News from the Division of Languages and Literature

"At what point," wonders Prose, "did we start expecting films to tell the truth about the past? And won’t we be in trouble if we do?"

Author Laura van den Berg, writer in residence at Bard College, reads from her recent work on Monday, February 23. The free program begins at 7 p.m. in the László Z. Bitó ’60 Auditorium in Bard’s Reem-Kayden Center. Van den Berg received the 2015 Bard Fiction Prize for her book The Isle of Youth. In this collection of stories, van den Berg explores the lives of women mired in secrecy and deception. The characters 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.

Professor Maria Sachiko Cecire directs Performing Dido, a short film about two gender-bending productions of the classic story staged in the hall of Christ Church, Oxford in 2013.

The Italian Studies Program at Bard College presents Francesco Ciabattoni to give a talk on "Dante's Musical Design in the Commedia." The lecture examines the premise that Dante's journey through the Christian netherworld is not without its own soundtrack. From the cacophonous, failed attempts at presenting sacred music in Hell, the pilgrim goes on to listen to Purgatory's expiatory performances of Gregorian chants; and from the music of pure innocence in the Garden of Eden, Dante ascends to the complex and bedazzling beauty of polyphony in Paradise. Ciabattoni will explain the musicological and theological underpinnings of Dante's chosen musical settings. The event takes place on Thursday, March 5, at 5 p.m. in Weis Cinema of the Bertelsmann Campus Center at Bard College.

Joseph O'Neill and Mona Simpson are among 19 nominees for the world's richest short story prize, the £30,000 Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award.

Alejandro González Iñárritu’s film about a cinema superhero struggling for a comeback on Broadway boasts "extraordinary originality."

Bard Fiction Prize winner Laura van den Berg on teaching, the benefits of a quiet space, and how working on a short story is different from a novel.

The New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) has announced its 2014 Artists' Fellowships Awardees, and a Bard MFA alumna and faculty members are among them. Music/Sound faculty Jace Clayton, Writing alumna Charity Coleman MFA '13, and Writing faculty Matvei Yankelevich have all been named as winners. For the past 29 years, NYFA has awarded unrestricted fellowships of $7,000 to artists living and working in the state of New York. Awarded in 15 different disciplines over a three-year period, Artists' Fellowships support artists from diverse cultural backgrounds at all stages of their professional careers.

Derek Furr, English faculty member and MAT Program director, considers how readers identify with the works of poets Derek Walcott and Elizabeth Bishop.

Distinguished Writer in Residence Francine Prose discusses the recent revelation that e-book retailers are able to track people's reading habits.

In Norman Manea's novel Captives, originally written in Romanian in 1970, characters are haunted by the past.

Last year Bard professor and acclaimed author Neil Gaiman did an experiment: take a hiatus from his immensely popular Twitter account and allow himself to get bored.

Conjunctions, the celebrated literary magazine published by Bard College, has won a $25,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and a $50,000 multiyear ($10,000/year) grant from the New York State Council on the Arts to support its print and electronic publication of award-winning fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction from many of the world’s leading contemporary writers and most innovative emerging authors.

Bard alumnus Ian Dreiblatt visits temple cults, urban landscapes, and cultures both modern and ancient through Robert Kelly's A Voice Full of Cities.

Rikki Ducornet's The Deep Zoo is a collection of 15 short essays whose "capacity for insights and range of thought ... is sprawling."

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.

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

"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.

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.

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.