2024
Tuesday, October 8, 2024
Read by Elizabeth Shafer
Shafer House 5:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 On Tuesday, October 8 at 5pm in the Shafer House, Elizabeth Shafer will read from two of Margaret Creal’s works: her 1957 novel, A Lesson in Love, and her 1994 short story, London Bridge is Falling Down. The reading will be followed by a reception with refreshments. All are welcome. Margaret Creal Shafer was born in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, where she began her piano study at the Royal Conservatory of Music. She moved to the Hudson Valley with her husband, the late Fredrick Q. Shafer “Fritz,” former rector of St. Johns Church in Barrytown, and Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Philosophy and Religion at Bard College. She taught piano for over forty years and authored three books: two short-story collections, The Man Who Sold Prayers and Singing Sky, and a novel, A Lesson in Love, and was a devoted member of the Hudson Valley Chamber Music Circle and quintessential host. Her house is now the home of the Written Arts Program, a fitting tribute to an author and beloved community member. Elizabeth Shafer is an artist, writer, and retired lawyer. She paints primarily in oils, but also works in pastels, printmaking, and encaustics. She had a solo exhibition of her art work at the Saugerties Public Library in 2019. Her chapbook, Wellsprings, was published in 2019. She was a Contributor in Poetry at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in August 2015. She is involved in environmental issues and has been a Board Member since 1991 of the Lawyers’ Committee on Nuclear Policy. She lives with her husband, Stephen Shafer, on their sheep farm in Saugerties, N.Y. Margaret Creal was her beloved mother-in-law. |
Tuesday, September 17, 2024
Shafer House 5:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
The Written Arts Program welcomes any and all interested students to an open house in Shafer House. Members of the faculty will be in attendance to answer any specific questions you may have, or to talk with you generally about workshops, Moderation, and Senior Projects. Enjoy the waterfall and have some refreshments as you chat with other student writers about their experiences in the program. Shafer House (9 Cedar Hill Road) is located at the Annandale Triangle on south campus. |
Monday, September 16, 2024
Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium 5:30 pm – 6:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
On Monday, September 16 at 5:30pm in the László Z. Bitó ’60 Auditorium, Reem-Kayden Center (RKC), Distinguished Visiting Professor of Written Arts Joseph O'Neill will read from his work. Introduced by Mary Caponegro and follwed by a Q&A, the reading is free and open to the student body. Joseph O’Neill is the author of the novels Godwin, The Dog, Netherland (which won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award), The Breezes, and This Is the Life. He has also written a family history, Blood-Dark Track, and a book of stories, Good Trouble. He lives in New York City and teaches at Bard College. |
Friday, September 13, 2024
A Workshop with Ama Codjoe
Campus Center, Weis Cinema 10:15 am – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 In this generative workshop, participants will discuss ekphrastic writing: writing about art. Together we will engage in close reading and close looking. Workshop attendees will leave with a draft of a poem and with prompts for further and future writing. No prior writing experience is needed. Please come prepared to write longhand. This workshop will be broken into two sessions: from 10:15–11:30 am, and then from 12:00–1:00 pm. Ama Codjoe is the author of Bluest Nude, winner of the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, and finalist for the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Poetry, the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and the Paterson Poetry Prize. She is also the author of Blood of the Air, winner of the Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize. Among other honors, Codjoe has received fellowships from the Rona Jaffe Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bronx Council on the Arts, the New York State Council/New York Foundation of the Arts, and the Jerome Foundation. In 2023, Codjoe was appointed as the second Poet-in-Residence at the Guggenheim Museum. She is the winner of a 2023 Whiting Award and a recipient of a 2024 Arts and Letters Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Read more about Ama Codjoe's work here. |
Tuesday, May 14, 2024
Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium 5:00 pm – 7:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
