News

Conjunctions:73, Earth Elegies Features New Work from Brian Evenson, Joyce Carol Oates, James Morrow, Lance Olsen, Rae Armantrout, Quincy Troupe, Eliot Weinberger, Nathaniel Mackey, Sabine Schiffner, Rob Nixon, Heather Altfeld, Arthur Sze, Francine Prose, Troy Jollimore, and Kristine Ong Muslim

To be mindful of the planet we call home is to be aware that our natural world is suffering. Its oceans are rising up, as if in protest. Its populations of birds and fish, of mammals and reptiles, are, many of them, in steep and steady decline. Forests, coral reefs, habitats of every sort of life form, from tree frogs to butterfly fish, from elephants to bees, are profoundly afflicted. Conjunctions:73, Earth Elegies—the latest issue of the innovative literary magazine published by Bard College—gathers writings that examine and lament the plight of our planet, while also celebrating its grand sublimity, its peerless beauty, and its indispensability. Edited by novelist and Bard literature professor Bradford Morrow, Earth Elegies features an exclusive interview with Underland author Robert Macfarlane, conducted by Diane Ackerman; a new translation of Sabine Schiffner poems; as well as new work from Brian Evenson, James Morrow, Lance Olsen, Joyce Carol Oates, Rae Armantrout, Quincy Troupe, Eliot Weinberger, Nathaniel Mackey, Sabine Schiffner, Rob Nixon, Heather Altfeld, Arthur Sze, Francine Prose, Troy Jollimore, and Kristine Ong Muslim.
The Washington Post says, “Conjunctions offers a showplace for some of the most exciting and demanding writers now at work.”

Edited by Bradford Morrow and published twice yearly by Bard College, Conjunctions publishes innovative fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction by emerging voices and contemporary masters. For nearly four decades, Conjunctions has challenged accepted forms and styles, with equal emphasis on groundbreaking experimentation and rigorous execution. Named a “Top Literary Magazine 2019” by Reedsy, the journal was a finalist for both the 2018 and 2019 ASME Award for Fiction and the 2018 CLMP Firecracker Award for General Excellence. In addition, contributions to recent issues have been selected for The Best American Essays (2018, 2019), The Pushcart Prize XLIV: Best of the Small Presses, Best American Experimental Writing 2020, Best Small Fictions 2019, and The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2019.

For more information on the latest issue, please visit conjunctions.com/print/archive/conjunctions73. To order a copy, go to annandaleonline.org/conjunctions, call the Conjunctions office at 845-758-7054, e-mail conjunctions@bard.edu, or write to Conjunctions, Bard College, PO Box 5000, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504-5000. Visit the Conjunctions website at conjunctions.com.

 
http://www.conjunctions.com/

On Monday, November 11, National Book Award–winning author Sigrid Nunez will read from her work at Bard College. The New York Review of Books writes that “Nunez’s keen powers of observation make her a natural chronicler,” and, according to the New Yorker, “Nunez has proved herself a master of psychological acuity.” Nunez will be introduced by MacArthur Fellow Dinaw Mengestu, director of Bard’s Written Arts Program. Presented by Bard Literature Professor Bradford Morrow’s Innovative Contemporary Fiction Reading Series and Bard’s Written Arts Program, the reading takes place at 6:30 p.m. in the Reem-Kayden Center László Z. Bitó ’60 Auditorium. It is free and open to the public; no reservations are required. Books by Nunez will be available for sale, courtesy of Oblong Books & Music. For more information about the Innovative Contemporary Fiction Reading Series, call 845-758-7054, email nnyhan@bard.edu, or visit conjunctions.com.

From the languages we speak to politics, philosophy, art, and architecture, the ancient Greeks and Romans have profoundly shaped the history of ideas. By engaging with their legacy, we can develop critical tools for considering our own ideas and beliefs in a fresh light. Studying the ancient past, then, is a vital part of a liberal arts education, as we prepare students to engage critically, imaginatively, and empathetically with the contemporary world around us. To encourage and support students pursuing this important course of study, Bard College has established a new scholarship in Classical Studies. Generous donor support for this scholarship reaffirms that classical studies are more important today than ever. 

