News and Notes by Date
October 2013
10-01-2013
Elena Ferrante is "so gifted that by the end she has you in tears," writes Italian professor Joseph Luzzi on Ferrante's newest novel.
September 2013
09-30-2013
Bard professor, writer Verlyn Klinkenborg offers a meditation on the arrival of autumn.
09-26-2013
Tim Davis is traveling the United States with journalist Joe Hagan, profiling Americans from all walks of life using old-fashioned tools: pen and paper, and a large format view camera.
09-26-2013
Bard writer in residence Teju Cole was in Nairobi last week during the terrorist attack at the Westgate mall, and met Kofi Awoonor at the Storymoja Hay Festival shortly before his death.
09-22-2013
Francine Prose considers the flawed yet heroic characters of Nicole Holofcener’s new film, Enough Said.
09-09-2013
Francine Prose ventures into the secret corners of the city with three museums off the beaten path.
09-09-2013
Bard history professor Richard Aldous's new biography Tony Ryan: Ireland's Aviator chronicles the life of the billionaire philanthropist. This article offers a taste of the new book.
09-05-2013
"One observation I try to impart to my undergraduate writing students is this: you have never read a first draft," writes Brendan Mathews.
09-05-2013
"Humans have always had trouble understanding instinct," writes Verlyn Klinkenborg. "If we experience it, we do not recognize it as such."
09-05-2013
As the tennis season comes to a close, Professor Joseph Luzzi performs an annual ritual of rereading John McPhee’s Levels
of the Game, about the historic 1968 U.S. Open semifinal between Arthur Ashe and Clark
Graebner.
09-04-2013
Last week the New York Times announced a new back page for its Book Review, called Bookends, in which two writers tackle a provocative question. Daniel Mendelsohn and Francine Prose are among the columnists.
09-04-2013
Teju Cole parodies a recent Washington Post piece titled “9 questions about Syria you were too embarrassed to ask.”
09-04-2013
Bard alumnus, writer, and director David Cote '92 will direct two plays in New York City this month: Otherland, which he wrote, and Something Something Über Alles, written by late Bard faculty member Assurbanipal Babilla.
09-01-2013
Norman Rush promised his wife, Elsa, that his new novel would be short and he would finish it quickly. It was a promise he couldn't keep. Wyatt Mason tells the story of marriage and collaboration.
August 2013
08-28-2013
Gustave Flaubert’s collection of satirical definitions, The Dictionary of Received Ideas, was a complaint against clichés and unreflective thinking. Teju Cole recently presented a similar, updated project on Twitter.
08-22-2013
Bard writer in residence Teju Cole's novel Open City is Book One for first-years at Simon's Rock, and it's made The Choice's list of best college orientation program books.
08-21-2013
Daniel Mendelsohn's translation "reveals the sensual and cerebral pleasures of a 20th-century master."
08-16-2013
Naomi LaChance '16 spoke with Hannah Arendt Center director Roger Berkowitz, previewing the new Hannah Arendt film as part of her Community Action Award internship at the Berkshire Eagle.
08-16-2013
Francine Prose examines director Woody Allen's treatment of his heroine in Blue Jasmine, and reflects on women's roles in his earlier films.
08-16-2013
Teju Cole looks at a power struggle in Nigeria, and author Wole Soyinka's criticism of First Lady Patience Jonathan's involvement.
08-15-2013
Bard faculty member Daniel Mendelsohn is one of two runners-up for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. Professor Mendelsohn was recognized for his collection Waiting for the Barbarians.
08-11-2013
"[W]hen I look up from my e-reading, I realize that the physical books are serving a new purpose—as constant reminders of what I’ve read," writes Verlyn Klinkenborg.
08-01-2013
08-01-2013
Bard alumnus, performer, screenwriter, and playwright Nick Jones '01 talks about how the Netflix approach of making an entire series available at once enables a different kind of viewing experience.
