News from the Division of Languages and Literature

Bard High School Early College takes on The Iliad in an all-day marathon reading.

It's been a busy fall for La Farge, whose new novel, Luminous Airplanes, debuted in October, garnering raves from the New York Times Book Review, Publishers Weekly, and others. Usually a novelist’s work is done long before publication. But La Farge, whose previous books include The Artist of the Missing (FSG, 1999); Haussmann, or the Distinction (FSG, 2001); and The Facts of Winter (McSweeney’s, 2005), has launched Luminous Airplanes in two different formats: a traditional print novel and a spectacularly ambitious online "immersive text," to which he is still adding content.

What would you tell the world's seven-billionth person so that he or she could be a responsible citizen? The Center for Civic Engagement sponsors an essay contest for students in Bard's network of institutions.

Bard literature professor and Conjunctions editor Bradford Morrow's novella Fall of the Birds e-book just released today! Watch book trailer via Open Road Media.

The Annual Bard Fiction Prize has been awarded to Benjamin Hale for his debut novel, The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore. Hale will receive a $30,000 award and join Bard as writer in residence for the spring 2012 semester.

On Monday, October 31, at Bard College, Bard College writer in residence Edie Meidav will read from her highly praised recent novel, Lola, California. Meidav is the winner of the 2006 Bard Fiction Prize and author of Crawl Space and The Far Field. In praise of Lola, California, the New Yorker wrote, “Meidav captures the self-indulgence of adolescent friendship and the tension underlying familial bonds, languidly teasing out the surprising secrets of the past.”

The latest issue of Bard's literary magazine Conjunctions explores family in all its permutations, with new work by Rae Armantrout, Ann Beattie, Elizabeth Hand, Noy Holland, Robert Kelly, Rick Moody, Joyce Carol Oates, Peter Orner, Octavio Paz, and Karen Russell.

"The genius of this brief novel is that it contains all of life in its diminutive crucible."

Conjunctions

The Royal Society of Literature (RSL) of Great Britain has invited renowned Romanian émigré author and Bard College writer in residence Norman Manea to become a Fellow of RSL. The Royal Society of Literature was founded by King George IV in 1820, to “reward literary merit and excite literary talent.” Manea is the first Romanian writer to be honored by the prestigious British institution. 



This September, the Bard Free Press, Bard College’s student newspaper, and the Bard Center for Civic Engagement present the Free Press Journalism Seminar Series, featuring leading journalists, newspaper publishers, writers, and scholars discussing the state of journalism today, from the role of journalists in society to ways of becoming a journalist.

Roughly half a century after first arriving, as a budding “scientist of totality,” to teach and abide at Bard College, Robert Kelly ambled with ursine grace across the stage in Olin Auditorium and assumed the lectern. Dusk was gathering on a chilly evening, and the enthusiastic crowd—consisting of colleagues, students, administrators, and various representatives of the arts intelligentsia from surrounding communities and farther afield—was there to celebrate his eternally youthful tenure as Bard’s unofficial poet in residence.

Achebe Center director Binyavanga Wainaina’s new memoir, One Day I Will Write About This Place, is a "kaleidoscopic keyhole that offers fresh insights on globalism, tribalism and the decolonizing process."

This month, Graywolf Press will publish One Day I Will Write about This Place, a debut memoir from Binyavanga Wainaina, the celebrated Kenyan writer and director of the Chinua Achebe Center for African Writers and Artists at Bard College. Vanity Fair calls Wainaina "one of Kenya's young literary stars," and oprah.com's Summer Reading List calls One Day "an astonishing, dreamy memoir."

Norman Manea has been officially invited to become a Fellow of The Royal Society of Literature of Great Britain. He is the first Romanian writer to be so honored. In July, the Romanian Cultural Institute in New York and Bard College presented a special event celebrating the Professor Manea’s 75th birthday, lauded as “one of the most remarkable writers of our time.”

Bard Fiction Prize winners Nathan Englander and Karen Russell talk with the New Yorker about breaking into the literary world.

This documentary about medieval drama—based on Elisabeth Dutton’s production of John Skelton’s Magnyfycence at Hampton Court Palace in May 2010—includes interviews, documentary footage, and both theatrical and cinematic stagings of the play.

Robert Kelly is Asher B. Edelman Professor of Literature at Bard College. He has been on the Bard faculty since 1961.

Professor Kelly founded the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts writing program in 1980, and directed it for a dozen years. He has received numerous grants and awards, including recognition from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, the Los Angeles Times Prize for Poetry, and an honorary doctorate from SUNY Oneonta. He is the author of more than 50 books of poetry (including Red Actions, a selection of poems from 1960–93), several novels, and five collections of shorter fiction. His most recent books are May Day (poems), Fire Exit (long poem), The Book from the Sky (novel), The Logic of the World and Other Fictions (stories), and Uncertainties. He is at work on a new collection of shorter poems and a book of essays, manifestos, and reviews.