The Classical Studies Scholarship recognizes academically outstanding students committed to classical studies. Scholarships cover up to full tuition for four years and are awarded based on need. Scholarship students must maintain a 3.3 grade point average or higher while earning at least 32 credits per year. Recipients are also eligible for a $1,500 stipend for classics-related summer programs (e.g. archaeological excavations, American School at Athens/Rome, language study) following their sophomore or junior year. Transfer students are also eligible for Classical Studies Scholarship funding.

Desirable experiences for selection as a Classical Studies Scholar include a proven interest in the ancient Greek and Roman worlds and their legacies; an interest in, and potential for, learning Greek and Latin; strong performance in high school classes related to English and world literature, languages, history, and/or other related humanities subjects. For more information or to apply, go to connect.bard.edu/register/classics_scholar.

“We in the Classical Studies Program are thrilled about this new initiative. These need-based financial aid scholarships, which include support for summer opportunities such as travel abroad and intensive language study, allow Bard College to make a unique contribution to ongoing efforts to widen access and increase equity in the field of Classics. We are excited to welcome the first scholars to Bard in Fall 2020, where they will join our thriving program and work with our award-winning faculty to pursue their passion for the ancient world,” says Associate Professor of Classical Studies Lauren Curtis.

Avallone’s 2019 Bettie Page Halloween Special is “a tribute to Bard,” he writes. The plot unfolds at “Annandale College” in upstate New York, where settings and characters are modeled on Avallone’s memories of Bard.
https://www.bleedingcool.com/2019/10/22/david-avallones-writers-commentary-on-bettie-pages-halloween-special-2019/

On Monday, October 28, Bard Fiction Prize and Los Angeles Times Book Prize winner Peter Orner will read from his from his new collection, Maggie Brown & Others, at Bard College. The Washington Post writes: “Peter Orner is that rare find: a young writer who can inhabit any character, traverse any landscape, and yet never stray from the sound of the human heart.” Orner will be introduced by MacArthur Fellow Dinaw Mengestu, director of Bard’s Written Arts Program. Presented by Bard Literature Professor Bradford Morrow’s Innovative Contemporary Fiction Reading Series and Bard’s Written Arts Program, the reading takes place at 6:30 p.m. in the Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito ’60 Auditorium. It is free and open to the public; no reservations are required. Books by Peter Orner will be available for sale, courtesy of Oblong Books & Music. For more information about the Innovative Contemporary Fiction Reading Series, call 845-758-7054, email nnyhan@bard.edu, or visit conjunctions.com.
 
http://www.conjunctions.com/about/news/event/?id=136226

New Faculty Chairs and Distinguished Professorships include Susan Aberth in Art History, Valeria Luiselli in Written Arts, Kelly Reichardt in Film and Electronic Arts, and An-My Lê in Photography

Bard College has appointed four new chairs and distinguished professorships across disciplines this fall. In the Division of the Arts’ Art History and Visual Culture Program, Susan Aberth has been named Edith C. Blum Professor of Art History. This chair was formerly held by Jean French. In the Division of Languages and Literature’s Written Arts Program, Valeria Luiselli has been named Sadie Samuelson Levy Professor in Languages and Literature. In the Division of the Arts’ Film and Electronic Arts Program, Kelly Reichardt has been named S. William Senfeld Artist in Residence. In the Division of the Arts’ Photography Program, An-My Lê has been named Charles Franklin Kellogg and Grace E. Ramsey Kellogg Professor in the Arts. This chair was formerly held by Peter Hutton.