July 2013
07-29-2013
Bard literature professor Verlyn Klinkenborg's essays about life on his upstate farm have run in the New York Times since 1997. Many of his essays were collected this year in the book More Scenes from the Rural Life.
07-18-2013
Bardians Liza Birnbaum '10, Molly Schaeffer '10, and Paul Cavanagh '11 started a new literary journal in Portland, Oregon, in memory of Bill Cranshaw '10, their friend who passed away after graduation.
07-03-2013
Professor Berkowitz discusses the founding of the Hannah Arendt Center, and the new biopic about the political thinker.
07-02-2013
President Leon Botstein sits down with the Vienna Review to talk memoirs, modernism, and the role of music in a polyglot world. (PDF)
June 2013
06-28-2013
"Master craftsman" Daniel Mendelsohn's essay collection makes NPR's list of top five nonfiction summer reads.
06-26-2013
Professor Klinkenborg explores the "rare and precious inheritance" of a solid education in literature and writing.
06-26-2013
Sara Wintz's first full-length collection of poetry, Walking Across A Field We Are Focused On At This Time Now, "takes the twentieth century and gives it a new haircut," writes Claire Wilcox.
06-26-2013
06-25-2013
Bard classicist, critic, and literature professor Daniel Mendelsohn talks with KUOW in Seattle about the role of professional critics in an age of customer reviews and blogs.
06-25-2013
Writer Sherman Yellen '53 pens "Screenplay for a 60th Wedding Anniversary" for his wife, designer Joan Yellen '55.
06-25-2013
Professor Romm reviews Harry Eyres's new book Horace and Me.
06-20-2013
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 2014 prize are due by July 15, 2013.
06-03-2013
Author Teju Cole has been selected as the winner of the International Literature Prize by Berlin's Haus der Kulturen der Welt for his debut novel Open City. The award recognizes both an outstanding book and its first translation into German.
May 2013
05-31-2013
Author and professor Daniel Mendelsohn reveals the power of a recurring nightmare and the graves of his ancestors as part of a New York Review of Books series about dreams.
05-29-2013
in the Bardian
Only 10 playwrights—out of nearly 600—have been accepted into the Public Theater’s prestigious 2013 Emerging Writers Group (EWG), a selective program created to nurture the work of new playwrights. Manuel Borras Oliveras ’08 is one of them. “Being accepted into the program was one of the most satisfying experiences, in terms of being acknowledged for my writing,” says Oliveras, who takes nothing for granted, having come to playwriting via an unconventional route: while incarcerated, as a student in the Bard Prison Initiative.
With EWG, Oliveras has attended writing retreats; participated in “speed-dating sessions” with agents, directors, and actors; and met established playwrights such as Suzan-Lori Parks (Venus; Topdog/Underdog) and David Henry Hwang (M. Butterfly). “It’s the environment you want to be in,” says Oliveras. “It’s school for me. I tackle it like I tackled Bard College, soaking up as much knowledge and education as I can.”
Oliveras grew up in the Bronx. Conditions in his neighborhood were harsh. He made it to 11th grade before he dropped out of school. At 17, Oliveras ended up in prison. “My life drastically turned at that point. I did not really know anything about my future, other than the fact that I was going to do a lot of time,” he says.
Awaiting sentencing in the city’s detention center, Oliveras’s head raced. He realized that his only option was to make the most of his time—17 years. Once in prison, he immediately enrolled in a GED class and threw himself into the schoolwork. “I felt like I could redeem myself a little bit, instead of only bringing tears to my mother’s and family’s eyes,” he says. “When I obtained my GED, it felt monumental. I knew then that I wanted to pursue education as far as possible.”
Oliveras began applying to college-in-prison programs. Unfortunately, the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act repealed federal Pell Grant funding for incarcerated students. Within months, New York State’s thriving network of postsecondary correctional higher education programs collapsed. So Oliveras began a journey of voracious independent study through books in prison libraries. “I was reading philosophy, history; I read a lot about my culture. I read Puerto Rican writers: Miguel Piñero and Julia de Burgos. My mind started expanding. I read about Pedro Albizu Campos, Che Guevara, the Black Panthers, and other influential people who had been through struggles like me.” He built friendships with older prisoners who were motivated to make the most of their time—starting and running community and educational programs on the inside.
