News from the Division of Languages and Literature

The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College presents a full spring season of performing arts events, including jazz and orchestral concerts, and innovative dance and theater productions, from January 31 through May 16. Highlights include the Billie Holiday Centenary Tribute, Joseph Haydn’s The Creation, American Symphony Orchestra concerts, Cynthia Hopkins’ A Living Documentary, Neil Gaiman in Conversation with Laurie Anderson, and Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance.

Meet John Ashbery, award-winning author of more than 30 books and Charles P. Stevenson, Jr. Professor Emeritus of Languages and Literature at Bard.

"Bradford Morrow is, quite skillfully, paying homage to one of Agatha Christie’s most famous whodunits. Yet even then, he offers a few twists of his own ...."

Writer in Residence Teju Cole and Bard Fiction Prize winner Laura van den Berg discuss reading for diversity, popular books, and what they're reading right now.

Daniel Mendelsohn on "plot versus plottiness"—by way of Aristotle, Jerry Seinfeld, Downton Abbey, and Scandal—in his inaugural Harper's column.

Publisher's Weekly and Library Journal both praised Norman Manea's Captives, his 1970 debut novel, now translated from Romanian to English for the first time.

Professor Farah plays matchmaker with his unfulfilled characters in his short story "The Start of the Affair."

Languages and Literature professor Ann Lauterbach and professor emeritus John Ashbery describe the pull of their favorite historical photographs.

"I am a bit shocked to realize 2014 was the year I loved everything I read," begins Porochista Khakpour as she names the best books she read this year.

Author Teju Cole discusses the CIA torture report, his affection for the Times arts section, and why he wants to write for the Onion.

How are Bard students and faculty talking about the Michael Brown and Eric Garner cases? Bard writer in residence Francine Prose offers a glimpse into her classroom discussion.

Bard College presents a special exhibition of photographs and poetry on display from December 8 
through January 9, on view in the Charles P. Stevenson, Jr. Library in the atrium and the Sussman Room, 2nd floor. The exhibition features two works, “Winter Music,” a collaboration between artist/photographer Susan Quasha and renowned poet Robert Kelly, and “Madonna Comix,” a series of 26 prints by Dianne Kornberg based on 11 poems by Celia Bland. There will be an opening reception and poetry reading on Tuesday, December 9, from 5 to 7 p.m. in the Library atrium.

Guilty pleasures, long books, and genre fiction ... Writer in Residence Teju Cole and Bard Fiction Prize winner Laura van den Berg comment on this second installment of "How Writers Read."

Mariel Fiori talks about the character of the Hudson Valley's Hispanic population, and why she founded Bard's La Voz magazine to help serve its needs.

Iranian American author Porochista Khakpour talks about a lifetime of writing and why she loves teaching younger students.

Joseph O’Neill's The Dog, Francine Prose's Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932, and James Romm's Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero all made the list.

Francine Prose talks about her new novel, inspired by the real life of cross-dressing French athlete Violette Morris, who became a spy for the Gestapo during World War II.

Forty-five writers contribute microfiction for this collection. Each piece is two sentences long and follows one rule: Include "thanks" in an interesting way.

Husband and wife artists Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer appeared at local favorite Oblong Books on November 29 to promote Small Business Saturday.

Writer in Residence Teju Cole and Bard Fiction Prize winner Laura van den Berg talk "reader's block," genre, favorite reading spots, and more.

The election of Klaus Johannis is nothing less than an "electoral earthquake" for Romania, writes Professor Manea. (PDF Download)

Authors Teju Cole and Salman Rushdie cohost an evening of their work at New York City's Symphony Space on December 10, featuring Blythe Danner '65 as one of the performers.

Nuruddin Farah's Hiding in Plain Sight, Porochista Khakpour's The Last Illusion, and Francine Prose's Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932 are among the year's best fiction.

The French government has declared books an "essential good." What does that say about French literary culture compared to that of the United States?

The Human Rights Project at Bard College presents a public conversation between Nuruddin Farah and Mark Danner to discuss Farah’s new critically acclaimed novel Hiding in Plain Sight. Farah, who just won a Lifetime Achievement Literary Award from the South African Literary Awards, has been hailed as “the most important African novelist to emerge in the past twenty-five years” by The New York Review of Books. This event will take place on Monday, November 17, from 6 pm to 7:30 pm in the Multipurpose Room of the Bertelsmann Campus Center at Bard College.

The Last Illusion draws from the Persian Book of Kings, in which a young man is raised by a bird and becomes a warrior. In Khakpour's novel he is raised by his mother in a cage as a bird.

"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.

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.

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

In the second in a regular series of conversations hosted by Bard professor Neil Gaiman, author and artist Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler’s Wife) discusses time travel, Doctor Who, graveyards, taxidermy, graphic novels, pictures, books, and long-distance romance. The program takes place on Friday, October 3 at 7:30 p.m. in the Sosnoff Theater.

Bard MFA photography faculty Mark Alice Durant interviews MFA writing faculty David Levi Strauss on art, writing, and politics.

Karen Russell, the 2011 Bard Fiction Prize winner, talks with Bard literature professor and Conjunctions editor Bradford Morrow about his new book, The Forgers.

On Monday, September 15, Joseph O'Neill, Bard’s Distinguished Visiting Professor of Written Arts and the author of the PEN/Faulkner Award–winning Netherland, will read from his new novel, The Dog. Publishers Weekly describes The Dog as “Pitch-perfect prose . . . Clever, witty, and profoundly insightful, this is a beautifully crafted narrative about a man undone by a soulless society.”