Texas College English Association

The Texas College English Association (TCEA) is the Texas affiliate of the national College English Association. Meeting in conjunction with the Texas-based Conference of College Teachers of English on the first weekend of March each year, TCEA organizes several sessions of scholarly papers and creative writing works by and/or about Texas scholars and writers.

The 2019 Conference was hosted by Texas A&M University Kingsville on February 28-March 2. The theme of the conference was “Texas: Land of Dichotomies.”

TCEA hosts an annual breakfast speaker each year at the conference, and the speaker for 2019 TCEA breakfast was John Riherd, a lawyer turned up-and-coming mystery novelist.

Riherd is an attorney turned mystery novelist. During his breakfast talk, he shared his educational, professional, and personal path to writing. After experiencing some burn out in the field of law and some personal turmoil, he turned to his passion for writing stories. He admited that he has had no formal training in creative writing and that his first work was riddled with errors. However, Riherd credited his past teachers for encouraging his interest in writing. In fact, he fondly spoke of specific teachers from elementary school on through high school and college throughout his talk. Today, he owns his own company called Dustivus Media where he publishes his books on demand. His first novel, A Crimson Grace, follows attorney and avid fisherman Samuel Locke as he rescues a teenager from human trafficking along the Galveston, Texas coast. His latest novel is entitled, The Blues and Ballet.

Publication: Each year the the TCEA committee selects one paper for publication to include in CCTE Studies, a Conference of College Teachers of English publication. The 2019 TCEA Best Paper Award was awarded to Stephanie Salazar-Amaro, from Del Mar College. She presented “The South Texas Gender Dichotomy in Jovita Gonzalez and Eve Raleigh’s Caballero” during the TCEA 3 session – Roundtable: Towards an Aesthetics of South Texas Women Writings: Negotiating Dichotomies

The 2020 Conference will be March 5-7, hosted by Collin College McKinney in McKinney. The theme is Don't Mess with Texas. . . Women. Please see the the "Call for Papers 2020" link for more information.