News from the Division of Languages and Literature

On November 5, celebrated poet Jennifer Moxley will read from her award-winning work at Bard College. The reading is presented by the John Ashbery Poetry Series. The Iowa Review writes that Moxley’s “poems make room for thinking, for dreams, and for silence as they manage and contextualize space both public and private ... [They seem] to ask: Can we take the detritus of living and make song of it? What would that song be like? Would it be song? How do we begin to make it? What would stand in its way?” Introduced by Ann Lauterbach, David and Ruth Schwab Professor of Languages and Literature at Bard, and followed by a Q&A, this event takes place at 6:00 p.m. in Bard Hall. It is free and open to the public; no tickets or reservations are required.

Join a public conversation on November 7 between Neil Gaiman, Bard professor in the arts, and Armistead Maupin, the best-selling writer and activist, as they discuss their heroes Charles Dickens and Christopher Isherwood, the craft of storytelling, and many other subjects. The program takes place on Saturday, November 7 at 7:30 p.m. in the Sosnoff Theater of Bard's Fisher Center. Maupin is the author of 11 novels, including the nine-volume Tales of the City series, which Salon calls “perhaps the most sublime piece of popular literature America has ever produced.”

Widely acclaimed author Joyce Carol Oates, recipient of the National Humanities Medal and National Book Award, will read from "Walking Wounded," a new, unpublished story commissioned especially for its world premiere at this event on Monday, October 26. Booklist wrote, in praise of her short-story collection Lovely, Dark, Deep, "Oates, one of few writers who achieves excellence in both the novel and the short story, has more than two dozen story collections to her name and she continues to inject new, ambushing power into the form. Oates’s stories seethe and blaze." Oates will be introduced by novelist and Bard literature professor Bradford Morrow. The reading, presented as part of Morrow’s Innovative Contemporary Fiction Reading Series, takes place at 3:00 p.m. in Olin Hall. It is free and open to the public; no reservations are required.

"Austrian and Curato turn the simple wedding of two worms into a three-ring circus that slyly turns the whole controversy over same-sex versus heterosexual marriage on its head."

Novelist and Bard literature professor Bradford Morrow and acclaimed guitarist Alex Skolnick present A Bestiary, a live collaborative performance of Morrow’s lyrical prose pieces about animals real and imaginary—from snake to mongoose, unicorn to whale, elephant to glugfish. Set to Skolnick’s original compositions, ranging from jazz to rock to country to world music, this reading of A Bestiary unites the written word with guitar virtuosity in unexpected, magical ways.  Now comic, now tragic, A Bestiary explores the animal kingdom as well as the human condition it mirrors.

On Thursday, October 8, poet Anna Moschovakis, a founding editor of Ugly Duckling Presse and winner of the Academy of American Poets’ James Laughlin Award, will give a reading at Bard College. Author of I Have Not Been Able to Get Through to Everyone, You and Three Others Are Approaching a Lake, and the forthcoming They and We Will Get into Trouble for This, Moschovakis will be introduced by Ann Lauterbach, David and Ruth Schwab Professor of Languages and Literature. This event, presented by the John Ashbery Poetry Series, takes place in Bard Hall at 6:00 p.m. It is free and open to the public; no tickets or reservations are required. Books will be available for sale and signing from Oblong Books & Music.

Bryan Doerries's Outside the Wire theater company presents performance projects at schools, hospitals, and prisons around the world that engage audiences in difficult conversations.

Professor Joseph Luzzi turned to Dante Aligheri’s The Divine Comedy in the wake of a tragic loss.