Susan Aberth is an art historian whose area of specialization is surrealism in Latin America. Aberth’s teaching interests focus on Latin American art, African art, Islamic art, and other religious art and practices. Additional interests include African religious practices in the Americas, and the art and iconography of Freemasonry, Spiritualism, and the occult. In addition to her 2004 book Leonora Carrington: Surrealism, Alchemy and Art (Lund Humphries), she has contributed to Seeking the Marvelous: Ithell Colquhoun, British Women and Surrealism (Fulgur Press, 2020), Agnes Pelton: Desert Transcendentalist (Phoenix Art Museum, 2019), Surrealism, Occultism and Politics: In Search of the Marvelous (Routledge Press, 2018), Leonora Carrington: Cuentos mágicos (Museo de Arte Moderno & INBA, Mexico City, 2018), Unpacking: The Marciano Collection (Delmonico Books, Prestel, 2017), and Leonora Carrington and the International Avant-Garde (Manchester University Press, 2017), as well as to Abraxas: International Journal of Esoteric Studies, Black Mirror, and the Journal of Surrealism of the Americas. She received her BA from the University of California, Los Angeles; MA from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University; and PhD from The Graduate Center, City University of New York. Aberth has been at Bard since 2000.

Valeria Luiselli is an award-winning writer of fiction and nonfiction whose books are forthcoming and/or published in more than 20 languages. A 2019 recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, she is the author of the novels Lost Children Archive (2019); The Story of My Teeth (2015), named Best Book in Fiction by the Los Angeles Times and one of the best books of the year by the New York Times, and was a National Book Critics Circle finalist; and Faces in the Crowd (2014), for which she received a National Book Foundation “5 under 35” prize, among other honors. Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in 40 Question, a nonfiction work published in 2017, won the American Book Award and was a National Book Critics Circle and Kirkus Prize finalist. Other nonfiction publications include “Maps of Harlem,” in Where You Are; and Sidewalks, a collection of essays that was named one of the 10 best books of 2014 by New York. Recent journal, newspaper, and radio work has appeared in the New York Times (“The Littlest Don Quixotes versus the World”), Guardian (“Frida Kahlo and the Birth of Fridolatry”), Outlook Interview Series, BBC World Services (“Undocumented Central American Minors”), Harper’s Trump special (“Terrorist and Alien”), and NPR’s This American Life (“The Questionnaire”), among others. Honors also include an Art for Justice Fellowship (2018–19) and residencies at Under the Volcano, USA-Mexico; Poets House, New York City; and Castello di Fosdinovo, Italy. She previously taught at Hofstra University, City College, the New York University MFA Writing Program in Paris, and Columbia University’s MFA Writing Program. Luiselli founded the Teenage Immigrant Integration Association at Hofstra in 2015, a program that offers continuous support to immigrant and refugee teens through one-on-one English classes, soccer games, and civil rights education. She is a member of PEN America and the Association of Writers and Writing Programs. She received her BA from UNAM in Mexico, and her MA and PhD from Columbia University. She has been at Bard since 2019.

Kelly Reichardt is a filmmaker whose latest film, Certain Women—starring Laura Dern, Michelle Williams, Kristen Stewart, and Lily Gladstone—premiered in 2016 at the Sundance Film Festival and won the top award at the London Film Festival. Her other films include: Night Moves (2013), Meek’s Cutoff (2010), Wendy and Lucy (2008), Old Joy (2006), and River of Grass (1994). Her film First Cow is currently in postproduction. Reichardt has received the United States Artists Fellowship, Guggenheim Fellowship, Anonymous Was a Woman Award, and Renew Media Fellowship. Her work has been screened at the Whitney Biennial (2012), Film Forum, Cannes Film Festival in “un certain regard,” Venice International Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, Berlin International Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, and BFI London Film Festival. She has had retrospectives at the Anthology Film Archives, Pacific Film Archive, Museum of the Moving Image, Walker Art Center, and American Cinematheque Los Angeles. Reichardt received her BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Tufts University. She has taught at Bard College since 2006.