When he was moved to Sing Sing in Ossining, New York, Oliveras enrolled in a theology program for college credit run by Mercy College. After he completed the program, he had no further opportunities for higher education until being transferred to Woodbourne Correctional Facility. “At Woodbourne, I saw a flyer for the Bard College program [the Bard Prison Initiative]. I immediately signed up. I wrote an entrance essay. Close to 200 guys applied. I thought, ‘Thank God I went through the theology program, because it taught me how to structure an essay.’ My essay got me an interview with Max Kenner ’01 [BPI executive director] and Daniel Karpowitz [BPI director of policy and academics, and lecturer in law and the humanities]. Only 11 of us were chosen. I felt so honored,” says Oliveras. “Bard came in at a time when other programs were leaving. I’m eternally grateful to Bard.”
Oliveras appreciates the quality of his Bard education, especially the focus on exploring ideas through writing. “It opened up my worldview,” he says. “It introduced me to writers like John Dewey, Plato, Shakespeare. I met professors who had written books, and I could sit down and talk to them. At those moments I felt totally free.” He was awarded an associate’s degree in 2006 and a bachelor’s degree in 2008.
During this period, Oliveras found himself taking writing very seriously. He cofounded Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA) at Woodbourne, a program that uses theater as a transformative tool, and applied what he was learning at Bard to his drama projects. “I kept reading plays and seeing what others had done,” he remembers. “I mimicked what they wrote, then I eventually started telling my own unique story.” He was the lead writer for Starting Over, a group-written play that was performed at Woodbourne and Sing Sing, and is being turned into a film as well as slated for production in New York City. Through RTA, Oliveras met Arin Arbus, associate artistic director of Theater for a New Audience in New York City. She read his work and encouraged him to submit it to theaters on the outside. Arbus showed a writing sample—“Dear Friend,” which is a letter to a man being incarcerated for the first time—to Mark Plesent, producing artistic director of the Working Theater in New York City; based on that, Plesent commissioned Oliveras’s full-length play, Song to a Child Like Me. The play’s first public reading, attended by his sister and other family members, was held at the Working Theater while Oliveras was still on the inside.
In September 2010, Oliveras was released. Balancing a full-time job as a housing advocate for Common Ground (a nonprofit dedicated to ending homelessness in New York City), he still writes every day. “In prison, I led a monastic life fully immersed in writing and studies. Out here, I need to work, pay bills, cook,” he says. “I had to relearn all this. It takes time. But I separate at least two hours a day to write. Never neglect your writing, or the work suffers.”
EWG provides playwrights with a stipend, master classes with established playwrights, a biweekly writers’ group led by members of the Public’s Literary Department, opportunities to attend rehearsals and productions at the Public, tickets to shows at other theaters, artistic and professional support, and at least one public reading of their work. Oliveras marvels at meeting with playwrights he once read in A-block. He’s aiming for a full production of one of his plays, and hopes to be able to write full time. “It takes a lot of courage sometimes, using what I’ve learned,” he says emphatically. “There were moments that were really tough. The change wasn’t overnight. It took a lot of things. I had to grow up to be a man in prison."
Read the spring 2013 issue of the Bardian:
Only 10 playwrights—out of nearly 600—have been accepted into the Public Theater’s prestigious 2013 Emerging Writers Group (EWG), a selective program created to nurture the work of new playwrights. Manuel Borras Oliveras ’08 is one of them. “Being accepted into the program was one of the most satisfying experiences, in terms of being acknowledged for my writing,” says Oliveras, who takes nothing for granted, having come to playwriting via an unconventional route: while incarcerated, as a student in the Bard Prison Initiative.
