In the Tri-State area? Catch BARD FICTION PRIZE WINNER CARMEN MARIA MACHADO TO GIVE READING ON FEBRUARY 19

 

BARD FICTION PRIZE WINNER CARMEN MARIA MACHADO TO GIVE READING ON FEBRUARY 19

ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y.—Author Carmen Maria Machado, Bard Fiction Prize winner and writer in residence at Bard College, will read from her work on Monday, February 19. Free and open to the public, the reading begins at 7 p.m. in the László Z. Bitó ’60 Auditorium in Bard’s Reem-Kayden Center. For more information call 845-758-7087.

Machado received the Bard Fiction Prize for her debut short story collection, Her Body and Other Parties (Graywolf Press, 2017) In the collection, long-listed for the 2017 National Book Award and a finalist for the Kirkus Prize, Machado shapes startling, genre-bending narratives that map the realities of women’s lives and the violence visited upon their bodies.

The Bard Fiction Prize committee writes: “The eight stories in Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties range playfully from a brilliant riff on Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark to an apocalypse glimpsed incidentally through one woman’s sexual encounters to an obsessive exegesis of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit that balloons into a hallucinatory, epic tapestry.  Machado’s stories are bizarre, hilarious, sexy, and addictively entertaining while troubling, complex ideas about femininity, queerness, gender, and sexuality lurk around the corner of every sentence. This book is an oddball masterpiece.”

“I’m incredibly honored to receive the Bard Fiction Prize, the former winners of which I’ve long admired,” says Machado.

Carmen Maria Machado is a fiction writer, critic, and essayist whose work has appeared in the New Yorker, Granta, Tin House, Guernica, Electric Literature, NPR Books, and elsewhere. Her stories have been reprinted in Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy, Best Horror of the Year, Year’s Best Weird Fiction, and Best Women’s Erotica. Her memoir, House in Indiana, is forthcoming in 2019 from Graywolf Press.

She holds an M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and has been awarded fellowships and residencies from the Michener-Copernicus Foundation, Elizabeth George Foundation, CINTAS Foundation, Speculative Literature Foundation, Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Workshop, University of Iowa, Yaddo Corporation, Hedgebrook, and the Millay Colony for the Arts. She is an artist in residence at the University of Pennsylvania, and lives in Philadelphia with her wife.

The creation of the Bard Fiction Prize, presented each October since 2001, continues Bard’s long-standing position as a center for creative, groundbreaking literary work by both faculty and students. From Saul Bellow, William Gaddis, Mary McCarthy, and Ralph Ellison to John Ashbery, Philip Roth, William Weaver, and Chinua Achebe, Bard’s literature faculty, past and present, represents some of the most important writers of our time. The prize is intended to encourage and support young writers of fiction, and provide them with an opportunity to work in a fertile intellectual environment. Last year’s Bard Fiction Prize was awarded to Karan Mahajan for his novel The Association of Small Bombs (Viking, 2016).


ABOUT THE BARD FICTION PRIZE
The Bard Fiction Prize is awarded to a promising emerging writer who is an American citizen aged 39 years or younger at the time of application. In addition to a $30,000 cash award, the winner receives an appointment as writer in residence at Bard College for one semester, without the expectation that he or she teach traditional courses. The recipient gives at least one public lecture and meets informally with students. To apply, candidates should write a cover letter explaining the project they plan to work on while at Bard and submit a CV, along with three copies of the published book they feel best represents their work. No manuscripts will be accepted. Applications for the 2019 prize must be received by June 15, 2018. For information about the Bard Fiction Prize, call 845-758-7087, send an e-mail to bfp@bard.edu, or visit bard.edu/bfp. Applicants may also request information by writing to: Bard Fiction Prize, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504-5000.

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