The Written Arts Program
encourages students to experiment with their own writing in a context sensitive to intellectual, historical, and social realities, and the past and current literary landscapes. Students are encouraged to consider how their writing is and can be an act of critical and creative engagement, a way of interrogating and translating the world around us. It is expected that Written Arts students are also passionate readers.Why I Chose Bard Written Arts
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Alex BeattyBorn and raised in St. Petersburg, Florida, Alex Beatty decided on Bard after visiting a literature class taught by Professor Marina Van Zuylen. Once at Bard, he chose to moderate into Written Arts. “I wanted to have the opportunity to focus on my own creative projects.”
Alex Beatty
Born and raised in St. Petersburg, Florida, Alex Beatty decided on Bard after visiting a literature class taught by Professor Marina Van Zuylen. Once at Bard, he chose to moderate into Written Arts. “I wanted to have the opportunity to focus on my own creative projects.”
After spending the second semester of his first year at Bard College Berlin, he became a double major in Written Arts and German Studies. For his German Studies Senior Project, Alex translated Der Stein von Werder [The Stone of Werder], a novella by the Baltic-German animal behaviorist Jakob von Uexküll. In it, three sisters attempt to uncover the meaning of a semilegible stone inscription. “I was drawn to The Stone by Uexküll’s use of narrative to explain his theory of meaning,” says Alex, “which also figured into my creative Senior Project, Pistacia Atlantica, a novel about stories written in the margins of old books.”
Of translation, Alex says: “As a learning experience, a creative challenge, and a valued service, translation work has allowed me to continue pursuing my interests since graduating Bard while also helping me to grow as a writer. It has also given me the opportunity to travel, last year to Uexküll’s archives in Tartu, Estonia, and later this year to Perth, Australia, where I’ll be presenting my research on Uexküll and his literary legacy.” It has given him the opportunity to translate contemporaries of Uexküll, such as Heine Hediger, whose research on the dreams of animals has been neglected by translators in the past. Alex has also been working with the writer Rivka Galchen, for whom he’s translating testimonies from the 17th-century witch trial of Katharina Kepler.
Alex also works as an administrative assistant at The Robert B. Silvers Foundation, a nonprofit organization established by the late editor of the New York Review of Books to support writers in the fields of reportage and criticism. “It’s had a profound impact on how I think of writing as a career,” Alex says. “Silvers’s legendary work ethic and passion for nuanced writing and the writers with whom I correspond in my capacity as an administrative assistant have been a daily inspiration for me to continue writing. I have never been sure exactly how writing will fit into my future, because it has taken so many unexpected forms since I decided to make it a career, but I look forward to pursuing new opportunities and continuing my projects in fiction, nonfiction, and translation.” -
Julie JaremaJulie Jarema transferred to Bard from NYU, drawn by its flexible curriculum and eclectic community. She arrived intending to take a critical approach to the study of literature, but a fiction workshop with Porochista Khakpour drew her to Written Arts.
Julie Jarema
Julie Jarema transferred to Bard from NYU, drawn by its flexible curriculum and eclectic community. She arrived intending to take a critical approach to the study of literature, but a fiction workshop with Porochista Khakpour drew her to Written Arts.
Julie explains, “I’ve always enjoyed writing and illustrating stories, primarily for children. However, my Senior Project pushed me toward approaching writing in a more absurd, experimental way and taught me that writing for an older audience doesn’t mean that the writing has to lose its playfulness.”
Julie’s project, “The Museum,” is a novel about a rootless girl whose employer, a reclusive author and the owner of an obscure museum, sends her on a scavenger hunt through Manhattan to gather artifacts for a new exhibition. As Mia’s quest draws her into spiraling mysteries of identity and artifact, the roles of the author and the reader become increasingly entangled.
At Bard, Julie’s interests also drew her to French, comparative literature, and the experimental humanities. In addition, during her undergraduate years she served as an editorial assistant at Bard’s literary journal Conjunctions, as an intern with Miriam Altshuler at the literary agency DeFiore & Co., and as a children’s marketing and publicity intern with Simon & Schuster. The last of these led to Simon & Schuster taking her on full-time as a children’s books associate immediately upon her graduation in 2016.
Spotlight on Our Faculty
The Written Arts Program is staffed by distinguished writers of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction who emphasize both innovative, experimental work and work that foregrounds the conventions of writing.
Written Arts Faculty Reading Series
From 2020
Upcoming Events
- 2/24Monday5:30 pm EST/GMT-5 Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium
Monday, February 24, 2025
A Screening and Discussion with Samantha Hunt
Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium 5:30 pm EST/GMT-5
On Monday, February 24, at 5:30 pm in the László Z. Bitó ’60 Auditorium, Reem-Kayden Center (RKC), Samantha Hunt will discuss her work after a screening of her short film The Yellow. Introduced and moderated by Dinaw Mengestu, this event is free and open to the student body.
Samantha Hunt is the author of five books. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Bard Fiction Prize and a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner. Her work has been translated into thirteen languages. Her short film The Yellow, was selected for the Toronto International Film Fest. Hunt teaches at Pratt and Bennington College. - 2/26Wednesday1:30 pm – 2:30 pm EST/GMT-5 Albee; Annex Basement (La Voz Magazine on google Maps)
- 2/26Wednesday7:30 pm – 10:00 pm EST/GMT-5 Avery/Ottaway Auditorium
Wednesday, February 26, 2025
Followed by Q&A with producer Andrea Chalupa
Avery/Ottaway Auditorium 7:30 pm – 10:00 pm EST/GMT-5
The year is 1933. Rumors of a government-induced famine in Soviet Ukraine reach the ears of Welsh journalist Gareth Jones. Eluding the authorities, Jones manages to clandestinely travel to Ukraine where he witnesses the atrocities of man-made starvation as all grain is sold abroad to finance the industrialization of the Soviet empire.
Join us for a film screening and Q&A.
- 3/04Tuesday5:30 pm EST/GMT-5 Stevenson Library
Tuesday, March 4, 2025
Stevenson Library 5:30 pm EST/GMT-5
Hua Hsu and Thomas Gebremedhin will come together for a discussion on their careers in writing and publishing, followed by a reading from Hua Hsu's 2022 memoir Stay True. Introduced and moderated by John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Professor of the Humanities and director of the Written Arts Program Dinaw Mengestu, this event is free and open to the Bard community.
Hua Hsu is a staff writer at The New Yorker and a professor of Literature at Bard College. Hsu serves on the executive board of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop. He was formerly a fellow at the New America Foundation and the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center at the New York Public Library.
Thomas Gebremedhin, Vice President and Executive Editor, joined Doubleday in 2020 following nearly a decade in magazines. His first acquisition at Doubleday was Hua Hsu’s Stay True, which was awarded both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography. Stay True was also named one of the New York Times 100 best books of the 21st century. The first work of fiction that Thomas published at Doubleday, Beautiful Days by Zach Williams, was named one of President Barack Obama’s favorite books of 2024. In addition to Hsu and Williams, Thomas works with Maaza Mengiste, Kyle Chayka, Benjamin Moser, Amanda Hess, Jen Percy, Eric Puchner, Nell Irvin Painter, Julie Phillips, David Klion, Tao Leigh Goffe, and Richard Rhodes, among others. His authors have won or been finalists for the Pulitzer Prize, the Booker Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, and they have been cited on the annual New York Times Best Books of the Year list among many other best of lists.