With EWG, Oliveras has attended writing retreats; participated in “speed-dating sessions” with agents, directors, and actors; and met established playwrights such as Suzan-Lori Parks (Venus; Topdog/Underdog) and David Henry Hwang (M. Butterfly). “It’s the environment you want to be in,” says Oliveras. “It’s school for me. I tackle it like I tackled Bard College, soaking up as much knowledge and education as I can.”
Oliveras grew up in the Bronx. Conditions in his neighborhood were harsh. He made it to 11th grade before he dropped out of school. At 17, Oliveras ended up in prison. “My life drastically turned at that point. I did not really know anything about my future, other than the fact that I was going to do a lot of time,” he says.
Awaiting sentencing in the city’s detention center, Oliveras’s head raced. He realized that his only option was to make the most of his time—17 years. Once in prison, he immediately enrolled in a GED class and threw himself into the schoolwork. “I felt like I could redeem myself a little bit, instead of only bringing tears to my mother’s and family’s eyes,” he says. “When I obtained my GED, it felt monumental. I knew then that I wanted to pursue education as far as possible.”
Oliveras began applying to college-in-prison programs. Unfortunately, the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act repealed federal Pell Grant funding for incarcerated students. Within months, New York State’s thriving network of postsecondary correctional higher education programs collapsed. So Oliveras began a journey of voracious independent study through books in prison libraries. “I was reading philosophy, history; I read a lot about my culture. I read Puerto Rican writers: Miguel Piñero and Julia de Burgos. My mind started expanding. I read about Pedro Albizu Campos, Che Guevara, the Black Panthers, and other influential people who had been through struggles like me.” He built friendships with older prisoners who were motivated to make the most of their time—starting and running community and educational programs on the inside.
When he was moved to Sing Sing in Ossining, New York, Oliveras enrolled in a theology program for college credit run by Mercy College. After he completed the program, he had no further opportunities for higher education until being transferred to Woodbourne Correctional Facility. “At Woodbourne, I saw a flyer for the Bard College program [the Bard Prison Initiative]. I immediately signed up. I wrote an entrance essay. Close to 200 guys applied. I thought, ‘Thank God I went through the theology program, because it taught me how to structure an essay.’ My essay got me an interview with Max Kenner ’01 [BPI executive director] and Daniel Karpowitz [BPI director of policy and academics, and lecturer in law and the humanities]. Only 11 of us were chosen. I felt so honored,” says Oliveras. “Bard came in at a time when other programs were leaving. I’m eternally grateful to Bard.”
Oliveras appreciates the quality of his Bard education, especially the focus on exploring ideas through writing. “It opened up my worldview,” he says. “It introduced me to writers like John Dewey, Plato, Shakespeare. I met professors who had written books, and I could sit down and talk to them. At those moments I felt totally free.” He was awarded an associate’s degree in 2006 and a bachelor’s degree in 2008.
During this period, Oliveras found himself taking writing very seriously. He cofounded Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA) at Woodbourne, a program that uses theater as a transformative tool, and applied what he was learning at Bard to his drama projects. “I kept reading plays and seeing what others had done,” he remembers. “I mimicked what they wrote, then I eventually started telling my own unique story.” He was the lead writer for Starting Over, a group-written play that was performed at Woodbourne and Sing Sing, and is being turned into a film as well as slated for production in New York City. Through RTA, Oliveras met Arin Arbus, associate artistic director of Theater for a New Audience in New York City. She read his work and encouraged him to submit it to theaters on the outside. Arbus showed a writing sample—“Dear Friend,” which is a letter to a man being incarcerated for the first time—to Mark Plesent, producing artistic director of the Working Theater in New York City; based on that, Plesent commissioned Oliveras’s full-length play, Song to a Child Like Me. The play’s first public reading, attended by his sister and other family members, was held at the Working Theater while Oliveras was still on the inside.
