News from the Division of Languages and Literature

Poet Fred Moten and philosopher Robert Gooding-Williams engage in a conversation about the place of poetry in a world increasingly defined by political and social strife, disorientation, and loneliness.

Peter Filkins’s H. G. Adler: A Life in Many Worlds is one of the first major works to be published about this influential writer. A survivor of Theresienstadt and Auschwitz, Adler published two dozen books of poetry, fiction, social science, history, and religion that detail the story of the Holocaust and analyze its influence on our world today. Filkins taps correspondence, broad historical research, and unpublished manuscripts to tell the story of how Adler lived through his times, and his effort to maintain human dignity amid systematic oppression, political corruption, and insufferable duress.

Veronica Chambers ’87, editor of the Times’s archival storytelling project, talks to WNPR about the paper’s new obituary series.

Erin Singer and Kelsey Peterson, two contributors to Conjunctions, Bard College’s groundbreaking literary journal, have won the 2019 PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers for their work in Conjunctions.

Two contributors to Conjunctions, Bard College’s groundbreaking literary journal, have won the 2019 PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers for their work in Conjunctions. The winning contributions are:

“Bad Northern Women” by Erin Singer, from Conjunctions:70, Sanctuary: The Preservation Issue (Spring 2018)

“The Unsent Letters of Blaise and Jacqueline Pascal” by Kelsey Peterson, from Conjunctions:71, A Cabinet of Curiosity (Fall 2018)

The award judges this year were Danielle Evans, Alice Sola Kim, and Carmen Maria Machado. The award comes with a cash prize of $2,000 and publication in The PEN America Best Debut Short Stories anthology (via Catapult). Conjunctions and the winners were invited to the 2019 PEN America Literary Awards Ceremony on Tuesday, February 26 at the NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts in New York City.

Recently Conjunctions has been named a finalist for the 2018 and 2019 ASME Award for Fiction by the American Society of Magazine Editors, as well as the 2018 CLMP Firecracker Award for General Excellence. “Skeleton, Rock, Shell” by Conjunctions contributor Sejal Shah was named a finalist for the inaugural Chautauqua Janus Prize. In addition, contributions to recent issues have been selected for The PEN America Best Debut Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize XLII: Best of the Small Presses, Best American Experimental Writing 2020, and Best American Essays 2018, and work from our pages has appeared in anthologies such as Harper’s, Best American Short Stories, and Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy.