2025: Minda Honey

Minda Honey\u27s (she/her) essays on politics and relationships have appeared in Harper\u27s Bazaar, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Washington Post, the Guardian, the Oxford American, Teen Vogue, and Longreads. She is the editor of Black Joy at Reckon - the newsletter has more than 30,000 subscribers. Her debut memoir, THE HEARTBREAK YEARS, is a hilarious and intimate portrait of a Black woman finding who she is and who she wants to be, one bad date at a time.https://thekeep.eiu.edu/lionsinwinter_writers/1052/thumbnail.jp

2025: Jacqui Germain

Jacqui Germain is a poet, journalist, and former student and labor organizer living and working in St. Louis. She served as the 2021-2022 Economic Security Project Fellow with Teen Vogue, reporting on issues of economic inequality of the intersections of race and gender. Winner of the 2021 Center for African American Poetry & Poetics Book Prize and the 2024 Kate Tufts Discovery Award, her debut collection of poetry is BITTERING THE WOUND.https://thekeep.eiu.edu/lionsinwinter_writers/1054/thumbnail.jp

The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on College Sport Communications

As Artificial Intelligence technology (AI) becomes increasingly accessible, the importance of understanding its impact on peoples’ work lives is also increasing. One field that has received very little attention in relation to this subject is college sport communications. Prior research has focused on AI within the closely related fields of journalism and public relations, but no previous studies have been conducted on AI and college sport communicators specifically. To address that knowledge gap, this study surveyed members of the College Sport Communicators (CSC) on their attitudes toward AI and their usage of such technology. The data analysis showed that while college sport communicators are optimistic about AI’s usefulness within the field, there is still a low adoption rate of AI across the industry. Results also revealed that communicators are not very concerned about AI threatening their job security, despite automation being one of the dominant narratives surrounding AI. Furthermore, it was found that college sport communicators have on average a low to moderate level of AI knowledge. Due to these factors, the study concluded that one of the primary reasons for the lack of wide scale AI adoption by college sport communicators is a lack of familiarity with the technology, rather than an outright hostility toward it. These findings also reflect those of previous studies conducted on journalists and public relations professionals. This study is significant because it represents the first look into how AI shaping college sport communications and adds to the growing body of research surrounding AI in our society

2025: Julia Fine

Julia Fine is the author of THE UPSTAIRS HOUSE, winner of the Chicago Review of Books Award for Fiction, and WHAT SHOULD BE WILD, which was shortlisted for the Bram Stoker Award for Superior First Novel. Her third novel, MADDALENA AND THE DARK, came out from Flatiron in June 2023. She teaches writing in Chicago, where she lives with her family.https://thekeep.eiu.edu/lionsinwinter_writers/1053/thumbnail.jp

Mike Petrick

https://thekeep.eiu.edu/lumpkin_alumni_spotlight/1000/thumbnail.jp