In September 2010, Oliveras was released. Balancing a full-time job as a housing advocate for Common Ground (a nonprofit dedicated to ending homelessness in New York City), he still writes every day. “In prison, I led a monastic life fully immersed in writing and studies. Out here, I need to work, pay bills, cook,” he says. “I had to relearn all this. It takes time. But I separate at least two hours a day to write. Never neglect your writing, or the work suffers.”
EWG provides playwrights with a stipend, master classes with established playwrights, a biweekly writers’ group led by members of the Public’s Literary Department, opportunities to attend rehearsals and productions at the Public, tickets to shows at other theaters, artistic and professional support, and at least one public reading of their work. Oliveras marvels at meeting with playwrights he once read in A-block. He’s aiming for a full production of one of his plays, and hopes to be able to write full time. “It takes a lot of courage sometimes, using what I’ve learned,” he says emphatically. “There were moments that were really tough. The change wasn’t overnight. It took a lot of things. I had to grow up to be a man in prison."
Read the spring 2013 issue of the Bardian:
05-29-2013
Since graduating from the Bard Prison Initiative, the writing career of Manuel Borras Oliveras ’08 has blossomed. He has been accepted to the Public Theater's prestigious 2013 Emerging Writers Group, a selective program created to nurture the work of new playwrights. Of his Bard education behind bars, Oliveras says, “It opened up my worldview. It introduced me to writers like John Dewey, Plato, Shakespeare. I met professors who had written books, and I could sit down and talk to them. At those moments I felt totally free.”
05-17-2013
Conjunctions:60, In Absentia—the latest issue of Bard's innovative literary magazine—gathers a collection of today’s leading contemporary writers to explore the presence of absence, the losses that gain on us, the black holes in our everyday lives. Edited by Conjunctions editor, novelist, and Bard literature professor Bradford Morrow, the issue includes work by Joyce Carol Oates, Robert Coover, Frederic Tuten, and many others. Visit their website to read excerpts.
05-14-2013
History professor Richard Aldous, author of Reagan and Thatcher, reviews Charles Moore's authorized biography of Margaret Thatcher. Former Daily Telegraph editor Moore is "an inspired choice," writes Aldous.
April 2013
04-23-2013
Italian professor Joseph Luzzi conveys the challenges of translating Dante's masterpiece as he reviews a new translation by Clive James.
04-22-2013
Bard professor and world-renowned author Norman Manea was well received at the prestigious Salon du Livre in Paris. Manea was an honorary guest at the event in March, which was dedicated to Romanian literature. The French press praised Manea's participation and his new book, The Fifth Impossibility: Essays on Exile and Language. During the Salon du Livre Manea gave interviews, participated in a public debate, and spoke to a large audience about Romanian history and literature. Click here to download PDF.
04-19-2013
Conjunctions:60, In Absentia—the latest issue of the innovative literary magazine published by Bard College—gathers a collection of today’s leading contemporary writers to explore the presence of absence, the losses that gain on us, the black holes in our everyday lives.
04-18-2013
Bard professor and award-winning author Francine Prose has been traveling for speaking engagements. Most recently, she spoke and taught as part of the Chautauqua Poets and Writers series in Oregon.
04-16-2013
Bard alumnus Nsikan Akpan '06 made the jump from biomedical research to science journalism, and gives advice to his fellow science writers on how to do the same.
04-12-2013
A production of The Bakkhai (The Bacchae) by Bard College students takes place at the Fisher Center through April 14. Sunday's events also include a panel discussion, "Euripides' The Bakkhai: Play and Performance" with Daniel Mendelsohn (Bard College), Helene Foley (Barnard), Rachel Kitzinger (Vassar), and Emily Wilson (University of Pennsylvania). The panel is free and open to the public.
04-08-2013
Cultural commentator Seth Rogovoy gives the Fisher Center's "Evening with Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer" a rave review.
04-08-2013
Writer Rusty Morrison interviews Bard literature professor and Conjunctions editor Bradford Morrow. The article also includes the full text of Morrow's short story "The Hoarder" from his book The Uninnocent.