News from the Division of Languages and Literature

Hannah Arendt Center senior fellow Wyatt Mason examines Rush’s National Book Award–winning novel in the third installment of this online book club.

Join author Neil Gaiman on Friday, April 3, for a dialogue with legendary musician and composer Laurie Anderson in this third edition of an ongoing series of public conversations at the Fisher Center hosted by Professor Gaiman. The discussion will center on the topics of “Story Structure” and “Fiction vs. Autobiography.” Presented by Live Arts Bard, the program takes place on April 3 at 7:30 p.m. in the Sosnoff Theater of The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College.

Bard College and Simon's Rock faculty member Peter Filkins has received a 2015–2016 fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities in support of his research and writing of The Life and Times of H.G. Adler (1910 -1988): Poet, Novelist, and Holocaust Survivor.

This year, Bard College is celebrating its 25th anniversary as publisher of the renowned literary magazine Conjunctions. Edited by Bradford Morrow—novelist, Bard Center Fellow, and professor of literature—Conjunctions is widely respected as the preeminent source for the best in innovative, provocative, rigorously realized fiction, poetry, and narrative nonfiction. Events to celebrate the anniversary include a special reading on Thursday, March 26, featuring Conjunctions contributors and Bard faculty members Mary Caponegro ’78, Ann Lauterbach, Neil Gaiman, Benjamin Hale, Robert Kelly, Francine Prose, and Morrow. The anniversary will also be marked by a special exhibition at Stevenson Library, as well as a celebratory reading and fund-raiser in the Spiegeltent on July 23.

"Gaiman’s attention to craft, passion for language and profound respect for the mythological roots of what is now called 'speculative fiction' come through" in this new collection.

Critic, classicist, and Bard professor Daniel Mendelsohn considers the strange cultural history of Sappho and the enduring allure of her poetry.

Laura van den Berg's "pleasingly strange" novel, Find Me, follows an immune young woman during a lethal epidemic who embarks on a quest to find her long-lost mother.

"It's a gathering place, a conjoining of voices," says Bradford Morrow, defining "conjunctions"—the name of the literary journal he founded with Kenneth Rexroth.