News and Notes by Date
April 2018
04-17-2018
Professor Baldasso, director of Bard’s Italian Studies Program, was awarded the fellowship for his work on literary dissent during the transition from Fascism to democracy in Italy.
04-04-2018
“If Powers were an American writer of the nineteenth century . . . he’d probably be the Herman Melville of Moby-Dick. His picture is that big” (Margaret Atwood, New York Review of Books).
March 2018
03-27-2018
Neil Gaiman’s ghoulish children’s novella Coraline is being adapted by the Royal Opera in London.
03-24-2018
On Monday, April 2, novelist and short story writer Laura van den Berg, winner of the 2015 Bard Fiction Prize, will read from her work at Bard College.
03-22-2018
The US-China Music Institute of the Bard College Conservatory of Music will present the Harmony and Power conference and concert series on March 30–31 on the Bard College campus.
03-17-2018
Long Soldier received the National Book Critics Circle Award for her poetry collection Whereas, “a brilliantly innovative text that examines history, landscapes, and identities.”
03-16-2018
Russian novelist, essayist, and short story writer Tatyana Tolstaya will read from her new collection Aetherial Worlds.
03-12-2018
On Thursday, March 29, prominent Russian novelist, essayist, short story writer, and public intellectual Tatyana Tolstaya will speak at Bard College about her new book, Aetherial Worlds, a collection of 18 stories.
03-06-2018
“One of the finest, most dimensional inquiries into the significance of books and the role of reading in human life comes from Neil Gaiman.”
February 2018
02-27-2018
Francine Prose’s novel Blue Angel, written 20 years ago and now adapted for the screen as Submission, complicates the current cultural conversation about sexual harassment.
02-22-2018
On Monday, March 5, Daniel Mendelsohn will give a book reading and signing followed by a wine reception for his new book, An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic.
02-20-2018
The National Book Award finalist and 2017 Bard Fiction Prize-winning novelist Karan Mahajan will read from his work on February 26.
02-16-2018
Bard College has launched a tuition-free, degree-granting microcollege in the central branch of the Brooklyn Public Library. This innovative new program is designed to help nontraditional students who have been deterred, discouraged, or excluded from higher education to achieve associate degrees in the liberal arts, at no cost and in their home community.
02-14-2018
The National Book Award finalist and 2017 Bard Fiction Prize-winning novelist Karan Mahajan will read from his work on February 26.
02-08-2018
"Docile and utilitarian bodies of women and peoples of color, a compliant natural world—these are the operational goals of unreconstructed (and white supremacist) patriarchal society."
02-03-2018
Bard College is one of five top schools taking part in the pilot expansion of a program developed to teach students to write for the real world.
January 2018
01-30-2018
Author Carmen Maria Machado, Bard Fiction Prize winner and writer in residence at Bard College, will read from her work on February 19.
November 2017
11-29-2017
Distinguished Writer in Residence Francine Prose reviews David Yaffe’s Reckless Daughter: A Portrait of Joni Mitchell.
11-23-2017
Mendelsohn weaves Homer's epic with episodes from his own life in a book of "shimmering, beautiful, dapple-skilled intelligence" about his relationship with his father.
11-16-2017
Chinua Achebe—an icon of African literature and beloved professor at Bard—was recognized with a Google Doodle on Thursday, November 16, on what would have been his 87th birthday.
11-15-2017
Conjunctions:69, Being Bodies—the latest issue of the innovative literary magazine published by Bard College—is an exploration of the complex circumstances of flesh-and-blood existence. A memoir of distance running counterpoints a meditation on resurrection. The story of an injury is juxtaposed with an uncommonly candid confession of a young man who struggles with gender identity and sexual orientation. In every contribution come fresh insights into what it means to inhabit our bodies for a brief moment in time. Edited by Conjunctions editor, novelist, and Bard literature professor Bradford Morrow, Being Bodies features new work from Mary Caponegro, Edward Carey, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Nomi Eve, Michael Ives, Carole Maso, Rick Moody, Kyoko Mori, Dina Nayeri, Stephen O’Connor, Peter Orner, Jorge Ángel Pérez, Rosamond Purcell, Sallie Tisdale, Anne Waldman, and others.
11-05-2017
On Monday, November 13, celebrated fantasy writer and critic Elizabeth Hand reads from her fiction collection Saffron and Brimstone. The Washington Post writes, "Hand's work is pulsing with tension throughout, charged with its own chilling luminosity." Hand will be introduced by novelist and Bard literature professor Bradford Morrow.
11-02-2017
Writer in Residence Wyatt Mason examines how the classicist Emily Wilson has given Homer’s epic a radically contemporary voice.
October 2017
10-18-2017
On Monday, October 30, celebrated author Diane Ackerman will read from The Zookeeper’s Wife at Bard College. This little-known true story of World War II enjoyed months as the New York Times No. 1 nonfiction bestseller, was the basis for a 2017 feature film of the same title, and received the Orion Book Award, which honored it as “a groundbreaking work of nonfiction, in which the human relationship to nature is explored in an absolutely original way through looking at the Holocaust.” Ackerman will be introduced by novelist and Bard literature professor Bradford Morrow. The reading, presented as part of Morrow’s Innovative Contemporary Fiction Reading (ICFR) series, takes place at 2:30 p.m. at Weis Cinema in the Bertelsmann Campus Center and will be followed by a Q&A. It is free and open to the public; no reservations are required.
