News from the Division of Languages and Literature

Authors Francine Prose and Ayana Mathis discuss their scariest reading experiences, both of which took place during childhood.

Michael Wood praises this first-ever collection of Nabokov's letters to his wife and collaborator.

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.

Daniel Mendelsohn considers why The Catcher in the Rye's Holden Caulfield doesn't have the same appeal when encountered as an adult reader.

Professor of English Ben La Farge's new book moves effortlessly from the classics to contemporary drama, and fiction to television, shedding new light on the art of comedy.

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.

Mona Simpson reviews Elena Ferrante's new novel, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, and muses on the history of autobiographical fiction from Dickens to Alcott.

Francine Prose writes about the appeal of Transparent, an "unlikely hit" television series about a father who comes out to his family as a trans woman in late middle age.

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.

Nabokov's passionate letters to his wife and collaborator Véra Slonim have been published for the first time, and were co–edited and translated by Olga Voronina, Russian and Eurasian Studies Program director.

Senior Fellow Wyatt Mason discusses life, culture, religion, and humanity with author Marilynne Robinson.

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.

Bard MFA photography faculty Mark Alice Durant interviews MFA writing faculty David Levi Strauss on art, writing, and politics.

Karen Russell, the 2011 Bard Fiction Prize winner, talks with Bard literature professor and Conjunctions editor Bradford Morrow about his new book, The Forgers.

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.”

Bard alumnus Lindsay Hill's first novel, Sea of Hooks, has won the PEN Center's top prize for fiction. Hill will give a reading of his work at Bard on September 22.

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.”

Writer in Residence Mona Simpson is a former senior editor at the Paris Review and the author of five novels.

She was born in Green Bay, Wisconsin, then moved to Los Angeles as a young teenager. Her father was a recent immigrant from Syria and her mother was the daughter of a mink farmer and the first person in her family to attend college. Simpson went to Berkeley, where she studied poetry. She worked as a journalist before moving to New York to attend Columbia's M.F.A. program. During graduate school, she published her first short stories in Ploughshares, the Iowa Review, and Mademoiselle. She stayed in New York and worked as an editor at the Paris Review for five years while finishing her first novel, Anywhere But Here (1986). After that, she wrote The Lost Father (1992), A Regular Guy (1997), and Off Keck Road (2000). Simpson has been awarded a Whiting Prize (1986), a Guggenheim (1988), a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University (1987), a Lila Wallace Reader's Digest Prize (1995), and a Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize (2001). She is a Pen Faulkner finalist (2001) and most recently received a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2008). She worked 10 years on My Hollywood (2010). "It’s the book that took me too long because it meant so much to me," she says. Mona lives in Santa Monica with her two children and Bartleby the dog.

"My job is to imagine. I am a novelist," says Joseph O'Neill, distinguished visiting professor of written arts, in this interview about his new book, set in Dubai.

How do some literary works retain broad appeal for centuries after they are written, while others—recognized by scholars and critics as brilliant—largely fade away?

Teju Cole visits Leukerbad, Switzerland, the site of James Baldwin's essay, and examines racism by retracing Baldwin's footsteps and his writing.

Language and Thinking faculty member Miranda Mellis considers what she learned from the various jobs she held beginning in her childhood, and how that contributed to her writing.

Joseph O'Neill's The Dog and Bradford Morrow's The Forgers are listed among Publisher's Weekly's most anticipated books of the season.

"There is no poetry without a politics," says Bard alumnus Andrew Durbin '12 in this interview about poetry, surveillance, and the Internet.

Bard faculty member and Conjunctions editor Bradford Morrow's new novel The Forgers has been listed among Publisher's Weekly's most anticipated books of the fall.

Bard writer in residence Francine Prose reviews Andrea Canobbio’s "remarkable" novel of an intense and ill-fated love affair between two doctors.

"The life of the first emperor is an ideal vehicle for a historical novel," writes Professor Mendelsohn. "Augustus is a figure about whom we know at once a great deal and very little ..."

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.

Professor Mendelsohn considers how writers have responded to national trauma, from ancient to modern times.

Bard writer in residence Teju Cole asked his 160,000 Twitter followers to tweet photos of their TVs during the World Cup. The result was an art project offering a synchronized global view of the games.

When searching for literary taboos, Prose turns to writers who have been imprisoned or mistreated by their governments because of their work.

Writer in residence Francine Prose talks about labels .... and teaching a class at Bard called Strange Books.

Chronogram interviews Bard College professor of Italian Joseph Luzzi about his memoir My Two Italies, which illuminates the cultural differences between northern and southern Italy through the lens of Luzzi's family life.

An unpublished novel, a record deal, and crumble for dinner ... Hayley Campbell, author of The Art of Neil Gaiman, reveals fun facts about legendary writer and Bard faculty member Neil Gaiman.

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.

Experimental Humanities Director Maria Cecire talks about how the new concentration draws on innovative methods to help students explore the human condition in the digital age.

Francine Prose reviews Agnieszka Holland's new film, in which one young man's shocking protest against Soviet occupation in January 1969 inspires family and strangers to take action at great cost.

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.

Daniel Mendelsohn reviews Fermor's The Broken Road, the long-anticipated, posthumously published final volume in the trilogy chronicling his famous walk across Europe in the 1930s.

Writers, says Mona Simpson, don't usually get rich doing their craft. And yet, they spend their lives "making something that you find beautiful and that's deeply satisfying and fulfilling ... that's a kind of wealth."

Bard alumni Joel Clark '05, Tavit Geudelekian '05, Andrew Kopas '08, and Mark Perloff '08 are part of King Post Studios, which last year launched a board game based on Herman Melville's Moby Dick, and is now working on a new game for the Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf.

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.

Bard writing professor Susan Fox Rogers took her kayak out on North Tivoli Bay last week not expecting to see much wildlife, since the height of migration has passed. To her surprise, the trip was marked by a series of encounters, including one with a baby beaver.

"The only people worth envying are the dead. That much, at any rate, is clear once you’ve spent some time reading the Greeks," begins Daniel Mendelsohn in this "Bookends" piece, which honors a most enviable ancient writer.

Professor Gaiman visits two refugee camps in Jordan run by the UN Refugee Agency and listens to the stories of Syrians who have fled violence in their home country.

Bard alumnus Chris Claremont '72 revitalized the X-Men comic book series, creating some of its most iconic characters ... with a little help from studying political theory at Bard.

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.

“Are you boasting or complaining?” Francine Prose considers a recent essay by writer Lionel Shriver, in which Shriver described feeling nostalgic for the time before her commercial success.

Professor Mendelsohn writes that the skills required of an excellent critic are often impediments to writing strong fiction.