News

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.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2638

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.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2635

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.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2628

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.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2617

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.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2622

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.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2616

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.

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.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2603

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.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2605

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.”
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2598

On Monday, September 22, author Lindsay Hill ’75, will read from his novel, Sea of Hooks, winner of the 2014 PEN Center USA Fiction Award, finalist for the Chautauqua Prize, and named one of the top 10 books of the year by Publisher’s Weekly and New York magazine. Kirkus Reviews calls Sea of Hooks “a remarkable and multifaceted novel—philosophical, poignant and puzzling,” while Publisher’s Weekly writes that “nearly every paragraph astonishes, every moment rich with magic and daring.”
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2597

The Bard Center for Civic Engagement announces more than 50 winners for the 2014 Community Action Award program, which supports student efforts to engage with communities locally, nationally, and internationally by providing funding for participation in internships that address issues impacting people around the world.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2588

Four covers from Bard's La Voz magazine will be displayed in the exhibition “Vive La Guelaguetza: An Encounter with Oaxaca” at the Mid-Hudson Heritage Center in Poughkeepsie, New York, through July 19. The exhibition commemorates La Guelaguetza, a world-famous cultural festival from Oaxaca, Mexico, which for the last five years has been celebrated locally at Waryas Park in Poughkeepsie. The festival, which attracts thousands of spectators, will take place on August 3 this year. The La Voz covers on display feature the town's past La Guelaguetza celebrations, and are on view alongside paintings, photography, and traditional costumes from the state of Oaxaca. Bard College students Mariel Fiori '05 and Emily Schmall '05 founded La Voz in 2004 as a Trustee Leader Scholar (TLS) project, aiming to serve the Latino community of the Hudson Valley with a free Spanish-language magazine. Fiori is still editor at La Voz, and the award-winning publication now has an estimated 20,000 readers in the area. La Voz will mark its 10th anniversary with a celebratory evening at the Spiegeltent at Bard's Fisher Center on August 12.

The Bard Fiction Prize is awarded annually to a promising, emerging writer who is an American citizen aged 39 years or younger. Winners receive a monetary award and an appointment as writer in residence at Bard for one semester. Applications for the 2015 prize are due by July 15, 2014.
http://www.bard.edu/bfp/

Human Rights and Written Arts joint major Corinna grew up in the small town of Sherman, Texas. She has been active with Bard’s Center for Civic Engagement and the TLS (Trustee Leader Scholar) program, which supports student volunteer efforts. In this interview, she talks about falling in love with Bard's campus, getting involved in the community, and how Bard has changed her.
http://www.bard.edu/news/profiles/?id=101

From Africa to China, Pakistan to the Philippines, to locales that are not to be found on any map, Conjunctions:62, Exile—the latest issue of the innovative literary magazine published by Bard College—examines exile as both a literal expulsion or ostracism and, as Primo Levi has it, “the prevalence of the unreal over the real.” The issue features Richard Sieburth’s first English translation of a hilarious, vitriolic work by Charles Baudelaire, written while self-exiled to Belgium; a cover photograph of an installation by Chiharu Shiota; and new writing from Laura van den Berg, Paul West, Brian Evenson, Peter Straub, H. G. Carrillo, Marjorie Welish, Maxine Chernoff, Aleš Šteger, Edie Meidav, Can Xue, and Arthur Sze.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2574

Until recently Bard alumnus Dan Cline was teaching English language classes to young people in Haisyn, Ukraine, working on community projects, and even ending up in the local press for his efforts. That changed over the winter as political unrest in the country grew into a revolution and the Peace Corps evacuated all its volunteers from the country.
http://www.bard.edu/news/news.php?id=94

Bard College announces the appointment of esteemed writer Anne Carson as Visiting Distinguished Writer in Residence. Carson, who joins the faculty in fall 2014, will teach courses in classical studies and in written arts through the Division of Languages and Literature. Anne Carson, a classics scholar, poet, essayist, critic, and translator, has won international acclaim across genres. She was twice a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; was honored with the 1996 Lannan Award and the 1997 Pushcart Prize, both for poetry; and was named a MacArthur “Genius” Fellow in 2000.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2563

On April 4, Bard College Professor in the Arts Neil Gaiman and Pulitzer Prize–winning cartoonist Art Spiegelman took the stage at the Fisher Center for a historic conversation about cartooning and writing, working across artistic mediums, friendship, identity, and more.


http://vimeo.com/93195839

The Bard Free Press, the college's student newspaper, has won two New York Press Association awards in the 2013 Better Newspaper Contest. Among college newspapers, the Free Press received first place for design and second place for feature story. The judges awarding the design prize said of the publication, "Brilliant design and layout. It felt like reading art. ... Not traditional by any means but that is what makes it so remarkable. It is a format that a young person could pick up and engage/relate with, and that demographic is obviously highly important in the future landscape of print publications."