10-15-2017
Author Carmen Maria Machado has received the Bard Fiction Prize for her debut short story collection, Her Body and Other Parties. In the collection, long-listed for the 2017 National Book Award and a finalist for the Kirkus Prize, Machado shapes startling, genre-bending narratives that map the realities of women’s lives and the violence visited upon their bodies. Machado’s residency at Bard College is for the fall 2018 semester, during which time she will continue her writing, meet informally with students, and give a public reading.
10-11-2017
What happens when Professor Daniel Mendelsohn's 81-year-old father enrolls in his Odyssey seminar at Bard? The author discusses his new memoir on Friday, October 20.
10-08-2017
Professor Emeritus John Ashbery passed away last month. Here, Ann Lauterbach shares her 2011 introduction of the poet upon receipt of his National Book Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award.
10-04-2017
On September 27, Stephen King and Owen King spoke at Bard about their new novel, Sleeping Beauties. Heather Fazio talks about the excellent rapport of the father-son writing team.
September 2017
09-26-2017
Professor Luc Sante writes about the impact of groundbreaking poet and Bard professor emeritus John Ashbery, who passed away earlier this month.
09-21-2017
On September 27, father-son team Stephen and Owen King discuss their new novel, Sleeping Beauties, at the Fisher Center.
09-20-2017
The Prague Sonata is "an elegant foray into music and memory." Morrow discusses the new book with Professor Mary Caponegro at Bard on October 2.
09-18-2017
Bard professor Daniel Mendelsohn's new memoir, An Odyssey: A Father, a Son and an Epic, recalls the semester his father decided to join his Odyssey seminar at Bard.
09-13-2017
On Monday, September 25, American Book Award–winning poet, memoirist, journalist, and Miles Davis biographer Quincy Troupe will read from his work at Bard College.
09-10-2017
Wyatt Mason on translating the works of the French writer Pierre Michon.
09-07-2017
Writers remember acclaimed poet and Bard professor emeritus John Ashbery, including professors Anselm Berrigan and Robert Kelly, professor emerita Joan Retallack, and alumnus Andrew Durbin '12.
09-05-2017
Tania Ketenjian '98 looks back on studying with Professor John Ashbery, who died on Sunday at the age of 90.
August 2017
08-01-2017
Adam Begley has crafted a judicious biography of portraitist Félix Tournachon (or Nadar) filled with "character and incident," emulating Nadar's own reverence for his subjects.
08-01-2017
"Never had I felt so accepted." Tyler Williams recalls transferring to Bard High School Early College, where he cultivated the tools to express ideas about ethnicity, religion, and morality.
July 2017
07-17-2017
Critic and Professor Daniel Mendelsohn examines the evocations of class, muddled family histories, and traces of autobiography in the novels of Sybille Bedford.
June 2017
06-26-2017
Philosophy and Literature editor Garry Hagberg talks about the groundbreaking journal and the types of scholarship it regularly features. Hagberg discusses how the journal delves into questions of human motivation, ethical concerns and the power of language.
06-14-2017
“Luc Sante’s nonfiction book is a brilliant history of low life in the city. It was much celebrated when it came out and should still be, because it’s really a classic—valuable for anybody who wants to write books, wants to write novels, wants to know about New York City . . . " writes Colin Harrison for the Village Voice.
06-14-2017
Renowned author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has been awarded the Mary McCarthy Prize for her novels and charismatic public presence.
06-14-2017
Bard College alumna Charlotte Mandell ’90 has been named one of six finalists for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize, which celebrates the finest works of translated fiction from around the world.
06-06-2017
Charles Ranlett Flint Professor of Humanities at Bard College Daniel Mendelsohn recounts the time he spent in his twenties living with an older French woman who made him a writer.
May 2017
05-02-2017
Last week, the New York Times previewed the performance.
April 2017
04-25-2017
Bard College student C Mandler has won an inaugural GLAAD Rising Star Grant. The GLAAD Rising Stars program empowers and invests in the next generation of LGBTQ change makers, whose advocacy is changing their local communities and the culture at large.
04-24-2017
Bard College students have won several highly competitive awards for international travel including two Thomas J. Watson Fellowships, four Fulbright grants, and a Davis Projects for Peace prize.
04-12-2017
"Whatever it is that I wrote yesterday or write today is going to be another inquiry into the question, 'What is a poem?'" Ann Lauterbach talks with Camille Guthrie.
March 2017
03-28-2017
Justus Rosenberg will receive the Legion of Honor medal at the French consulate in New York City on Thursday, March 30. Professor Rosenberg, Bard professor emeritus of languages and literature and visiting professor of literature, is the last surviving member of the Varian Fry group, which helped rescue hundreds of artists and intellectuals from Nazi-occupied France during World War II. He later joined the Forces Francaises de I'Interieur and the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation organization. The medal recognizes his "selfless sacrifice" throughout the war and subsequent "outstanding academic career ... where you left a profound mark and remain a highly influential role model for thousands of young men and women beginning their adult lives. It comes in recognition of the high esteem in which you are held by French authorities, and serves as an example to all those who have French-American friendship at heart."
03-27-2017
The essays in Teju Cole's new collection "are brilliantly written—sharp, intelligent—and yield a pleasurable sweetness."