Literature: Related Content
Read literature faculty member Benjamin Anastas’ “The Breakup List” in the June 13 New York Times Magazine.
Two alumnae are among the six Pulitzer Prize winners for literature this year. Donna Tartt '86 won in the category of fiction for her novel The Goldfinch, while Megan Marshall '75 won for her biography Margaret Fuller: A New American Life.
Literature faculty member Marguerite Feitlowitz’s translated autobiography of Mexican writer Salvador Novo, which includes 19 translated sonnets, recounts Novo's coming-of-age amidst the violent Mexican Revolution and offers a history of his passions—both literary and otherwise. Published this spring by University of Texas Press, Pillar of Salt is "nothing short of beautiful," wrote critic Micah McCrary in his review.
Bennington student editors have released the fifth volume of plain china, the first and only literary anthology showcasing the best undergraduate writing from across the country.
Literature faculty member Doug Bauer has won the 2014 PEN New England Award for nonfiction for his latest book, What Happens Next? Matters of Life and Death. Bauer’s poignant collection of essays weaves the stories of his own and his parents’ lives, the meals they ate, the work and rewards and regrets that defined them, and the inevitable betrayal by their bodies as they aged.
Alumnus Luke Mogelson’s short story To the Lake was published in the spring 2014 issue of The Paris Review. Mogelson, a freelance journalist and recipient of Stanford University’s prestigious Stegner Fellowship, is a frequent contributor to The New York Times Magazine and has been published in The New Yorker, GQ, The New Republic, and The Nation, among others.
Sometimes, you just want a guaranteed good read. When you’re far from home, adventuring in a new place—as Bennington students will be over Field Work Term—that may be especially true. Fortunately for them, director of library and information services Oceana Wilson has it covered. A few years ago, she began a tradition with Bennington faculty, of "looking for winter reading recommendations for students—the kind of books you would recommend to a friend.”
Luke Mogelson’s investigative exposé on the alleged murders of three Afghan civilians by U.S. soldiers appears on the cover of the May 1 New York Times Magazine. Recently discharged from the National Guard, Mogelson was one of 10 writers out of nearly 1,900 applicants this year to receive the prestigious Wallace Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University’s creative writing program.
The New York Times called Donna Tartt’s new novel, The Goldfinch, a “glorious, Dickensian novel that pulls together all her remarkable storytelling talents into a rapturous, symphonic whole and reminds the reader of the immersive, stay-up-all-night pleasures of reading."
In a New York Times Magazine feature on famous writers’ rooms, Jonathan Lethem ’86 shares a view of the study in his Blue Hill, Maine, summer home, where he wrote portions of several books, including his latest, Dissident Gardens, which is due out this fall.
Faculty member Barbara Alfano’s new book, The Mirage of America in Contemporary Italian Literature and Film, examines the use of images associated with the U.S. in Italian novels and films released between the 1980s and the 2000s. The book explores how the individuals portrayed in these works—and the intellectuals who created them—confront the cultural construct of the American myth.
Bestselling food writer Michael Pollan '76 discussed his new book, Cooked, which offers a powerful argument for a return to home cooking, on NPR.
Visual arts faculty member Ann Pibal, MFA faculty member Major Jackson, and alumna Kiran Desai ’93 are among the 175 artists, scholars, and scientists—out of nearly 3,000 applicants—to receive 2013 Guggenheim Fellowships.
National Book Award-winning poet Mark Doty will read and discuss his work on Wednesday, April 24, at 7:00 pm in Bennington’s Tishman Lecture Hall. The event, part of the Poetry at Bennington reading and lecture series, is free and open to the public.
Two Bennington students have been invited to Bucknell University this summer, and two others to Skidmore College, for highly selective, nationally sought-after creative writing fellowships.
Undergraduate and MFA faculty member Benjamin Anastas' new memoir, Too Good to Be True—about having and losing it all, both in literature and life— “is smart and honest and searching,” raved one New York Times review, “…so plaintive and raw that most writers (and many readers) will finish it with heart palpitations.”
In his column in the Buenos Aires Herald, celebrated journalist and human rights hero Robert Cox dubbed faculty member Marguerite Feitlowitz's book on Argentina's infamous Dirty War "the most important book to appear so far on the consequences of the vicious cycle of terror and violence that enveloped Argentina in the 1970s."
Man Booker Prize winner Kiran Desai ‘93 was one of six immigrant authors to share their coming-to-America story in a recent issue of The New Yorker. In her essay “Fatherland,” Desai discusses the guilt that she and many of her Indian peers felt when leaving their parents to immigrate to America.
Luke Mogelson’s investigative exposé on the alleged murders of three Afghan civilians by U.S. soldiers appears on the cover of the May 1 New York Times Magazine. Recently discharged from the National Guard, Mogelson was one of 10 writers out of nearly 1,900 applicants this year to receive the prestigious Wallace Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University’s creative writing program.
This isn't to suggest that military personnel are behaving similarly throughout Afghanistan as a result of the conditions there," Mogelson writes. "It is only to say that 10 years into an unconventional war whose end does not appear imminent, the murder of civilians by troops that are supposed to be defending them might reveal more than the deviance of a few young soldiers in a combat zone.
Read the entire article.
For more information on the prestigious creative writing program, see Stanford's website.
Bennington College has released the second annual edition of plain china, a first-of-its-kind anthology of premier fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and artwork selected from more than 30 American undergraduate literary journals. Featuring work from the University of Georgia, Harvard, Louisiana State University, Princeton, Oberlin, Rice, Susquehanna, Stanford, and Vassar, the anthology is the only national online compilation of undergraduate writing today.
Literature faculty member Katie Peterson was one of 14 artists and the only poet to be awarded an unrestricted $25,000 grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts this year.
Iconic writer Bret Easton Ellis '86 was on Northeast Public Radio last week promoting his new novel Imperial Bedrooms, the sequel to his bestselling debut Less Than Zero, which, published by Vintage in 1985, launched the 21-year-old Bennington student into literary stardom.
Alumna Sarah Stanbury '71 has been awarded a 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship for her ongoing work in medieval English literature. An English professor at the College of the Holy Cross, Stanbury's work examines what manmade objects in the work of Chaucer tell us about the people and period.
PEN New England has named author Gretel Ehrlich ‘67 winner of the 2010 Henry David Thoreau Prize for Literary Excellence in Nature Writing.
"Be enthusiastic about your work, but always stay humble," filmmaker Mitchell Lichtenstein '78 told a room full of Bennington students as part of the "Beyond Bennington" speaker series, which invites alumni to campus to discuss their careers with current students.
Bennington College has launched a first-of-its-kind anthology of premier fiction, poetry, and nonfiction selected from more than 40 American undergraduate literary journals. Featuring work from Brown, Boston College, UCLA, the University of Chicago, Harvard, Princeton, Oberlin, Stanford, and Tulane, among others, plain china: Best Undergraduate Writing 2009 is the only national online compilation of undergraduate writing.
A television series conceived by Savannah Dooley ‘07 when she was a student at Bennington has been picked up by ABC Family and will air on the network this summer.
The National Endowment of the Arts has awarded author and faculty member Doug Bauer a $25,000 grant in support of his ongoing work in contemporary literature.
Author and legendary editor Judith Jones '45 was a guest on NPR's Here and Now earlier this month to discuss her new book, The Pleasures of Cooking For One.
Author Jonathan Lethem '86's new novel Chronic City was hailed as "astonishing" this week in The New York Times Sunday Book Review.