Bennington Faculty and Alumni Score Big with Guggenheim Fellowships (April 11, 2008) [Read more.]

In Bennington magazine, November 2004: Prime Times: Writers on Their Favorite Television Shows (Crown Books), edited by Douglas Bauer, was released this year. The book includes pieces by Bennington contributors Bernard, Sven Birkerts, Susan Cheever, and Jill McCorkle. In addition, poetry by Bernard recently appeared in The Nation.

From Bennington magazine, September 2002: Just Say Yes: A Profile of April Bernard, a feature story in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers, praised her new collection, Swan Electric. “‘We were going to run the world,’ Bernard says of her crowd, laughing her boisterous laugh. ‘Well,’ she says, reconsidering, ‘I don’t know that I really wanted to run the world—I wanted to give the world my best advice. I have very good opinions on everything. These poems are about being young and being so, so stupid. And thinking you’re so, so smart. And thinking you’re so cool, and being such a dork. That whole world? It just seemed sad and funny to me that we thought we were so important.’” Poems from Swan Electric (some of which are included in this issue) have appeared in The New York Review of Books, DoubleTake, The New Republic, and The New York Times Book Review. Bernard spent the month of July at the McDowell Colony.

From Notes, December 2002: Bernard has received rave reviews in The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, and The New York Review of Books for her collection of poems entitled Swan Electric. The collection is something of a “loose-leaf” memoir of life in the East Village during the 1980s. According to Pulitzer Prize winner, Charles Simic, “Even when she copes with disappointments in love and other daily hassles, she doesn’t lose her sense of humor...Swan Electric is an original and thoroughly enjoyable book of poems by a fine poet.” Bernard also participated in the Brattleboro Literary Festival, a three-day celebration in October with more than 25 authors and poets in a variety of events, ranging from readings and panel discussions to demonstrations. Joining Bernard were Nobel Laureate Saul Bellow (a Bennington Belitt Lecturer), Galway Kinnell, Karen Hesse, Chris Bohjalian, Howard Frank Mosher, Elinor Lipman, Archer Mayo, Malachy McCourt, Kathryn Davis, and Ruth Stone.