News from the Division of Languages and Literature

"The unnamed narrator is an American adrift in Dubai ... It’s a devastating story of a man circling the drain, lost in the last society that will have him."

"The richly textured, eminently readable translations by Boyd and Olga Voronina are admirably faithful ... a generation of scholars of the emigration will be in Boyd and Voronina’s debt."

Poet Robert Kelly, who was present at Dylan Thomas's last public reading before his untimely death, discusses the author and his legacy. Robert Kelly's interview begins at 18:00.

"Murder, dismemberment, stalking and blackmail are all part of the journey The Forgers takes through the territory where love and books overlap."

On Monday, November 10, Steven Millhauser, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Martin Dressler, The Knife Thrower, and other works, reads from his most recent short-story collection, We Others: New and Selected Stories, winner of The Story Prize and a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. Charles Simic, in The New York Review of Books, calls We Others “a book of astonishingly beautiful and moving stories by one of America’s finest and most original writers,” and David Rollow, in the Boston Sunday Globe, writes, “Every reader knows of writers who are like secrets one wants to keep, and whose books one wants to tell the world about. Millhauser is mine.” Millhauser will be introduced by novelist and Bard literature professor Bradford Morrow.

Nuruddin Farah discusses his novel Hiding in Plain Sight, a story about a photographer who cares for her niece and nephew after her brother's death at the hands of extremists in Somalia.

Authors Francine Prose and Ayana Mathis discuss their scariest reading experiences, both of which took place during childhood.

Author Laura van den Berg has been selected to receive the annual Bard Fiction Prize for 2015. The prize, established in 2001 by Bard College to encourage and support promising young fiction writers, consists of a $30,000 cash award and appointment as writer in residence for one semester. Van den Berg is receiving the prize for her book The Isle of Youth (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2013). In this collection of stories, van den Berg explores the lives of women mired in secrecy and deception. The characters in these stories are at once vulnerable and dangerous, bighearted and ruthless—grappling with the choices they have made and searching for the clues to unlock their inner worlds. Van den Berg’s residency at Bard College will be for the spring 2015 semester, during which time she will continue her writing, meet informally with students, and give a public reading.

Michael Wood praises this first-ever collection of Nabokov's letters to his wife and collaborator.

Daniel Mendelsohn considers why The Catcher in the Rye's Holden Caulfield doesn't have the same appeal when encountered as an adult reader.

On Monday, November 3, Julia Elliott, winner of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award and a Pushcart Prize, will read from her debut short-story collection, The Wilds, which Publishers Weekly describes as “a brilliant combination of emotion and grime, wit and horror… Elliott’s gift of vernacular is remarkable, and her dark, modern spin on Southern Gothic creates tales that surprise, shock, and sharply depict vice and virtue.” Elliott will be introduced by novelist and Bard literature professor Bradford Morrow.

Professor of English Ben La Farge's new book moves effortlessly from the classics to contemporary drama, and fiction to television, shedding new light on the art of comedy.

Mona Simpson reviews Elena Ferrante's new novel, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, and muses on the history of autobiographical fiction from Dickens to Alcott.

Bard alumna and La Voz editor Mariel Fiori '05 has been named an Entrepreneurial Woman of the Year by Gateway to Entrepreneurial Tomorrows, Inc. (GET). GET promotes economic development in the Hudson Valley by supporting women, minorities, youth, and veterans in starting their own businesses. Every year the organization recognizes outstanding regional businesspeople with the Hudson Valley Entrepreneurial Awards. Mariel Fiori, who cofounded the Spanish-language magazine La Voz as a Bard student and has edited the publication for a decade, will be recognized for her contributions as a community leader. Fiori and five other awardees will be honored at GET's 10th anniversary celebration on Thursday, October 23, as part of the Hudson Valley Entrepreneurial Conference and Expo in Wappinger Falls.

Francine Prose writes about the appeal of Transparent, an "unlikely hit" television series about a father who comes out to his family as a trans woman in late middle age.

The Classical Studies Program at Bard College presents Bracko: A reading of Sappho’s poetry on October 18 by Anne Carson, Robert Currie, Nick Flynn, and Sam Anderson. Bracko presents the lyric poetry of Sappho, the ancient Greek poet known to many English-speaking readers through Anne Carson’s translation If Not, Winter. In addition to welcoming Sappho’s most distinguished translator to Bard, the event celebrates an extraordinary moment in the history of Sappho’s poetry. Sappho made headlines in the international press this year because of the rare discovery of two previously unknown poems.

Senior Fellow Wyatt Mason discusses life, culture, religion, and humanity with author Marilynne Robinson.

Nabokov's passionate letters to his wife and collaborator Véra Slonim have been published for the first time, and were co–edited and translated by Olga Voronina, Russian and Eurasian Studies Program director.