Acclaimed Writers Offer Reading Series at Bennington

Critically acclaimed, award-winning authors and faculty of the Bennington College’s Writing Seminars (the College’s MFA in Writing program) offer a week-long reading series, which is free and open to the public. All readings take place at 7:00 pm in the College’s Usdan Gallery, VAPA, beginning on Thursday, January 4, 2007, and ending on Friday, January 12, 2007.

Thursday, January 4, 2007

Henri Cole volumes of poetry include: Middle Earth (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2003), The Visible Man (1998), The Look of Things (Knopf, 1995), The Zoo Wheel of Knowledge (1989), and The Marble Queen (Atheneum Books, 1986). Cole's awards and honors include the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, the Berlin Prize of the American Academy in Berlin, the Rome Prize in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Scholarship. He is the recipient of fellowships from the Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Sheila Kohler, has authored five novels: Crossways (Other Press), Children of Pithiviers, Cracks, The House on R Street (Random House Value Publishing), and The Perfect Place (Other Press), as well publishing three books of short stories. She has received the O. Henry Award, the Open Voice Prize, the Smart Family Foundation Prize, and the Willa Cather Prize.

Friday, January 5, 2007

Susan Cheever is the bestselling author of more than a dozen books, including five novels and the memoirs Note Found in a Bottle (Washington Square Press) and Home Before Dark. Her work has been nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award and won the Boston Globe Winship Medal. She is a Guggenheim Fellow, a member of the Corporation of Yaddo, and a member of the Author's Guild Council. She writes a weekly column for Newsday.

Ilan Stavas is the author of The Disappearance: A Novella and Stories (Triquarterly), The Urban Muse: Stories of the American City (Delta), and The One-Handed Pianist and Other Stories (University of New Mexico Press). He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Guggenheim Foundation, as well as the Presidential Medal of Honor from Chile.

Saturday, January 6, 2007

Priscilla Hodgkins (MFA '96), former Associate Director of the Writing Seminars, has published short stories, book reviews, and essays. Her non-fiction and fiction pieces have appeared in Agni and Creative Nonfiction, among others. Her essay, "Einstein Didn't Dream of My Mother" was recognized in Best American Essays.

Liam Rector’s books of poems include The Executive Director of the Fallen World (University of Chicago Press in 2006), American Prodigal (Story Line Press, 1994) and The Sorrow of Architecture (Dragon Gate Press, 1984). His poems have appeared in Agni, Paris Review, American Poetry Review, The New Republic, Boston Review, Slate, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. His reviews and essays have appeared in magazines and books that include American Poetry Review, The Los Angeles Times Book Review, The Boston Globe, Hudson Review, Bostonia, The Oxford Companion to Literature, and Contemporary Poets. Founder and director of the Writing Seminars, Rector is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts in poetry, and the Friend to Writers Award from PEN New England.

Sunday, January 7, 2007

Barbara Ascher is the author of four books of non-fiction: Dancing in the Dark: Romance, Yearning, and the Search for the Sublime (Cliff Street Books), Landscape without Gravity: A Memoir of Grief (Penguin), The Habit of Loving (Random House Vlue Publishing), and Playing After Dark (HarperCollins). Ascher has worked as a columnist for The New York Times, an essayist for National Public Radio, and a reviewer for The Washington Post Book World.

Patricia Volk is the author of the novel White Light (Atheneum) and two collections of short stories, All It Takes (Scribner) and The Yellow Banana (Word Beat Press). She has published stories, book reviews, and essays in dozens of magazines, including The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, New York, The New Yorker, Playboy, Redbook, GQ, Parents, and O, the Oprah Magazine. She was a weekly columnist for New York Newsday.

Monday, January 8, 2007

Deirdre Bair received the National Book Award for Samuel Beckett: A Biography (Simon and Schuster). She has been a literary journalist and university professor of comparative literature. Her biographies of Anaïs Nin (Penguin) and Simone de Beauvoir (Touchstone) were also prize finalists, and she was awarded fellowships from (among others) the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations and the Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College.

