News from the Division of Languages and Literature

The latest issue of Bard's literary magazine Conjunctions explores family in all its permutations, with new work by Rae Armantrout, Ann Beattie, Elizabeth Hand, Noy Holland, Robert Kelly, Rick Moody, Joyce Carol Oates, Peter Orner, Octavio Paz, and Karen Russell.

"The genius of this brief novel is that it contains all of life in its diminutive crucible."

Conjunctions

The Royal Society of Literature (RSL) of Great Britain has invited renowned Romanian émigré author and Bard College writer in residence Norman Manea to become a Fellow of RSL. The Royal Society of Literature was founded by King George IV in 1820, to “reward literary merit and excite literary talent.” Manea is the first Romanian writer to be honored by the prestigious British institution. 



This September, the Bard Free Press, Bard College’s student newspaper, and the Bard Center for Civic Engagement present the Free Press Journalism Seminar Series, featuring leading journalists, newspaper publishers, writers, and scholars discussing the state of journalism today, from the role of journalists in society to ways of becoming a journalist.

Roughly half a century after first arriving, as a budding “scientist of totality,” to teach and abide at Bard College, Robert Kelly ambled with ursine grace across the stage in Olin Auditorium and assumed the lectern. Dusk was gathering on a chilly evening, and the enthusiastic crowd—consisting of colleagues, students, administrators, and various representatives of the arts intelligentsia from surrounding communities and farther afield—was there to celebrate his eternally youthful tenure as Bard’s unofficial poet in residence.

Achebe Center director Binyavanga Wainaina’s new memoir, One Day I Will Write About This Place, is a "kaleidoscopic keyhole that offers fresh insights on globalism, tribalism and the decolonizing process."

This month, Graywolf Press will publish One Day I Will Write about This Place, a debut memoir from Binyavanga Wainaina, the celebrated Kenyan writer and director of the Chinua Achebe Center for African Writers and Artists at Bard College. Vanity Fair calls Wainaina "one of Kenya's young literary stars," and oprah.com's Summer Reading List calls One Day "an astonishing, dreamy memoir."

Norman Manea has been officially invited to become a Fellow of The Royal Society of Literature of Great Britain. He is the first Romanian writer to be so honored. In July, the Romanian Cultural Institute in New York and Bard College presented a special event celebrating the Professor Manea’s 75th birthday, lauded as “one of the most remarkable writers of our time.”

Bard Fiction Prize winners Nathan Englander and Karen Russell talk with the New Yorker about breaking into the literary world.

This documentary about medieval drama—based on Elisabeth Dutton’s production of John Skelton’s Magnyfycence at Hampton Court Palace in May 2010—includes interviews, documentary footage, and both theatrical and cinematic stagings of the play.

Robert Kelly is Asher B. Edelman Professor of Literature at Bard College. He has been on the Bard faculty since 1961.

Professor Kelly founded the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts writing program in 1980, and directed it for a dozen years. He has received numerous grants and awards, including recognition from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, the Los Angeles Times Prize for Poetry, and an honorary doctorate from SUNY Oneonta. He is the author of more than 50 books of poetry (including Red Actions, a selection of poems from 1960–93), several novels, and five collections of shorter fiction. His most recent books are May Day (poems), Fire Exit (long poem), The Book from the Sky (novel), The Logic of the World and Other Fictions (stories), and Uncertainties. He is at work on a new collection of shorter poems and a book of essays, manifestos, and reviews.

Bard College presents "Sri Lanka: Creative Media in a Time of Conflict" on Friday, November 7 at the Milton and Sally Avery Center for the Arts. The symposium aims to highlight the vitality of creative expression and artistic documentation in the midst of Sri Lanka’s brutal civil war; it includes two film screenings, a poetry reading, and art exhibition.