Incoming English graduate student Anna Flood will hit the ground running when she begins her first semester of graduate work at the University of Illinois: she just spent the summer taking part in the Summer Predoctoral Institute and working with Professor Candice Jenkins on speculative fictions about slavery (e.g., Octavia Butler's Kindred).  Flood recently wrote for the Graduate College about her day presenting this research at the Illinois Summer Research Symposium in a post entitled "Day in the Life: Illinois Summer Research Symposium." Check it out!