On Monday, May 13, and Tuesday, May 14 at 5pm, please join the Written Arts Program for two nights of senior readings! Written Arts seniors will be reading excerpts from their recently completed Senior Projects in fiction, poetry, narrative nonfiction, and hybrid forms, with introductory and closing remarks from Written Arts faculty. This event will be held in person in the László Z. Bitó ’60 Auditorium, Reem-Kayden Center (RKC). All are welcome! May 13 Readers Ilias Medrano Michaela Siegel Havvah Keller Maddie Oprica Frankie McNerney Zach Mattison Pati Dynes Zeke Morgan Gabriel Goering Nine Reed-Mera Emily McMaster Rae Lipkind William Fink Justine Denamiel Zoie Garnsey Savannah Pina Dylan Whitaker Misha Schaffner-Kargman May 14 Readers Lukas Olausson Anna Nelson Zeph Watkins Johannes Furtwangler Sam Crocker Danielle Dean Lindsey Jordan Lisa Magee Lowell Thomas Sadie Bernard Juno Shepard Isabelle Kline Simon Horan Ruby Greischar Achi Tsitsishvili Hannah Hemingway Jonathan Asiedu Shannon O'Neill |
Monday, May 13, 2024
Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium 5:00 pm – 7:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
On Monday, May 13, and Tuesday, May 14 at 5pm, please join the Written Arts Program for two nights of senior readings! Written Arts seniors will be reading excerpts from their recently completed Senior Projects in fiction, poetry, narrative nonfiction, and hybrid forms, with introductory and closing remarks from Written Arts faculty. This event will be held in person in the László Z. Bitó ’60 Auditorium, Reem-Kayden Center (RKC). All are welcome! May 13 Readers Ilias Medrano Michaela Siegel Havvah Keller Maddie Oprica Frankie McNerney Zach Mattison Pati Dynes Zeke Morgan Gabriel Goering Nine Reed-Mera Emily McMaster Rae Lipkind William Fink Justine Denamiel Zoie Garnsey Savannah Pina Dylan Whitaker Misha Schaffner-Kargman May 14 Readers Lukas Olausson Anna Nelson Zeph Watkins Johannes Furtwangler Sam Crocker Danielle Dean Lindsey Jordan Lisa Magee Lowell Thomas Sadie Bernard Juno Shepard Isabelle Kline Simon Horan Ruby Greischar Achi Tsitsishvili Hannah Hemingway Jonathan Asiedu Shannon O'Neill |
Wednesday, May 1, 2024
Campus Center, Weis Cinema 7:00 pm – 10:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Screening of Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film, 2001: A Space Odyssey For WRIT 345: Imagining Nonhuman Consciousness |
Thursday, April 25, 2024
Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium 6:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
On Thursday, April 25 at 6 pm in the László Z. Bitó ’60 Auditorium, Reem-Kayden Center (RKC), Terrance Hayes will read from his work. He will be introduced by Erica Kaufman, Bard Writer in Residence and Director of the Institute for Writing and Thinking. The reading will be followed by a discussion moderated by Dawn Lundy Martin, Distinguished Writer in Residence at Bard College. Terrance Hayes is the author of seven poetry collections: So to Speak; American Sonnets for My Past And Future Assassin, a finalist for the National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, and TS Eliot Prize; How to Be Drawn; Lighthead, winner of the 2010 National Book Award for poetry; Muscular Music, recipient of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award; Hip Logic, winner of the 2001 National Poetry Series; and Wind in a Box. His prose collection, To Float In The Space Between: Drawings and Essays in Conversation with Etheridge Knight, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and winner of the Pegasus Award for Poetry Criticism. Hayes has received fellowships from the MacArthur Foundation, Guggenheim Foundation, and Whiting Foundation, and is a professor of English at New York University. |
Monday, April 22, 2024
The acclaimed, genre-spanning writer reads from her work.
Campus Center, Weis Cinema EVENT CANCELED Novelist and short story writer Elizabeth Hand will read from new work at Bard College on Monday, April 22 at 4:00 pm in Weis Cinema, located in the Bertelsmann Campus Center. Hand is the author of over 20 genre-spanning, award-winning novels and collections of short fiction. Her most recent novel, A Haunting on the Hill, is an homage to Shirley Jackson’s classic The Haunting of Hill House and was commissioned by Jackson’s family. The reading, which is being presented as part of Bradford Morrow’s course on innovative contemporary fiction, is free and open to the public. A longtime critic and reviewer, Hand’s writing has also appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Times, Boston Review, Salon, the Los Angeles Times, and the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, among other outlets. Her noir novels featuring post-punk photographer and provocateur Cass Neary have been translated into myriad languages and are being developed for a TV series. Hand has been an instructor at writing workshops across the US and abroad, including Oxford and Pakistan, and is on the faculty at the Stonecoast MFA Program in Creative Writing. She divides her time between the Maine coast and North London, and is at work on Unspeakable Things, which is loosely inspired by Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca. Praise for Elizabeth Hand “Hand has a gift for the sensuous, evocative detail, and her descriptions are often simultaneously seductive and spooky.” —The New Yorker “A Haunting on the Hill is a love letter to Hill House and a very impressive tribute to Shirley Jackson. It is also a tremendous addition to Hand’s already outstanding, multi-genre oeuvre.” —Gabino Iglesias, NPR “Only the brilliant Elizabeth Hand could so expertly honor Jackson’s rage, wit, and vision with a 21st century twist. The old place is as creepy, disorienting, and menacing as ever.” —Paul Tremblay “To describe Elizabeth Hand as a mystery writer is to not have read another Elizabeth Hand book. Over decades, she has proved that she’s eclectic, genre-bending, and comfortable in fantasy and mystery, crime, myth, magic—and more.” —The Washington Post |