Norman Manea survived a Nazi concentration camp in Ukraine and a communist dictatorship in his native Romania. Through his experiences, he learned a language of subversion that sets apart his impressive body of work. (Daily Beast)
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/04/05/norman-manea-survived-the-nazis-and-the-communists-and-lived-to-write-about-it.html

On Thursday, April 10, the Written Arts Program at Bard College presents a reading by Rikki Ducornet (Bard ’64). A poet, fiction writer, and visual artist, Ducornet’s many books include the recent novels Netsuke, Gazelle, The Fan-Maker’s Inquisition, and Phosphor in Dreamland. Publisher’s Weekly said of her story collection The Complete Butcher’s Tales: “[It’s] told in prose of such beauty that one can't help silently mouthing the words. Fluid, studied, almost overripe, it is also intensely visual.”
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2553

On Monday, April 7, Michael Cunningham—the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Hours, By Nightfall, Flesh and Blood, and other books—will read from his work at Bard College. Cunningham 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 4:00 p.m. in Olin Auditorium. It is free and open to the public; no reservations are required.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2547

Live Arts Bard (LAB) is a partnership between the Theater and Performance Program and the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College. As its acronym suggests, Live Arts Bard is a laboratory for new performance. Each year LAB will provide residencies for individual artists, or groups of collaborators, in theater, performance, dance, live arts, and allied art forms. Its aim is to develop a fertile and nurturing community of visiting artists and students, who work side by side to generate projects and new creative methodologies.


http://www.bard.edu/news/video/

The John Ashbery Poetry Series at Bard College presents Brenda Coultas and Ann Lauterbach reading from their work, with an introduction by Michael Ives. The program takes place on Thursday, April 3, at 6 p.m. in Bard Hall, and is free and open to the public.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2548

On Monday, March 31, at Bard College, biographer and New Yorker staff writer D. T. Max will read from his highly acclaimed biography of David Foster Wallace, Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story, a New York Times bestseller that Vanity Fair called “as illuminating, multifaceted, and serious an estimation of David Foster Wallace’s life and work as we can hope to find.”
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2540

Daniel Mendelsohn, celebrated author, critic, and Charles Ranlett Flint Professor of Humanities at Bard College since 2006, is one of 20 writers to receive a 2014 American Academy of Arts and Letters award in literature. Mendelsohn has won the Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award of $20,000, given to a writer whose work merits recognition for the quality of its prose style.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2538

As Bard senior J. p. Lawrence prepares to graduate in May, he will not be entering the work force for the first time—far from it. The anthropology and writing joint major, Bard Free Press editor-in-chief, and cross-country runner has been a member of the U.S. Army National Guard since 2008.
http://www.bard.edu/news/news.php?id=90

Event Rescheduled from Monday, March 3
On Monday, March 10, highly acclaimed fiction writer Amy Hempel will read from The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel, which, in 2007, was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, an Ambassador Book Award winner, and named one of the Ten Best Books of the Year by the New York Times.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2528

The Fisher Center and Live Arts Bard are pleased to present a conversation between acclaimed author Neil Gaiman and celebrated cartoonist Art Spiegelman, about cartooning and writing, working across artistic mediums, friendship, identity, and more. This special event takes place on Friday, April 4 at 7:30 p.m. in the Sosnoff Theater.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2534

The Big Read comes to Dutchess, Columbia, and Ulster Counties through a unique partnership between Bard College and the Germantown, Kingston, Red Hook, Rhinecliff, and Tivoli libraries. Beginning in March 2014, The Big Read spans six weeks of activities, performances, and discussions exploring Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Marilyn Robinson’s Housekeeping.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2533

On Monday, March 10, at Bard College, Raquel Partnoy, Alicia Partnoy and Ruth Irupé Sanabria—three generations of women from a remarkable Argentinian family whose lives were brutally and forever changed by state terrorism during the military rule in Argentina in the late 1970s and early 1980s—will share their art, writing, memories, and commentary on the continuing struggles for justice in Argentina.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2525

Bennett Sims, Writer in Residence at Bard College, will read from his work on Monday, February 24. Sims received the 2014 Bard Fiction Prize for his debut novel, A Questionable Shape. In this penetrating story set in Baton Rouge, about a son looking for his undead father, Sims transcends traditional zombie narrative to deliver a wise and philosophical rumination on the nature of memory and loss. Sims is at Bard for the spring 2014 semester.
http://www.bard.edu/news/releases/pr/fstory.php?id=2518