Institutional News

Fall 2024 Poetry at Bennington Series Announced

Poetry at Bennington, an endowed program of short-term residencies that brings established and emerging poets to Bennington College for public readings and close work with students, has announced its Fall 2024 lineup of featured poets. All Poetry at Bennington events are free and open to the public. They take place in various locations on the College’s campus.

“This is the thirteenth year of this wonderful series here at the college,” said Poetry at Bennington Director and faculty member in poetry Michael Dumanis. “I’m really excited about this fall’s lineup, which includes a Pulitzer Prize finalist, a National Book Award finalist, an eminent art critic renowned as an innovative Asian American poet, and several tremendous, singular emerging poets.”

Fall 2024 Schedule

Rhyme as Camp: A Craft Talk With Maggie Millner
Wednesday, October 9, 2024, at 11:00 am at CAPA Symposium

Reading by Maggie Millner
Wednesday, October 9, 2024, at 7:00 pm at Tishman Lecture Hall 

Maggie Millner in Conversation With Michael Dumanis
Thursday, October 10, 2024, at 12:30 pm at CAPA Symposium 

Mapping Memory: A Master Class With Robyn Schiff
Wednesday, October 16, 2024, at 3:00 pm at CAPA Symposium 

Reading by Robyn Schiff
Wednesday, October 16, 2024, at 7:00 pm at Tishman Lecture Hall 

Robyn Schiff in Conversation With Michael Dumanis
Thursday, October 17, 2024, at 12:30 pm at CAPA Symposium

Craft Talk With Megan Fernandes
Wednesday, October 23, 2024, at 11:00 am at CAPA Symposium

Craft Talk With Chet’la Sebree
Wednesday, October 23, 2024, at 3:00 pm at CAPA Symposium

Reading by Megan Fernandes and Chet’la Sebree
Wednesday, October 23, 2024, at 7:00 pm at Tishman Lecture Hall

Megan Fernandes and Chet’la Sebree in Conversation With Michael Dumanis
Thursday, October 24, 2024, at 12:30 pm at CAPA Symposium

Craft Talk with John Yau                                                                                                   
Thursday, November 20, 2024, 3:00 pm at CAPA Symposium

Reading by Peter Gizzi and John Yau
Wednesday, November 20, 2024 at 7:00 pm at Tishman Lecture Hall

A Guidebook to the Invisible World: on Emily Dickinson With Peter Gizzi
Thursday, November 21, 2024 at 11:00 am in Barn 024

About the Fall 2024 Featured Poets

Maggie Millner is the author of Couplets (FSG, 2023), a New York Times Editors' Choice; one of The Atlantic's ten best books of 2023; and a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Award in Poetry, the PEN/Voelcker Award, and the Lambda Literary Award for lesbian poetry. Couplets is being translated into six languages and published in seven countries. Millner’s poems have appeared in Best American Poetry, BOMB, The Nation, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and Poetry. She is a lecturer at Yale University and Senior Editor at The Yale Review.

Robyn Schiff is the author of four poetry collections: Information Desk: An Epic (Penguin, 2023), winner of the 2024 Four Quartets Prize and a finalist for the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; A Woman of Property (Penguin, 2016), a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize, a New York Times Editor’s Choice, and named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker and the Chicago Tribune; Revolver (University of Iowa Press, 2008), a PEN/USA Award finalist; and Worth (University of Iowa Press, 2002). She co-edits the independent small press Canarium Books and was the recipient of the 2023 Joseph Brodsky Rome Prize and a Guggenheim Fellowship. She is Professor at the University of Chicago where she directs the creative writing program.

Megan Fernandes is a South Asian American writer born in Canada and living in New York City. Her three collections of poetry are I Do Everything I’m Told (Tin House, 2023); Good Boys (Tin House, 2020), a finalist for the Kundiman Poetry Prize and the Paterson Poetry Prize; and The Kingdom and After (Tightrope Books, 2015). Her work has appeared in American Poetry Review, The Common, Kenyon Review, The New Yorker, Ploughshares, and Poetry. She is Associate Professor of English and Writer-in-Residence at Lafayette College.

Chet'la Sebree is the author of Field Study (FSG Originals, June 2021), winner of the 2020 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets, and Mistress, selected by Cathy Park Hong for the 2018 New Issues Poetry Prize and an NAACP Image Award finalist. Her debut essay collection about her relationship to home, heritage, and belonging through domestic and international travel is forthcoming from The Dial Press in 2025. Her poetry and prose have appeared in Guernica, Kenyon Review, Poetry International, and Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019. She is an assistant professor of English at George Washington University and teaches in the Randolph College Low-Residency MFA program.