An-My Lê is a photographer who was born in Saigon, Vietnam, in 1960, but left that country during the final year of the war in 1975 and subsequently found a home as a political refugee in the United States. She received an MFA from Yale University in 1993. Her film and photography examine the effects and representation of war and have included the documentation of (and participation in) Vietnam War reenactments in South Carolina. She has received fellowships from the MacArthur Foundation, Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and New York Foundation for the Arts, and has had exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, the International Center of Photography, and MoMA PS1. An-My has been teaching at Bard since 1999.

Bard faculty members Marina van Zuylen and Daniel Terris spoke at "Educating for Freedom, for All," a forum marking the 75th Anniversary of the Teagle Foundation. The event featured leaders and fresh voices promoting equity in higher education. It took place on Thursday, October 3, at the Harold Pratt House in New York City. Daniel Terris, dean of the Al-Quds Bard College of Arts and Sciences in East Jerusalem, spoke on the panel "Opening Minds" on the topic of educating for citizenship. Marina van Zuylen, professor of French and comparative literature at Bard College and national academic director of the Clemente Course in the Humanities, spoke on the panel "Liberal Arts for All" on how the humanities bring hope to adults in crisis.

Author Clare Beams has received the Bard Fiction Prize for her debut collection of short stories, We Show What We Have Learned (Lookout Books 2016). Beams’ residency at Bard College is for the fall 2020 semester, during which time she will continue her writing and meet informally with students. Beams will give a public reading at Bard in spring 2020.

The Bard Fiction Prize committee writes: “The nine stories in Clare Beams’ debut collection of fiction, We Show What We Have Learned, range from factual, historical settings and characters to eerily fantastical ones, displaying a startling depth and an epic scale of imagination. While the characters, and the situations they find themselves in, are sometimes surreal, their psychologies are always absolutely real—fully, compassionately drawn. Every one of these stories has a world and a lifetime behind it, and every one is a compelling, disquieting, and immensely pleasurable journey, reverie, and dream for its reader. Clare Beams is a subtle, quiet master of short fiction, who writes in beautiful and exquisitely crafted prose.”

“I am so much more grateful to Bard and to the Bard Fiction Prize committee than I can possibly say for this recognition of my work and for this gift—one of the best gifts anyone could give me, as a writer who’s also a parent of young children—of time. To join this list of winners, so many who are heroes and heroines of mine, is an honor, and to join the inspiring Bard community is a thrill. I can’t wait to meet the students and faculty and work on my third book, a new novel, in their midst,” says Beams.

Clare Beams is the author of the story collection We Show What We Have Learned, which was a Kirkus Best Debut of 2016 and a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award, and the Shirley Jackson Award. Her first novel, The Illness Lesson, will be published by Doubleday in February of 2020. Her fiction appears in One Story, n+1, Ecotone, The Common, Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, and elsewhere, and she has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Sustainable Arts Foundation. She lives in Pittsburgh with her husband and two daughters, and has taught creative writing at Carnegie Mellon University and St. Vincent College.

The creation of the Bard Fiction Prize, presented each October since 2001, continues Bard’s long-standing position as a center for creative, groundbreaking literary work by both faculty and students. From Saul Bellow, William Gaddis, Mary McCarthy, and Ralph Ellison to John Ashbery, Philip Roth, William Weaver, and Chinua Achebe, Bard’s literature faculty, past and present, represents some of the most important writers of our time. The prize is intended to encourage and support young writers of fiction, and provide them with an opportunity to work in a fertile intellectual environment. Last year’s Bard Fiction Prize was awarded to Greg Jackson for his short story collection Prodigals (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2016).
https://www.bard.edu/bfp/

Two Bard College faculty members have been named 2019 MacArthur Fellows. Jeffrey Gibson, artist in residence in the Studio Arts Program and Valeria Luiselli, writer in residence in the Written Arts Program, are both recipients of this prestigious “genius grant” awarded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

