Top News—Alumni: Related Content
Martha Siegel '72 taught cello at the United Nations International School for fifty years. She shared how her Bennington education and Field Work Term experiences inspired a lifelong passion for teaching music.
Carlos X. Torres de Janon '14 currently lives in Seattle and works as an associate Landscape Designer at MIG, Inc. He shared how his Bennington education taught him to "wear many hats" in design and in life.
Bennington College alumni are publishing novels, memoirs, short story, non-fiction, and poetry books. Check out the round up below to learn who was published this winter.
Bennington alumni shared their professional and personal accomplishments in 2024 and their goals and hopes for 2025.
Abby Neale '13 is a teaching artist in Boston public schools. They shared how their Bennington education has supported them through their career path.
Nancy Halverson Melvin '76 is a teaching artist who designs and produces clothing, teaches after-school enrichment classes in painting and handwork for children through adults at the Chicago Branch of the Anthroposophical Society, and documents her work with short videos. She shared how her Bennington education started her long and fruitful artistic career.
Alli Poirot '02 MAT '03 is in her 21st year as an educator and is currently teaching International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Programme (DP) History at Dwight School in New York City. She shared how her Bennington education and supportive faculty members inspired and shaped her own career path.
Since graduating in June, Em Gutierrez '24 is now working as part of the case management team at TransSOCIAL, which advocates for and serves the trans communities in Georgia and Florida.
Bennington College is the only college Michael Pollan ’76 applied to. Pollan’s mother had attended Bennington in the fifties, and he remembered reading through her college papers, which were kept in the attic of his childhood home, and thinking about how extraordinary it was to have been taught, as she was, by poet Howard Nemerov and literary critic Kenneth Burke.
The Advocate highlighted Will Greer '24 and his campaign for Vermont state representative in the Bennington 2 district.
by Jeffrey Perkins MFA ’09
Atlas Obscura Co-Founder Dylan Thuras '04 on Bennington, Travel, and the Unexpected
A misty figure floating beyond the end of the world. The eerie sounds of pianos streaming from Jennings practice rooms with no one at the keys. The spine-chilling feeling of eyes watching you from the woods.
What comes to mind when you think of the seasonal thinning of the veil? Alumni share their original non-fiction account of hauntings at Bennington, micro fiction, and poetry about the spooky side of autumn. Read if you dare.
By Ashley Brenon Jowett
Illustration by Nate Padavick
As a homage to Dylan Thuras ’04’s Atlas Obscura, we’re sharing seven of the website’s wondrous Bennington-area places. You will barely be able to resist using the map for a spooky road trip this fall.
More than 100 people attended the Ben Belitt Colloquium on Arts and Literary Culture in Tishman Auditorium on Bennington College’s campus on Wednesday, May 15, 2024. They joined panelists Pulitzer Prize Winner Jericho Brown, the MacArthur Award-winning novelist Jonathan Lethem ’86, celebrated poet Camille Rankine, and moderator and Bennington faculty member Benjamin Anastas to learn about the life and work of Queer Black poet and essayist Reginald Shepherd ’88, an underrecognized member of the Bennington literary community in the eighties. Below is a piece Lethem wrote for and read at the event.
Bennington College alumni are publishing novels, memoirs, non-fiction, poetry, and photography books. Check out the round up below to learn who is publishing, winning awards, and appearing in paperback this fall.
Local indie-folk-rock musical artist Carling Berkhout '19 spoke to The Brattleboro Reformer about her latest album, Omens.
On the warm perfectly cloudless evening of September 12, about thirty local Bennington alumni gathered at the President’s residence, the Brick House, in Shaftsbury to catch up with College news and each other. They graduated between 1962 and 2024. What they have in common is a love of the creative and interdisciplinary environment Bennington provided and their willingness to stay in or return to the area.
Exhibition reveals the personal collections of Bennington College community members September 17–November 23.
Saving Democracy Together, an innovative non-partisan online and in-person course open to students, alumni, and the public, attracted more than 250 online registrants and 100 in-person participants in its first of seven sessions on Thursday, September 5.
Jeff Curto MFA '83 was one of Bennington's first MFA students and the only one in photography when he came to Bennington, graduating in 1983. He studied with Neil Rappaport, a documentary photographer who taught at Bennington for 27 years.
Bennington College is pleased to announce Shay Totten ’91 as its new Director of Alumni and Constituent Engagement. Shay Totten starts at the College on Monday, September 9, and reports to Vice President for Institutional Advancement Allison Gomes.
This summer brings some great opportunities to see Bennington alumni and faculty making music across the country. Follow the links below for tickets, info, and good vibes.
By Craig Morgan Teicher
Anna Gazmarian (MFA, ’20, Nonfiction) began work on what would become her debut, Devout: A Memoir of Doubt (Simone & Schuster, 2024), while she was a nonfiction student in the Bennington Writing Seminars. The book chronicles her struggles with bipolar disorder as a member of the Evangelical community, where prayer was posited as the only solution to mental health distress. I talked to Anna on the heels of her book tour. Among other things, we discuss writing, publishing, and going to church at the gym.
Poet and Memoirist Safiya Sinclair ’10, author of the memoir How to Say Babylon, a National Book Critics Circle Award Winner and one of the most notable books of the year according to the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Atlantic, TIME Magazine, and many others, will address the 89th graduating class at the conferring of degrees on Saturday, June 1. We connected with her to learn more about her time at Bennington and how it influenced her career.
Winston Foundation Grant funds 2024 Ben Belitt Colloquium on Arts and Literary Culture
Ryan Chigogo ’23, energy analyst at Charles River Associates, reflects on his time at Bennington College.
Article by Gaurav Aung '24