Moni Basu, University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications (UFCJC) Michael and Linda Connelly Lecturer in Narrative Nonfiction, has accepted the position of Director of Narrative Nonfiction for the Low-Residency Master of Fine Arts Program at the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, where she has she has been a distinguished professor of practice since 2015. Basu will also be the Charlayne Hunter-Gault Distinguished Writer in Residence. She will begin her new role in January 2023.

Since her arrival at UFCJC in 2018, Basu’s achievements include:

• Being named 2019-2020 UF Undergraduate Teacher of the Year, after only her second year at UF.
• Founding Atrium, the new UFCJC award-winning narrative nonfiction magazine.
• Re-launching the UFCJC chapter of the Asian American Journalists Association.
• Creating and developing several new courses, including Narrative Nonfiction Writing, The Art of the Interview and Reporting from Ground Zero.
• Helping to develop Fresh Take Florida.

During her time at UFCJC, Basu also served as editor-at-large for The Bitter Southerner and The Groundtruth Project, and continued to write. Her story “In Search of Spirits in Cassadaga: A Writer Unlocks the Truths of this Mystical Community, Its Energy Healers and the Supernatural” won both the Florida Magazine Association’s Charlie Award and the Religious Communicators Council’s Wilbur Award in 2021.

Basu has been influential to her students, serving as a teacher, a mentor, a guide and a friend to hundreds of students. She has changed so many lives—some of it through lessons about storytelling, but much of it through lessons about life.

UFCJC student Melissa Hernandez de la Cruz, in an article she wrote for College Magazine on the “10 Most Loved Professors at the University of Florida,” of which Basu was one, said of Basu: “Her ability to express self-awareness and self-reflection ease the way into your first assignment: personal essay. Although usually a small class, Basu touches each student’s heart, helping them find their voice. She dislikes adverbs and adjectives because she believes there are countless ways to describes things beyond a simple word.”

Posted: August 8, 2022
Category: College News
Tagged as: Moni Basu