Friday, April 19, 2024
Bard Hall 3:00 pm – 5:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
In Ancient Greece, professional performers of Homer were called Rhapsodes. Their job was to memorize Homeric poetry and perform it at festivals around Greece. Today we honor their tradition and that of Bill Mullen, a former professor of Classics and Rhetoric at Bard College. The Contest The Bill Mullen Recitation Contest is an annual competition amongst Bard College and BHSEC Cleveland students. The recitation prize competition encourages the love of literature, the joy in oral recitation, the committing to memory of great poetry, the love of public speaking, and the agonal spirit, all of which are at the heart of how we remember Bill Mullen’s intellectual legacy. The Bill Mullen Recitation contest aims to expose students to, and perhaps instill a love for, the art of memorizing and reciting poetry. Read more here. We are no longer accepting entries as we have reached our upper limit for capacity at the event! Contest Rules - Participants must be undergraduates at Bard College. - Poem must be recited in English (translations into English are welcome). - The poem’s author must be deceased. - Full texts only, no excerpts. - Recitation length: no longer than 3 minutes. - Entry deadline: April 12, 2024. Prizes: $500 1st place $100 2nd place Who Is Bill Mullen? In 2021, Bard College announced the William C. Mullen Memorial Fund, created by a generous donation from longtime Bard professor Bill Mullen. This fund is used to promote his legacy through grants to any of Bill’s former students to continue their studies in the liberal arts and sciences. William “Bill” Mullen (1946–2017) was a professor of classics and taught at Bard from 1985 until his death. Read more about Professor Mullen here Who Are the Judges? Thomas Bartscherer is the Peter Sourian Senior Lecturer in the Humanities at Bard College. He writes on the intersection of literature and philosophy, with a particular focus on tragic drama, aesthetics, and performance. He also writes on contemporary art, new media technology, and the history and practice of liberal education. Ann Lauterbach is a poet and essayist. Her eleventh collection of poetry, Door, will be published by Penguin Random House in March (2023). She writes at the intersection of poetics, politics and the visual arts. A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship (1986) and a MacArthur Fellowship (1993), she is Ruth and David Schwab Professor of Languages and Literature (Written Arts) at Bard College. |
Thursday, April 18, 2024
Bard Hall 6:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
On Thursday, April 18, at 6 pm in Bard Hall, Aaliyah Bilal will read from her work. She will be introduced by Rachel Ephraim, Bard Early College Hudson Valley faculty member. The reading will be followed by a discussion moderated by her editor Yahdon Israel, senior editor at Simon & Schuster. Aaliyah Bilal was born and raised in Prince George’s County, Maryland. She has degrees from Oberlin College and the University of London School of Oriental and African Studies. She’s published stories and essays with the Michigan Quarterly Review and The Rumpus. Temple Folk is her first short story collection. Yahdon Israel is a Senior editor at Simon Schuster and founder of Literaryswag, a cultural movement that intersects literature and fashion to make books accessible. He has written for The New Inquiry, LitHub, Poets and Writers, Vanity Fair, and The Atlantic. He teaches Creative Writing at the MFA Program at City College. Read more about Yahdon's work here. More about Temple Folk Finalist for the 2023 National Book Award for Fiction “Temple Folk is more than a special literary accomplishment, it is a gift of glorious songs. The people in the nation of Islam have not appeared very often in literature. Now, Aaliyah Bilal arrives with a splendid and grand collection of 10 stories that, with sensitivity and insight and skill, give us a world of people, our loved ones, and neighbors, who decided that life might be better in the nation. We have long needed these stories, these songs, and this gift should be praised from as many rooftops as possible.” —Edward P. Jones, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Known World “With her landmark debut, Temple Folk, Aaliyah Bilal shines a light on a Black American community that, for all its influence, hasn’t been given its due in fiction—the Nation of Islam. The deftness of her storytelling allows total access to characters struggling to practice faith as a means of survival. This is a truly masterful work, full of compassion, humor, nuance, and great insight.” –Emily Raboteau, Author of Searching for Zion Read more about Aaliyah's work here. |