The MacArthur Fellowship is a no-strings-attached award to extraordinarily talented and creative individuals as an investment in their potential. There are three criteria for selection of Fellows: exceptional creativity, promise for important future advances based on a track record of significant accomplishments, and potential for the Fellowship to facilitate subsequent creative work. Recipients may be writers, scientists, artists, social scientists, humanists, teachers, entrepreneurs, or those in other fields, with or without institutional affiliations. Fellows may use their award to advance their expertise, engage in bold new work, or, if they wish, to change fields or alter the direction of their careers. Although nominees are reviewed for their achievements, the Fellowship is not a lifetime achievement award, but rather an investment in a person’s originality, insight, and potential. Indeed, the purpose of the Fellowship is to enable recipients to exercise their own creative instincts for the benefit of human society. MacArthur Fellows receive $625,000 stipends that are bestowed with no conditions; recipients may use the money as they see fit. Eleven Bard faculty members have previously been honored with a MacArthur Fellowship.



Jeffrey Gibson grew up in major urban centers in the United States, Germany, Korea, and England. He is a Choctaw-Cherokee artist who incorporates his heritage into his multi-disciplinary work, which includes abstract sculptures, paintings, and prints. Gibson earned his Master of Arts in painting at the Royal College of Art, London, in 1998 and his Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1995. Gibson has work in the permanent collections of the Denver Art Museum, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian at the Smithsonian Institution, National Gallery of Canada, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and more. Recent solo exhibitions include Jeffrey Gibson: Like a Hammer at the Seattle Art Museum in Washington and Madison Museum of Art in Wisconsin and Jeffrey Gibson: This is the Day at Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, Texas. Gibson is a past TED Foundation Fellow, and a Joan Mitchell Grant recipient. He lives and works in New York.



Valeria Luiselli is an award-winning writer of fiction and nonfiction whose books are forthcoming and/or published in more than 20 languages. She is the author of the novels Lost Children Archive (2019); The Story of My Teeth (2015), named Best Book in Fiction by the Los Angeles Times, one of the best books of the year by the New York Times, and a National Book Critics Circle finalist; and Faces in the Crowd (2014), for which she received a National Book Foundation “5 under 35” prize, among other honors. Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in 40 Questions, a nonfiction work published in 2017, won the American Book Award and was a National Book Critics Circle and Kirkus Prize finalist. Other nonfiction publications include “Maps of Harlem,” in Where You Are, and Sidewalks, a collection of essays that was named one of the 10 best books of 2014 by New York. Recent journal, newspaper, and radio work has appeared in the New York Times (“The Littlest Don Quixotes versus the World”), Guardian (“Frida Kahlo and the Birth of Fridolatry”), Outlook Interview Series, BBC World Services (“Undocumented Central American Minors”), Harper’s Trump special (“Terrorist and Alien”), and NPR’s This American Life (“The Questionnaire”), among others. Honors also include an Art for Justice Fellowship (2018–19) and residencies at Under the Volcano, USA-Mexico; Poets House, New York City; and Castello di Fosdinovo, Italy. She previously taught at Hofstra University, City College, the New York University MFA Writing Program in Paris, and Columbia University’s MFA Writing Program. She founded the Teenage Immigrant Integration Association at Hofstra in 2015, a program that offers continuous support to immigrant and refugee teens through one-on-one English classes, soccer games, and civil rights education. She is a member of PEN America and the Association of Writers and Writing Programs. She was born in Mexico City and currently lives in New York City.
https://www.macfound.org/fellows/1036/

Professor Mendelsohn invokes the classics to offer perspectives on modern-day events in this collection—“one fascinating essay after another from one of America’s best critics.”
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/daniel-mendelsohn/ecstasy-and-terror/

In June 2019, Professor Lauren Curtis traveled to Fribourg, Switzerland, to participate in the conference, The Dance of Priests, Matronae, and Philosophers: Aspects of Dance Culture in Rome and the Roman Empire. She presented her new research about the relationship between dance and politics in ancient Rome, “Roman Rhythms: Music, Dance, and Imperial Ethics,” and learned about new approaches in ancient dance studies from specialists from France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
 
https://www3.unifr.ch/philclass/fr/news/actualites/20704

Seneca’s essay “On Anger” has just been republished as “How to Keep Your Cool: An Ancient Guide to Anger Management,” with a translation and introduction by James Romm. Romm talks about the work’s relevance today.
https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/why-you-can-t-be-angry-and-rational-at-the-same-time-1.3903298

