Written Arts News
New Book by Bard Writer in Residence Benjamin Hale Featured in Chronogram
“The story really only works as nonfiction,” he told Chronogram. “It’s so weird it wouldn’t be believable as a novel.”
New Book by Bard Writer in Residence Benjamin Hale Featured in Chronogram
Benjamin Hale, writer in residence. Photo by Rachel Collet
Hale will discuss the book in conversation with Ryan Chapman at Oblong Books in Rhinebeck on March 12 at 6 pm.
Post Date: 03-11-2026
Valeria Luiselli Interviewed in the New Yorker
Luiselli was interviewed about her story “Predictions and Presentiments,” which is drawn from her upcoming book, Beginning Middle End.
Valeria Luiselli Interviewed in the New Yorker
Valeria Luiselli. Photo by Alfredo Pelcastre
The Written Arts Program at Bard encourages students to experiment with their writing in a context sensitive to intellectual, historical, and social realities. Students are encouraged to consider writing as an act of critical and creative engagement, a way of interrogating and translating the world.
Post Date: 02-16-2026
D.M. Aderibigbe’s Collection 82nd Division Featured in Multiple Publications
Since its release, it has been reviewed by Literary Hub and received a starred review in Booklist.
D.M. Aderibigbe’s Collection 82nd Division Featured in Multiple Publications
D.M. Aderibigbe and his collection 82nd Division.
Aderibigbe was also interviewed by Frontier Poetry. “In my second collection, I was wholly invested in the formal elements of each poem,” he said. “It was important to me [that] the form of each poem adds some degree of complexity to it.” He will give a reading of the collection with Ann Lauterbach on January 29 at Oblong Books in Rhinebeck.
Aderibigbe teaches in Bard’s Written Arts program, which encourages students to experiment with their writing in a context sensitive to intellectual, historical, and social realities. Students are encouraged to consider writing as an act of critical and creative engagement, a way of interrogating and translating the world.
Post Date: 01-27-2026
Upcoming Events
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4/06Monday5:10 pm EDT/GMT-4
North Campus Center, Multipurpose Room
Center for Ethics and Writing Journal Launch
Monday, April 6, 2026
5:10 pm EDT/GMT-4
North Campus Center, Multipurpose Room
Come celebrate the first issue of the Center for Ethics and Writing Journal!
The CEW Journal is a collection of student writing from Center-supported writing workshops across Bard, including those taught at Bard College's Annandale campus and the Bard Microcolleges in Harlem and Brooklyn. The Journal also includes poetry from one of the Center for Ethics and Writing's Fellows, Mahtab Yaghma.
Come and enjoy some refreshments and grab a print copy of the Center's Journal. This reception will be followed by a reading with novelist and Bard alum Stephanie Wambugu '20 at 6pm.
Contact: Megan Brien
E-mail: [email protected]
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4/06Monday6:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
North Campus Center, Multipurpose Room
A Reading with Stephanie Wambugu '20
Monday, April 6, 2026
6:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
North Campus Center, Multipurpose Room
On Monday, April 6th, at 6pm in the North Campus Center Multipurpose Room, writer and Bard alum Stephanie Wambugu '20 will read from her work. This reading is free and open to the public.
Stephanie Wambugu lives in New York City. She was born in Mombasa, Kenya and grew up in New England. Her work appears in The Nation, Granta, frieze, Bookforum and The Drift. Her debut novel Lonely Crowds was published by Little, Brown in 2025. Learn more about Stephanie Wambugu's work here.
This reading will be preceded by a reception for the Center for Ethics and Writing Journal at 5:10pm. All are welcome to join.
Contact: Megan Brien
E-mail: [email protected]
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4/16Thursday6:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Stevenson Library
Black Poetry in Times of Crisis
A Reading and Conversation with Kevin Young and Evie Shockley
Thursday, April 16, 2026On Thursday, April 16th, at 6pm in the Stevenson Library, poets Kevin Young and Evie Shockley will come together for a reading and conversation on writing and poetry in times of crisis. This event will launch the Black Poetry Day Collection in the Stevenson Library. All are welcome to attend.
6:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Stevenson Library
Poet and literary scholar Evie Shockley thinks, creates and writes with her eye on a Black feminist horizon. Her books of poetry include suddenly we, semiautomatic and the new black. Her work has twice garnered the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, been named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and appeared internationally. Her honors include the Poetry Society of America’s Shelley Memorial Award, the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry, the Holmes National Poetry Prize and the Stephen Henderson Award. Her joys include participating in poetry communities such as Cave Canem and collaborating with like-minded artists working in various media. Shockley is the Zora Neale Hurston Distinguished Professor of English at Rutgers University.
Kevin Young is an American poet and the former director of the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of African American History and Culture. Author of 11 books and editor of eight others, Young previously served as Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library. A winner of a Guggenheim Fellowship as well as a finalist for the National Book Award for his 2003 collection Jelly Roll: A Blues, Young was Atticus Haygood Professor of English and Creative Writing at Emory University and curator of Emory's Raymond Danowski Poetry Library. In March 2017, Young was named poetry editor of The New Yorker.
The Black Poetry Day Collection was donated to Bard in 2023 by retired Director of the Plattsburgh Public Library Stanley Ransom and his wife, Christina Palhof Ransom (Bard alum ‘73). The collection includes autographed copies of books by each of the poets honored at Black Poetry Day at SUNY Plattsburgh from 1970 to the present.
Contact: Megan Brien
E-mail: [email protected]