John Yau has published more than fifty books of poetry, fiction, and art criticism. His most recent books of poetry include Tell It Slant (Omnidawn, 2023), Bijoux in the Dark (Letter Machine Editions, 2018), and Further Adventures in Monochrome (Copper Canyon, 2012).  Born in Lynn, Massachusetts, to Chinese emigrants, he is the founding editor of the small press Black Square Editions and Professor of Critical Studies at Rutgers Unviersity’s Mason Gross School of the Arts. His work has been honored with the Jackson Poetry Prize; fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ingram-Merrill Foundation, and the Guggenheim Foundation; and the Rabkin Prize for excellence in visual arts journalism. His books of art criticism include In the Realm of Appearances: The Art of Andy Warhol and A Thing Among Things: The Art of Jasper Johns, as well as monographs on Wifredo Lam, Thomas Nozkowski, Joe Brainard, Catherine Murphy, A. R. Penck, Richard Artschwager, Pat Steir, Liu Xiaodong, and Kim Tschang-yeul.

Peter Gizzi is the author of several collections of poetry, most recently Fierce Elegy (2023), Now It’s Dark (2020), and Archeophonics (2016), a finalist for the National Book Award. All are from Wesleyan. In 2020 Carcanet published Sky Burial: New and Selected Poems in the UK. In 2024 Penguin UK published an expanded edition of Fierce Elegy. His honors include fellowships from The Rex Foundation, The Howard Foundation, The Foundation for Contemporary Arts, The Guggenheim Foundation, and The Judith E. Wilson Visiting Fellowship in Poetry at the University of Cambridge. In 2018 Wesleyan published In the Air: Essays on the Poetry of Peter Gizzi. Editing projects have included o•blēk: a journal of language arts (1987-1993); The Exact Change Yearbook (Exact Change/Carcanet, 1995); The House That Jack Built: The Collected Lectures of Jack Spicer (Wesleyan, 1998); and with the late Kevin Killian, My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer (Wesleyan, 2008). From 2007 to 2012 he was the poetry editor for The Nation. Since 2003 he has been a contributing editor to the literary journal Conjunctions. He teaches poetry and poetics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

For additional information about events, contact Jessica Lynn at 802-440-4376.

About Poetry at Bennington

Since its establishment in 2012, Poetry at Bennington has brought more than 50 poets to campus, including Poets Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winners, along with a diverse range of emerging and established poets. During the short-term residencies, the poets give public readings and engage directly with students through question-and-answer sessions, craft lectures, master classes, group writing exercises, and individual consultations. The events are free and regularly attract students from neighboring colleges, as well as poetry enthusiasts across southern Vermont and western Massachusetts. 

Past visiting poets include Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award Winners Timothy Donnelly, Ross Gay, Matthea Harvey, Dawn Lundy Martin, and Ariana Reines; Poets Laureate Joy Harjo, Charles Simic, Mark Strand, and Natasha Trethewey; MacArthur “Genius” Grant Award Winners Claudia Rankine and C.D. Wright; National Book Award Winners Daniel Borzutzky, Robin Coste Lewis, Mark Doty, and Terrance Hayes; and Pulitzer Prize Winners Rae Armantrout, Jericho Brown, and Jorie Graham.

About Bennington College

Bennington College’s alumni include twelve Pulitzer Prize winners, three U.S. poets laureate, four MacArthur Geniuses, and countless New York Times bestsellers and National Book Award recipients. 

Recent graduates have gone on to attend PhD and MFA programs in literature and creative writing at Stanford University, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, NYU, UVA, Columbia University, Cornell University, the University of Massachusetts, Arizona State, and Brown University. Graduates have had poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, journalism, and book reviews published or accepted by The Atlantic, Wire, The Awl, Boston Review, Christian Science Monitor, Denver Quarterly, The Guardian, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Ploughshares.

Notable literary alumni from both the undergraduate and MFA in Writing program include Donna Tartt, Bret Easton Ellis, Kiran Desai, Jonathan Lethem, Michael Pollan, ​Ann Goldstein, Safiya Sinclair, Anaïs Duplan, Anne Waldman, Mary Ruefle, Cynthia Sweeney, Jamie Quatro, Amy Gerstler, Morgan Jerkins, and Charles Bock.

Rooted in an abiding faith in the talent, imagination, and responsibility of the individual, Bennington invites students to pursue and shape their own intellectual inquiries, and in doing so to discover the profound interconnection of things. Learn more at bennington.edu.