Could Mark Twain, master storyteller of Connecticut and of the world, have imagined the new tale unfolding today at UConn?

Lynn Z. Bloom, Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of English, and Martin Bloom, professor emeritus of social work, are adding a new chapter to the work-in-progress. Their planned gift will establish the Bloom Endowment for the Mark Twain Distinguished Author-in-Residence.

Mark Twain’s literary legacy to the world is unquestioned, and his place in Connecticut secured by his home in Hartford, now the Mark Twain House and Museum. The endowment for the Mark Twain Distinguished Author-in-Residence, housed in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, will ensure UConn’s commitment to that heritage, through bringing creative writers and scholars of American literature not only to the Storrs campus but to the state of Connecticut.

That Mark Twain lives today is attested by the publication of his autobiography in 2010, a bestseller commemorating the 100th anniversary of his death. That Twain will live for tomorrow’s students, scholars, and the general public will be reinforced by the Bloom Endowment.

An iconoclastic, boundary-breaking writer in the Twain mold, Bloom was hired as the inaugural Aetna Chair of Writing at UConn in 1988, the first chair in the nation to be endowed for writing and the first endowed chair on UConn’s flagship campus – of further groundbreaking significance because it went to a woman.

Although her Ph.D. advisor at the University of Michigan told her to get a teaching certificate so she would have “something to fall back on,” Bloom had a more expansive vision of her professional future. She didn’t want to fall back. “I wanted to move forward,” she says. “It’s wonderful to have a job, made possible by the Aetna Foundation’s endowment to UConn, that is always forward-looking, with numerous opportunities for invention and innovation.”

Just as Twain is associated with Hartford and Connecticut, Bloom’s name is associated with writers and writing teachers throughout the state as a consequence of this appointment. The Aetna Chair’s mandate, under Bloom’s direction, is to focus on the teaching of writing at the Storrs and regional campuses through a host of events and initiatives. These include teacher fellowships to the Connecticut Writing Project Summer Institute – over 450 to date; co-sponsorship of annual conferences at UConn on teaching writing and two national composition research conferences; and a creative writer-in-residence every semester.

The chair also supports publication of Essay CONNections – volumes of award-winning freshman essays – and UConn’s award-winning student literary magazine, The Long River Review; teaching awards; the annual Aetna Celebration of Creative Nonfiction; and prizes for freshman and graduate critical essays, creative nonfiction, and interdisciplinary writing through the UConn Writing Center and the activities of UConn’s Litchfield County Writers Project.

Bloom decided at the age of six to be a writer and teacher, inspired by Dr. Seuss’s And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street. “I was suffused with happiness upon reading this book,” she says. “I thought, ‘If I can become a writer and make others as happy as I am at this moment it will be wonderful.’” Her vision never wavered, though Twain’s influence would come later. After writing a doctoral dissertation analyzing literary biography, she spent seven years learning how to write one herself, Doctor Spock: Biography of a Conservative Radical, the life story of pediatrician Benjamin Spock.

Known nationally for her writing research (some 25 books and 125 articles on creative nonfiction), Bloom has dramatically increased UConn’s national prominence in the field. “The Aetna Chair is important,” she says. “When I came here, there was no campus-wide scholarly effort devoted to writing. And with the Aetna Chair, the whole University climate regarding writing has changed. Someone with expertise in writing can open the eyes of readers and writers. You can see the lightbulbs going off.”

The Blooms hope to continue this momentum with the creation of the Bloom Endowment for the Mark Twain Distinguished Author-in-Residence. “I have liked being able to play good fairy with the money from the Aetna endowment,” Lynn Bloom says. “And now I have the opportunity to become a philanthropist myself.”

To give to the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, please contact the Foundation’s development department.