Cloudofunkowing--wow, you are like telling the story of my life right now, right down to the liberal arts college! Yes, I've been working closely with some Lit. faculty during my MFA time--one is a top ecocrit scholar, and on the poetry side our faculty are very involved in the ecopoetics movement as well, so I've had the pleasure of seeing my creative and scholarly pursuits feed each other. And congrats on UT! I've been looking at Heather Houser's work there and thinking about applying to UT next year. I'm planning to apply to mostly straight Lit programs and throw USC's creative writing/lit program in there as well b/c my department has contacts there and I've been impressed by the work I've seen come out of there.
davidipse--yes, UCLA is currently my dream school. They infused their environmental humanities program with 4 great hires (one of which is following me on academia.edu, is that nerdy to care about?). And I'm looking at Michigan and Berkeley too. Davis and Berkeley actually co-hosted the first-ever ecopoetics conference in 2013 and it was incredible so it seems like things are really moving at both places in terms of bridging the creative/critical divide via ecocrit. I see Berkeley and UCLA are BOTH on your accepted list--what's your field? I'm interested in how you could decide between two incredible schools.
Glad to hear I'm not the only one out there, too! Thanks for the info!