Tuesday, April 16, 2024
A Talk with Carol Goodman
Olin Humanities, Room 202 5:00 pm – 6:30 pm EDT/GMT-4 Culturally and often personally, fairy tales, folklore, and myth are the humanity’s earliest narratives. Fiction writers have drawn from this source throughout the history of literature—both to get inspired themselves and to inspire others. Carol Goodman will discuss the influence that fairy tales, folklore and myth have had on her writing, from the traditional stories encountered in childhood to the myth-inflected novels, including Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. Carol Goodman is the author of 25 novels, including The Seduction of Water, which won the 2003 Hammett Prize, The Widow’s House, which won the 2018 Mary Higgins Clark Award, and The Night Visitors, which won the 2020 Mary Higgins Clark Award. Her latest novel is The Bones of the Story. She teaches writing and literature at SUNY New Paltz and lives in the Hudson Valley. |
Tuesday, April 2, 2024
A Performance with JJJJJerome Ellis
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 In this performance, artist JJJJJerome Ellis presents portions of their latest project Aster of Ceremonies. Using piano, saxophone, electronics, and voice, they’ll perform excerpts from “Benediction,” a devotional song cycle attending to 18th and 19th century Black runaway slaves who stuttered. This lecture-performance is an ongoing attempt to, in the words of critic Hortense Spillers, “hear [slavery’s] stutter more clearly.” JJJJJerome Ellis (any pronoun) is a disabled animal, artist, and person who stutters. Through music, performance, writing, video, and photography, the artist asks what stuttering can teach us about justice. Born in 1989 to Jamaican and Grenadian immigrants, the artist lives in Norfolk, Virginia, USA with their wife, ecologist-poet Luísa Black Ellis. Ellis has been a lecturer in Sound Design at Yale University. Their debut album, The Clearing (2021), was called “an astonishing, must-listen project” (The Guardian). It was co-produced by NNA Tapes and The Poetry Project, and it was released with an accompanying book published by Wendy’s Subway. The Clearing won the 2022 Anna Rabinowitz Prize. The artist has received a Fulbright Fellowship (2015), a United States Artists Fellowship (2022), a Foundation for Contemporary Art Grants to Artists Award (2022), a Creative Capital Grant (2022). The artist has received residencies at MacDowell (2019, 2022), Ucross (2021), Lincoln Center Theater (2019), ISSUE Project Room (2021), and La MaMa (2021). JJJJJerome’s solo and collaborative musical/performance work has been presented by Lincoln Center, The Poetry Project, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Sawdust, WNYC, and ISSUE Project Room (New York); Venice Biennale 2023; Haus der Kunst (Munich); Rewire Festival (The Hague); Schauspielhaus Zürich; Chrysler Hall (Norfolk, Virginia); MASS MoCA (North Adams, Massachusetts); Arraymusic (Toronto); and the Center for African American Poetry and Poetics (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), among others. The artist’s visual work (video and photography) has been presented by Oklahoma Contemporary (Oklahoma City), Juf (Madrid), Artspace New Haven (New Haven, Connecticut), and Ballroom Marfa (Marfa, Texas). They have received commissions from the Virginia Symphony Orchestra, The Shed, and REDCAT. Ellis is a signed artist with NNA Tapes and is represented by Michaël Gardiner at Heavy Trip, Pascal Mungioli at Stay Service, and Ben Izzo at A3 Artists Agency. The artist’s work has been covered by the Guardian, This American Life, Pitchfork, Artforum, Black Enso, and Christian Science Monitor. Read more about JJJJerome's work here. |
Tuesday, April 2, 2024
Film Screening and Director Q&A with Michael Lockshin
Avery Art Center 5:30 pm – 9:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 “…one of the most dramatic and charged Russian film debuts in recent memory. The movie refashions the novel as a revenge tragedy about a writer’s struggle under censorship, borrowing from the story of Bulgakov’s own life” (Paul Sonne, New York Times). “… a blistering critique of Soviet power and authoritarianism… a box-office smash and a cultural phenomenon …” (Christopher Vourlias, Variety). “As Russia becomes more repressive, it is possible that Master and Margarita could be one of the last films of its kind, a blockbuster where the criticism of the state lies on the surface.” (Andrew Roth, Guardian). The American-Russian film-maker Michael Lockshin was born in the US and moved to the Soviet Union as a child in 1986. His first feature film, Silver Skates (2020) became the first Russian-language original film on Netflix. Lockshin directed and coauthored The Master and Margarita after Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel, composed in 1928–1940 and published posthumously in 1967–68. Released on January 25, the film was blasted by pro-Kremlin propagandists for its “sharp, anti-Soviet, anti-modern Russian theme.” Russian ideologues’ appeals to cancel Lockshin and his film have been brought about by the director’s pronouncements against the war and his support for Ukraine. |
