Literature: Related Content
"Strange Days” by MFA in Writing Director Sven Birkerts and "Vision" by Tiffany Briere MFA '11 were included in The Best American Essays 2015. “The Siege at Whale Cay,” by Assistant Director Megan Mayhew Bergman MFA ’10, was included in The Best American Short Stories 2015.
On October 2015, students in a course taught by faculty member Benjamin Anastas launched a blog tracing Bennington’s outsized impact on the world of literature and asking what accounts for it. Literary Bennington features author interviews, short pieces of journalism and reviews, and coverage of literary events on campus.
The Oyster War: The True Story of a Small Farm, Big Politics, and the Future of Wilderness in America, the debut book by Summer Brennan ’01, has been widely reviewed since its publication in August 2015.
Safiya Sinclair '10 has won the Boston Review's 2015 Poetry Contest. In introducing the winner, Cathy Park Hong writes "Sinclair collages a sensual lexicon, creating speech acts that are racialized assemblages. Her language is distinctive, assured, and a marvel to read."
A new book by Sven Birkerts, director of the MFA in Writing Program at Bennington College, is receiving warm attention. Changing the Subject: Art and Attention in the Internet Age, published by Grey Wolf Press, which focuses on the effect of digital culture on our ability to engage with our world, and the fate of writing in such a context, has been reviewed in the Chronicle for Higher Education, New Republic, and the New York Times Book Review.
Safiya Sinclair '10 has been awarded the 2015 Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry, given by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, for her manuscript, Cannibal. Sinclair is currently pursuing a PhD in literature and creative writing at the University of Southern California, where she is a Dornsife Doctoral Fellow.
Prashansa Taneja '16 has a review of Shirley Jackson's Let Me Tell You in The Millions, an online magazine offering coverage on books, arts, and culture.
Alan Cheuse, the novelist, teacher and longtime literary commentator for NPR, has died at the age of 75.
Caroline Zancan MFAW '14, author of Local Girls, links her debut novel to her time at Bennington in an interview with Melville House.
In an essay in Literary Hub, faculty member Michael Dumanis discusses writing poetry "animated by American English and frequently set in a recognizably American landscape, yet wholly rooted in Russian language and tradition, composed with a distinctly Russian ear and what I think is a distinctly Soviet, ex-Soviet, or would-be-Soviet sensibility".
Literature faculty member Mark Wunderlich, whose recent poetry collection, The Earth Avails, won the 2015 Rilke Prize, is interviewed in the current issue of The American Literary Journal. His poem "The Corn Baby" was published in the May 15 New York Times Magazine.
Faculty member Mark Wunderlich recently won the 2015 University of North Texas’ Rilke Prize for his latest collection, The Earth Avails. The $10,000 prize recognizes a book that “demonstrates exceptional artistry and vision.” Mark was also a finalist for the $100,000 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. His recent poem, "My Night with Jeffrey Dahmer,"recounts in chilling detail his encounter with infamous serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer at a bar in Madison, Wisconsin.
Lucky Alan and Other Stories, the latest collection from Jonathan Lethem ’86, has been reviewed widely and warmly since its publication in February. The New York Times calls him “the king of sentences,” while the Guardian says the best stories offer a daring and affecting connection to the real.
Faculty member Benjamin Anastas' essay, "Questions for My Grandfather’s Psychiatrist," was published in the The New York Times as part of the paper's ongoing series about psychotherapy.
Hundreds of literary fans and notables gathered in Washington D.C. last week for a celebration of what would have been longtime former faculty member Bernard Malamud's 100th year.
MFA alumna Megan Mayhew Bergman's forthcoming collection of stories, Almost Famous Women, received a starred review from Kirkus, and is an Indie Next Pick for winter. Due out in January, Academy Award-winning actress Anjelica Huston called it "heartbreaking and lovely".
Katy Simpson Smith MFA ’13's new novel, The Story of Land and Sea, is “not only among the most assured debut novels in recent memory,” raved a Vogue magazine review, but also “heralds the birth of a major new talent.”
Sasha Wiseman '15 reviewed Jenny Offill's new novel, Dept. of Speculation, in the the Los Angeles Review of Books. Read the review.
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.
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.
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.
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.