Spencer Reece, recipient of Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, the Whiting Writers' Award, and Florida State Arts Board Grant, has published a book of poems, The Clerk's Tale (Houghton Mifflin, 2004). Spencer Reece is the recipient of the Eighth Annual Levis Reading Prize for his collection of poetry The Clerk’s Tale. Reece, winner of the 2003 Katharine Bakeless Nason Prize for poetry, selected by the U.S. poet laureate Louise Glück and awarded by the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. His poems appear in such journals as The New Yorker and Boulevard, in addition to magazines in Canada, Australia, and Britain.

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Stephen Dunn’s books of poetry including Local Visitations (W.W. Norton & Co., 2003); Different Hours (2000), winner of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize winner for poetry, Riffs & Reciprocities: Prose Pairs (1998), Loosestrife (1996), New and Selected Poems: 1974-1994 (1994), Landscape at the End of the Century (1991), and Between Angels (1989). Dunn's other honors include the Academy Award for Literature, the James Wright Prize, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.

Terese Svoboda has received the O. Henry Award, the Pushcart Prize, the Story Magazine Award, the Emily Dickinson Award, and translation fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and PEN Columbia. Svoboda lived for a year in the Sudan, making documentary films and translating the songs of the Nuer people. Her novel, Cannibal (NYU Press), won the Bobst Prize and was chosen as one of the top ten books of the year by Spin magazine and hailed as a "women's 'Heart of Darkness'" by Vogue. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in Antioch Review, APR, Columbia, Conjunctions, Georgetown Review, Harper's, Paris Review, The New Yorker, Noon, Ohio Review, Vogue, and The Wall Street Journal. Her novel A Drink Called Paradise was published by Counterpoint Press, along with a collection, Trailer Girl and Other Stories. Her most recent book is a collection of poetry Treason (Zoo Press, 2002). Her poetry videos have been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art and on PBS.

Thursday, January 11, 2007

Askold Melnyczuk is the recipient of the Lila Wallace Reader's Digest Award, the McGinnis Prize in Fiction, and fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. He is the author of What is Told (a New York Times Notable Book) and Ambassador of the Dead, published in May 2001 by Counterpoint, has been called “exquisite, original” by The Washington Post. His first, What Is Told (Faber and Faber) was a New York Times Notable Book for 1994. In 1997 he received a Lila Wallace Readers’ Digest Award in Fiction. He has published stories, poems, translations, and reviews in The New York Times, The Nation, Partisan Review, Grand Street, Ploughshares, Poetry, and The Boston Globe. His poems have been included in various anthologies including The McGraw-Hill Book of Poetry, Literature: The Evolving Canon, and Under 35: The New Generation of American Poets.

George Scialabba, recipient of the Citation for Excellence in Reviewing from the National Book Critics' Circle, has recently published his first book of nonfiction, Divided Mind, issued by Arrowsmith. Scialabba has written hundreds of reviews and essays for magazines and periodicals, including Dissent, The Nation, The Village Voice, and The Boston Globe.

Friday, January 12, 2007

Alice Mattison is the author of four novels, three collections of short stories, and a volume of poetry. Mattison's novels are In Case We're Separated (Harper Perennial), a New York Times Notable Book, The Wedding of the Two-Headed Woman (William Morrow), The Book Borrower (Harper Perennial), and Hilda and Pearl. Stories and poems have been published in The New Yorker, Ploughshares, The Michigan Quarterly Review, Glimmer Train, North American Review, Boulevard, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. Mattison’s essays have been published or are forthcoming in Writer’s Chronicle, Agni, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Chronicle Of Higher Education, The Threepenny Review, and Southwest Review and anthologized in Pushcart Prize XXIV.

Rachel Pastan, recognized as one of the Barnes and Nobel Discover Great Writers in 2004, is the author of This Side of Married (Penguin). She has published short stories in The Threepenny Review and Mademoiselle, and won the Arts and Letters Fiction prize and the PEN Syndicated Fiction Award. She has received fellowships from the Wisconsin Arts Board and the Delaware Arts Council. As a book reviewer, observer of the arts, and columnist, Pastan has written for such publications as Salon.com, The Washington Post Book World, and The New York Times Book Review.