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Bard Professor Dinaw Mengestu Named President of PEN America

Dinaw Mengestu, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Professor of the Humanities and director of the Written Arts Program at Bard College, has been elected president of PEN America, a 103-year-old writers organization whose mission is to celebrate literature and defend freedom of expression. Mengestu, who is also the founder and director of the Center for Ethics and Writing at Bard, will assume leadership at PEN America at a time when threats to freedom of speech are on the rise globally.

“Many groups advocate for free speech. But it’s the relationship between free expression and literature and writers that makes PEN America’s work so unique,” Mengestu said in an interview with the New York Times. “If we lose awareness of how important our culture of literary and artistic production is, our understanding of free expression goes with it.”

As PEN America’s president, Mengestu will prioritize an active literary presence on the board to ensure that free expression work is not only at the forefront, but happening in partnership with the literary community at large. He also seeks to strengthen the connection with PEN’s international chapters to advance the organization’s mission for freedom of expression worldwide.

“Dinaw Mengestu has spent his career illuminating the borders between countries, histories, and identities, and bringing readers into the lives of those too often pushed to the margins,” said Summer Lopez, PEN America’s interim co-CEO and chief of Free Expression programs. “As he steps into the role of PEN America president, his unwavering commitment to free expression, his advocacy for writers under threat around the world, and his profound belief in literature’s power to humanize across deep divides will guide the organization through this pivotal moment for democracy and the written word.”

Mengestu assumes the presidency and becomes the chair of the PEN America Board of Trustees for a two-year term, following his election by the organization’s membership at its annual general meeting on Wednesday evening. A PEN America trustee since 2016, he succeeds Jennifer Finney Boylan, the trailblazing trans author and LGBTQ+ activist whose 18 books include novels, thrillers, memoirs, and a YA adventure series.

Dinaw Mengestu is the author of four novels, Someone Like Us (Knopf 2024), All Our Names (Knopf, 2014), How To Read the Air (Riverhead, 2010), and The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears (Riverhead, 2007), all New York Times Notable Books. Born in Ethiopia, his articles and fiction have appeared in the New York Times, New Yorker, Harper’s, Granta,  and Rolling Stone. He is a 2012 MacArthur Fellow, a recipient of a Lannan Literary Fellowship, National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Award, Guardian First Book Award, and a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, among other honors. His most recent novel, Someone Like Us, was chosen as one of President Obama’s 10 best books of the year, and his work has been translated into more than 15 languages. He holds a BA from Georgetown University and an MFA from Columbia University. He is the director of the Written Arts Program at Bard College and the founder and director of the Center for Ethics and Writing.

Post Date: 12-18-2025

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Two Bard College Professors Receive 2025 Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant

Miriam Felton-Dansky, associate professor and director of Bard College’s undergraduate Theater and Performance Program, and Drew Thompson, associate professor of Africana and Historical Studies at Bard and associate professor at Bard Graduate Center, have received 2025 Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grants. Felton-Dansky was awarded a grant in the category of Articles for “Vetting Regimes: The US Politics of Artist Visas from the Berlin Wall to the Muslim Ban,” and Thompson was awarded a grant in the category of Books for Coloring Surveillance through Polaroids: The Poetics of Black Solidarity and Sociality.

In its 2025 cycle the Arts Writers Grant has awarded a total of $1,040,000 to 31 writers. The program supports writing about contemporary art and aims to ensure that critical writing remains a valued mode of engaging with the visual arts. The grant has funded over 450 writers over 20 years, providing more than $13.5 million of support. “The Arts Writers Grant honors excellence in the field, and celebrates the generative role arts writing plays in creative and intellectual spheres,” said Joel Wachs, president of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

Felton-Dansky will receive a grant in support of her research into the history and evolution of US visa classifications for international performing artists. Her article will examine how the O and P visa systems, established in 1990, have shaped which performers can enter the US to present work on American stages and how these administrative processes have evolved over the past three decades. The research traces the origins of these visa categories and their role in international cultural exchange, drawing on archival materials, immigration policy analysis, and case studies from the performing arts sector.

“This project emerged from conversations with valued colleagues in the arts community at Bard, which I am proud to be a part of,” Felton-Dansky said. “I am honored by the meaningful recognition and support of this grant, which will allow me to pursue my research about the politics of international artist visas at a time when conversation about our immigration system has never been more urgent. My work on the article will feature prominently in my forthcoming book, The January Years: Infrastructures of New Performance in New York.”

Thompson will be awarded a grant in support of his book project, Coloring Surveillance through Polaroids: The Poetics of Black Solidarity and Sociality, which studies the practices of Black artists in order to understand the role of Polaroids in African and African-American histories. The book explores why Black artists use Polaroids and what their projects reveal about the relationships between Polaroids and Black life, in the context of everyday histories of labor, activism, and artistic expression. Artists under study for the project include Dawoud Bey, Lorna Simpson, Zarina Bhimji, Kay Hassan, Djabulani Dhlamini, Anthony Barboza, Zun Lee, and others.

“I am grateful for the support and community that the Arts Writers Grant provides,” Thompson said. “The prestigious honor is an opportunity to be more expansive and imaginative with my curatorial and writing practice. I developed many of the ideas behind this project through my undergraduate and graduate teaching, a testament to the creativity and spirit of collaboration that flourishes at Bard.”

Post Date: 12-11-2025