Pleasants

Kara Pleasants is a Senior Lecturer for the English department. She received the English Department Writing Programs Award for Social Justice and Antiracist Teaching and Tutoring Award in Spring 2024 and an Excellence in Education Award from the city of Bowie, MD in 2011. A UMD alum, she holds a Master’s of Arts in English Literature, focusing on Rhetoric, Renaissance and Early Modern studies; a Master’s of Education in English Curriculum and Instruction; and a Bachelor’s in Russian Language and Literature. She enjoys writing fiction and poetry, publishing Disenchanted (a Pride and Prejudice remix with magic) in 2020 with Quills and Quartos Publishing. Her poetry has been published in the Raven’s Muse Magazine, Livinia Press, Failed Haiku and The Orchards Poetry Journal. She combines her love of poetry with music as director of the Maryland Palestrina Choir, an ensemble dedicated to performing choral music from the Renaissance.