Conjunctions:72, Nocturnals—the latest issue of the innovative literary magazine published by Bard College—gathers fiction, poetry, and essays from leading writers, both emerging and established, on the theme of night, its denizens, and its chronicles.
https://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=3154

An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic is the story of what happened after Mendelsohn’s 81-year-old father enrolled in his Bard College course on Homer’s Odyssey.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/an-odyssey-is-aprils-pick-for-the-pbs-newshour-new-york-times-book-club

On Tuesday, April 23, American Book Award–winning author Valeria Luiselli will read from her work at Bard College. “The novel truly becomes novel again in Luiselli’s hands—electric, elastic, alluring, new. . . . She is a superb chronicler,” writes the New York Times. Luiselli, who was recently appointed as writer in residence in the Division of Languages and Literature at Bard, will be introduced by MacArthur Fellow and Written Arts Program Director Dinaw Mengestu.
https://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=3143

Robert Cioffi, assistant professor of classics, has been awarded two fellowships from Harvard University for work on his scholarly monograph, Narrating the Marvelous: The Greek Novel and the Ancient Ethnographic Imagination. One, from the Loeb Classical Library Foundation, provides funding for an additional semester of research leave. In addition, he has been named a Junior Fellow at the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, D.C., where he will be in residence for the spring semester of 2020.
 
https://kleos.chs.harvard.edu/?p=138089

Peter Filkins’s H. G. Adler: A Life in Many Worlds is one of the first major works to be published about this influential writer. A survivor of Theresienstadt and Auschwitz, Adler published two dozen books of poetry, fiction, social science, history, and religion that detail the story of the Holocaust and analyze its influence on our world today. Filkins taps correspondence, broad historical research, and unpublished manuscripts to tell the story of how Adler lived through his times, and his effort to maintain human dignity amid systematic oppression, political corruption, and insufferable duress.
http://www.bard.edu/news/notes/details/?id=3965

Erin Singer and Kelsey Peterson, two contributors to Conjunctions, Bard College’s groundbreaking literary journal, have won the 2019 PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers for their work in Conjunctions.
http://www.bard.edu/news/features/?id=258

Bard College is proud to be included on the list of U.S. colleges and universities that produced the most 2018–2019 Fulbright U.S. students. 
http://www.bard.edu/news/features/?id=252

Greg Jackson, Bard Fiction Prize winner and writer in residence at Bard College, will read from his work on Monday, February 18, at the College’s Reem-Kayden Center.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=3117

Assistant Professor of Classics Robert Cioffi reviews Josephine Quinn’s In Search of the Phoenicians.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/v41/n01/robert-l-cioffi/a-palm-tree-a-colour-and-a-mythical-bird

Bard College announces the appointment of award-winning Mexican author Valeria Luiselli as writer in residence in the Division of Languages and Literature. 
http://www.bard.edu/news/features/?id=241

Conjunctions:71, A Cabinet of Curiosity features new work from Laura van den Berg, Ann Beattie, Brandon Hobson, Jeffrey Ford, Joyce Carol Oates, Joanna Scott, Can Xue, and more.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=3094

“Creative Process in Dialogue: Art and the Public Today” will be held at BHSEC Manhattan on October 31, followed by a lunch hour talk at Bard at Brooklyn Public Library on November 1.
http://www.bard.edu/news/features/?id=212

Bard College has received two grants from the NEH in support of faculty-led humanities projects, part of the endowment’s third and last round of funding for fiscal year 2018.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=3060

Conjunctions:70, Sanctuary: The Preservation Issue features new work from Diane Ackerman, Mary Jo Bang, Julia Elliott, Nam Le, Peter Orner, Donald Revell, and others.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=3010

