Literature: Related Content
Mark Wunderlich published a new poem in the American Academy of Poets Poem-a-Day called "The Son I'll Never Have." It also appears in the Columbia Daily Tribune.
Jonathan Lethem '86 has been a fixture in the pages of The New Yorker, The New York Times, and other publications following the release of his acclaimed new book A Gambler's Anatomy.
"A tour of the United States through books" on Electric Lit features The Secret History by Donna Tartt '86 as the recommended book for the state of Vermont. MFA faculty member Alexander Chee's novel Edinburgh represents the state of Maine.
With the release of a new biography by Ruth Franklin, Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life, Jackson's life as a writer, mother, and faculty wife in North Bennington has received further attention.
Marguerite Feitlowitz was interviewed by Andrew Graham-Yooll in Página12 as an expert on the subject of the language of dictatorship on how she came to focus her work on Argentina’s history.
Lynn Emanuel '72 has been awarded the 2016 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize for her new book The Nerve of It.
Lydia Martín MFAW '16 has won Ploughshare's 2016 Emerging Writer's Contest Fiction Prize for her story "The Adjustment Act." Fiction judge Anthony Marra called it "a flat-out triumph: richly characterized, gorgeously rendered, deeply humane." Ploughshares, which is published by Emerson College, "has been committed to promoting the work of up-and-coming writers" since 1971.
Franci Revel '18 is the winner of this year's American Academy of Poet's Bennington College Poetry Prize for her poem "Pasture." Revel's work was recognized as part of the AAP's University and College Poetry Prizes Program, which "sponsors over 200 annual poetry prizes at colleges and universities across the U.S." The AAP prizes also provide "visibility and financial support to poets demonstrating artistic excellence." Her piece is currently featured on their website.
Benjamin Anastas’ review of Javier Marías’ Thus Bad Begins, “a novel of espionage and betrayal in post-Franco Spain” was published on Bookforum this month. Anastas writes, “the author is a listener in the aisles of a vast global library, and he can hear the great books whispering.”
Two alumni were included in Buzzfeed's list of 21 Incredible New Books You Need to Read this Fall. A "colorful new novel" by Jonathan Lethem '86, A Gambler's Anatomy, was featured, along with Safiya Sinclair's '10 new "lyrical and provocative" book of poetry Cannibal.
Roa Lynn ’60 wrote a piece that appeared in The New Yorker earlier this summer about having lunch with Pablo Neruda in June, 1968, and the poem he wrote for her inspired by that meeting. Lynn links her memory of Neruda to hearing the news of Bobby Kennedy's assassination, and an attempted murder she witnessed from the window of a bus while traveling in Argentina.
The Rumpus published a piece on The Bennington Review in their "This Week in Short Fiction" section. The article had only good things to say about the newly revived magazine, and especially praised their choice to include "The Pariah and I" by Porochista Khakpoor, as well as the journal's inclusive mission statement.
Effy Redman '04 recently published a piece in The New York Times about growing up with Moebius Syndrome, a condition that renders her unable to smile or make most other facial expressions. In the article, Redman meditates on the difficulties she deals with as a person unable to participate in the many-layered and surprisingly vital social mechanism that is a simple smile.
The Lost Girls, the debut novel of Heather Young MFAW '11, was published this summer by William Morrow. The Lost Girls, while not her first published work, is her first work of fiction.
The Imperial Wife, by Irina Reyn MFAW '06, has received widespread critical attention and praise, including an article and interview with NPR, and a review in the Washington Post.
Lee Clay Johnson '07 is the author of Nitro Mountain, which was published this spring by Knopf. It has been favorably reviewed by several literary journals including Kirkus and Electric Literature and most recently, by the New York Times.
Alice Mattison, award-winning author and core faculty of the MFA Program, was interviewed by Sarai Walker MFA '03 in The Center for Fiction on "looking like a writer," and her new non-fiction guide for authors, The Kite and the String.
Marguerite Feitlowitz, faculty member in literature, was interviewed about her book, A Lexicon of Terror: Argentina and the Legacies of Torture, which explores the verbal atrocities of the 1976-1983 military dictatorship, in in the Buenos Aires Herald.
Anaïs Duplan '14, who attended the MFA program at Iowa Writer’s Workshop after graduating from Bennington, published his first book of poetry with Brooklyn Arts Press. A number of the poems in the collection, titled Take This Stallion, were first written and published when Duplan was a student at Bennington.
Faculty member in literature Benjamin Anastas reviews Elisha Cooper's memoir Falling: A Daughter, a Father, and a Journey Back, an account of the author's daughter's struggle with cancer, for The New York Times.
The class is called Literary Bennington and so is the blog. Both take the canon of Bennington writers—from recent Pulitzer Prize winner Donna Tartt ’86 to Mann Booker Prize winner Kiran Desai ’93 to MacArthur “Genius” Jonathan Lethem ’86 and best-selling author Bret Easton Ellis ’86, as well as the scores of faculty members who laid the literary ground for those who came after: Bernard Malamud, Kenneth Burke, Stanley Edgar Hyman (and his wife, novelist Shirley Jackson), Edward Hoagland, and Lucy Grealy among others—as their subject. The blog, of course, draws more than just the Bennington crowd. Led by faculty member Benjamin Anastas, students publish in-depth interviews with Bennington authors and journalists, and share archival reviews of visiting poets from the school’s student paper and recaps of current literary Bennington controversies among other pieces. It is, at once, a look back and forward and literarybennington.tumblr.com is inviting to the unfolding investigation all of what makes a Bennington writer, and what makes Bennington such a hotbed for writing talent. Below is just one of the many interviews students have conducted, this one with author and journalist Summer Brennan ’01 whose recently released book is featured on page 8, and who was interviewed by An Nguyen ’18.
Rosie Schaap ’94 writes inThe New York Times Magazine about taking part in a photo shoot with Muhammad Ali as a child, and the profound memory of her father connected to that photograph.
Marguerite Feitlowitz pens an essay in Words Without Borders about teaching in translation.
The Governor’s Institutes of Vermont has selected Bennington as home to its newest Institute. The Young Writers Institute at Bennington College, to be held June 19-25 in conjunction with the Bennington Masters of Fine Art in writing, will host 20-25 writers of high school age who will hone their craft, develop critical and collaborative skills, and be inspired by writers teaching at one of the country’s most prestigious low-residency MFA programs.
Bennington Review, a national biannual print journal housed at Bennington College, recently relaunched thirty years after its last publication. The inaugural issue features work by award-winning writers, including recipients of the Pulitzer Prize and the Whiting Writers’ Award, as well as National Endowment for the Arts and Guggenheim fellows.
Summer Brennan '01 won NYU's second annual Matthew Power Literary Reporting Award. Brennan's first book was The Oyster War: The True Story of a Small Farm, Big Politics, and the Future of Wilderness in America. She has written for New York Magazine, Scientific American, Pacific Standard, McSweeneys, The Millions, The Rumpus, and others.
Bret Easton Ellis '86 recently saw the Broadway musical adaptation of his novel “American Psycho."