Professor Emerita of English Francesca Abbate ’90 dreamed of teaching at a small liberal arts college like Beloit, and returned to teach at her alma mater after earning an M.F.A. degree at the University of Montana and a Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Her poetry has appeared in such prestigious literary journals such as The Cincinnati Review, Field, Gulf Coast, The Iowa Review, and Poetry. Her first book of poetry, Troy, Unincorporated, published by The University of Chicago Press in 2012, recast Chaucer’s “Troilus and Criseyde” as a contemporary story of love and loss set in Wisconsin. She taught creative writing and literature at Beloit, with a focus on the long poem, prose poetry, and poetry by contemporary women poets, as well as writing courses on fairy tales, writing about adolescence, and Venice. She has credited the resources at the Logan and Wright museums and the Beloit College Archives with enriching her teaching. In 2012, she was the inaugural George S. Parker II faculty curator at the Wright Museum.