Seniors Elena LeFevre, Nicola Koepnick, Adelina Colaku, Page Benoit, and Madeleine Breshears, and Bethany Zulick ’16 are among the Fulbright winners for 2018–19.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2998

“If Powers were an American writer of the nineteenth century . . . he’d probably be the Herman Melville of Moby-Dick. His picture is that big” (Margaret Atwood, New York Review of Books). 
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2993

On Monday, April 2, novelist and short story writer Laura van den Berg, winner of the 2015 Bard Fiction Prize, will read from her work at Bard College.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2984

The US-China Music Institute of the Bard College Conservatory of Music will present the Harmony and Power conference and concert series on March 30–31 on the Bard College campus.
http://www.bard.edu/news/events/event/?eid=133513&date=1522501200

On Thursday, March 29, prominent Russian novelist, essayist, short story writer, and public intellectual Tatyana Tolstaya will speak at Bard College about her new book, Aetherial Worlds, a collection of 18 stories.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2979

On Monday, March 5, Daniel Mendelsohn will give a book reading and signing followed by a wine reception for his new book, An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2972

The National Book Award finalist and 2017 Bard Fiction Prize-winning novelist Karan Mahajan will read from his work on February 26.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2971

Bard College has launched a tuition-free, degree-granting microcollege in the central branch of the Brooklyn Public Library. This innovative new program is designed to help nontraditional students who have been deterred, discouraged, or excluded from higher education to achieve associate degrees in the liberal arts, at no cost and in their home community.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/02/16/bard-college-and-brooklyn-public-library-open-free-satellite-university#.WobUBy8nVFQ.twitter

Author Carmen Maria Machado, Bard Fiction Prize winner and writer in residence at Bard College, will read from her work on February 19.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2964

Conjunctions:69, Being Bodies—the latest issue of the innovative literary magazine published by Bard College—is an exploration of the complex circumstances of flesh-and-blood existence. A memoir of distance running counterpoints a meditation on resurrection. The story of an injury is juxtaposed with an uncommonly candid confession of a young man who struggles with gender identity and sexual orientation. In every contribution come fresh insights into what it means to inhabit our bodies for a brief moment in time. Edited by Conjunctions editor, novelist, and Bard literature professor Bradford Morrow, Being Bodies features new work from Mary Caponegro, Edward Carey, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Nomi Eve, Michael Ives, Carole Maso, Rick Moody, Kyoko Mori, Dina Nayeri, Stephen O’Connor, Peter Orner, Jorge Ángel Pérez, Rosamond Purcell, Sallie Tisdale, Anne Waldman, and others.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2952

On Monday, November 13, celebrated fantasy writer and critic Elizabeth Hand reads from her fiction collection Saffron and Brimstone. The Washington Post writes, "Hand's work is pulsing with tension throughout, charged with its own chilling luminosity." Hand will be introduced by novelist and Bard literature professor Bradford Morrow.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2949

On Monday, October 30, celebrated author Diane Ackerman will read from The Zookeeper’s Wife at Bard College. This little-known true story of World War II enjoyed months as the New York Times No. 1 nonfiction bestseller, was the basis for a 2017 feature film of the same title, and received the Orion Book Award, which honored it as “a groundbreaking work of nonfiction, in which the human relationship to nature is explored in an absolutely original way through looking at the Holocaust.” Ackerman will be introduced by novelist and Bard literature professor Bradford Morrow. The reading, presented as part of Morrow’s Innovative Contemporary Fiction Reading (ICFR) series, takes place at 2:30 p.m. at Weis Cinema in the Bertelsmann Campus Center and will be followed by a Q&A. It is free and open to the public; no reservations are required.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2943