Monday, March 25, 2024
The 2019 Shirley Jackson Award winner reads from his work
Campus Center, Weis Cinema 4:30 pm – 5:30 pm EDT/GMT-4 Novelist and short story writer Brian Evenson will read from new work at Bard College on Monday, March 25 at 5:00 pm in Weis Cinema, located in the Bertelsmann Campus Center. Evenson is the author of a dozen books of fiction, most recently the story collection The Glassy, Burning Floor of Hell (2021), and the Weird West microcollection Black Bark (2023). The reading, which is being presented as part of Bradford Morrow’s course on innovative contemporary fiction, is free and open to the public. Evenson’s collection Song for the Unraveling of the World (2019) won the Shirley Jackson Award and the World Fantasy Award, and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times’ Ray Bradbury Prize for Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Speculative Fiction. Previous books have won the American Library Association’s RUSA Prize Award and the International Horror Guild Award, and have been finalists for the Edgar Award. He is the recipient of three O. Henry Prizes, an NEA fellowship, and a Guggenheim Award. His work has been translated into more than a dozen languages. A new book, Good Night, Sleep Tight, will be published by Coffee House Press in September of 2024. He lives in Los Angeles and teaches at CalArts. Praise for Brian Evenson “His stories are deeply terrifying and so troubling that they linger in your mind long after you've read them.” —R.L. Stine “There is not a more intense, prolific, or apocalyptic writer of fiction in America than Brian Evenson.” —George Saunders “Brian Evenson is one of the most consistently vital and unnerving voices in writing today. . . . No matter where you start with Evenson’s work, the door is wide ajar, and once you go through it you won't be coming out.” —VICE “Brian Evenson is one of my favorite living horror writers.” —Carmen Maria Machado “You’ve heard of ‘postmodern’ stories—well, Evenson’s stories are post-everything. They are post-human, post-reason, post-apocalyptic. . . . In an Evenson story, there are two horrible things that can happen to you. You can either fail to survive, or survive.” — New York Times |
Tuesday, March 5, 2024
Visiting Professor of Humanities Adam Shatz reads selections from his new book, followed by a conversation with Ziad Dallal, Assistant Professor of Foreign Languages, Cultures, and Literatures and Director of Middle East Studies.
Reem-Kayden Center; Room 103 5:00 pm – 7:00 pm EST/GMT-5 About the Rebel's Clinic: “In the era of Black Lives Matter, Frantz Fanon’s shadow looms larger than ever. He was the intellectual activist of the postcolonial era, and his writings about race, revolution, and the psychology of power continue to shape radical movements across the world. In this searching biography, Adam Shatz tells the story of Fanon’s stunning journey, which has all the twists of a Cold War-era thriller.” |
Monday, February 26, 2024
Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm EST/GMT-5
On Monday, February 26 at 5:30 pm in the László Z. Bitó ’60 Auditorium, Reem-Kayden Center (RKC), Richard Deming will read from his book, This Exquisite Loneliness: What Loners, Outcasts, and the Misunderstood Can Teach Us About Creativity. Introduced by Written Arts Program Director Dinaw Mengestu and followed by a discussion with David and Ruth Schwab Professor of Languages and Literature Ann Lauterbach. Richard Deming is a poet, art critic, and theorist whose work explores the intersections of poetry, philosophy, and visual culture. His most recent book, This Exquisite Loneliness, appeared in 2023. He is also the author of Day for Night, Listening on All Sides, and Art of the Ordinary. His collection of poems, Let’s Not Call It Consequence, received the Norma Farber Award from the Poetry Society of America. He contributes to such magazines as Artforum, Sight & Sound, and the Boston Review, and his poems have appeared in the Iowa Review, Field, American Letters & Commentary, and The Nation. Winner of the Berlin Prize, he was the Spring 2012 John P. Birkelund Fellow of the American Academy in Berlin. He teaches at Yale University, where he is the director of Creative Writing. |
Tuesday, February 20, 2024
Olin Humanities, Room 202 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm EST/GMT-5
The Written Arts program will be holding a moderation Q&A in Olin 202. Students intending to moderate into the Written Arts will have the opportunity to speak with faculty about the moderation process and specific Written Arts requirements. Students intending to moderate into Written Arts this semester are required to attend this event. Those who are unable to attend are asked to please notify the program coordinator ([email protected]) in advance. |