Author Carmen Maria Machado has received the Bard Fiction Prize for her debut short story collection, Her Body and Other Parties. In the collection, long-listed for the 2017 National Book Award and a finalist for the Kirkus Prize, Machado shapes startling, genre-bending narratives that map the realities of women’s lives and the violence visited upon their bodies. Machado’s residency at Bard College is for the fall 2018 semester, during which time she will continue her writing, meet informally with students, and give a public reading.
http://www.bard.edu/bfp/

What happens when Professor Daniel Mendelsohn's 81-year-old father enrolls in his Odyssey seminar at Bard? The author discusses his new memoir on Friday, October 20.
http://fishercenter.bard.edu/calendar/event.php?eid=133159

On Monday, September 25, American Book Award–winning poet, memoirist, journalist, and Miles Davis biographer Quincy Troupe will read from his work at Bard College. 
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2934

Bard College alumna Charlotte Mandell ’90 has been named one of six finalists for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize, which celebrates the finest works of translated fiction from around the world.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2910

Bard College student C Mandler has won an inaugural GLAAD Rising Star Grant. The GLAAD Rising Stars program empowers and invests in the next generation of LGBTQ change makers, whose advocacy is changing their local communities and the culture at large.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2893

Bard College students have won several highly competitive awards for international travel including two Thomas J. Watson Fellowships, four Fulbright grants, and a Davis Projects for Peace prize.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2892

Justus Rosenberg will receive the Legion of Honor medal at the French consulate in New York City on Thursday, March 30. Professor Rosenberg, Bard professor emeritus of languages and literature and visiting professor of literature, is the last surviving member of the Varian Fry group, which helped rescue hundreds of artists and intellectuals from Nazi-occupied France during World War II. He later joined the Forces Francaises de I'Interieur and the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation organization. The medal recognizes his "selfless sacrifice" throughout the war and subsequent "outstanding academic career ... where you left a profound mark and remain a highly influential role model for thousands of young men and women beginning their adult lives. It comes in recognition of the high esteem in which you are held by French authorities, and serves as an example to all those who have French-American friendship at heart."

Professor in the Arts Neil Gaiman and Executive Producer Bryan Fuller discuss moving from page to screen for the forthcoming Starz television series American Gods, adapted from Gaiman’s best-selling novel. The event takes place on Saturday, April 15 at 7:30 p.m., and includes an exclusive preview of the first episode of the new television series ahead of its premiere on the Starz network.

Bard Fisher Center Presents an Evening with Neil Gaiman and American Gods (Bard.edu)
Neil Gaiman to Discuss American Gods (Poughkeepsie Journal)
 

John Crowley, the World Fantasy Award–winning author of Little, Big and the Ægypt series, will read from his fiction at Bard College on Monday, November 14. The New York Times Book Review writes, “John Crowley is an abundantly gifted writer, a scholar whose passion for history is matched by his ability to write a graceful sentence.”
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2853

Who or what is an alien? Someone or something whose profound otherness stirs in us terror, even dread, or perhaps a healthy—sometimes dangerous—curiosity? Exploring these straightforward yet complex questions, Conjunctions:67, Other Aliens—the latest issue of the innovative literary magazine published by Bard College—collects works of literary science and speculative fiction that explore the vast precincts of unfamiliarity, of keen difference, of weirdness and not belonging.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2851

Author Karan Mahajan has been selected to receive the Bard Fiction Prize for his novel The Association of Small Bombs. A finalist for the 2016 National Book Award, Mahajan’s masterful narrative tells the story of two Delhi families ripped apart by a small bombing in a marketplace. Woven around the story of the Khuranas and the Ahmeds is the gripping tale of Shockie, a Kashmiri bomb maker who has forsaken his own life for the independence of his homeland. Mahajan’s residency at Bard College is for the Fall 2017 semester, during which time he will continue his writing, meet informally with students, and give a public reading.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2848

After five years of preparation, the Sussman Rare Book Collection will open in the Stevenson Library on October 29 with such treasures as a 1556 copy of the Magna Carta.
http://hudsonvalleyone.com/2016/10/13/woodstock-attorney-donates-extraordinary-book-collection-to-bard/