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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Rare Performance of Theatrical Adaptation of John Cage's James Joyce, Marcel Duchamp, Erik Satie: An Alphabet

RARE PERFORMANCE OF THEATRICAL ADAPTATION OF JOHN CAGE’S JAMES JOYCE, MARCEL DUCHAMP, ERIK SATIE:
 AN ALPHABET

Performed in the Fisher Center’s Acoustically Superb Sosnoff Theater

Presented by the John Cage Trust and New Albion Records

 ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y. – The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts presents John Cage’s James Joyce, Marcel Duchamp, Erik Satie: An Alphabet on Friday, November 11 and Saturday, November 12 at 8 p.m. The rarely performed theatrical piece stars John Kelly and is directed by Laura Kuhn, with music and sound design by Mikel Rouse and set design by Marco Steinberg. The program is produced by the John Cage Trust at Bard College andNew Albion Records. Tickets are $15, $25, $35, and $45. To purchase tickets call the Fisher Center box office at 845-758-900, or go to fishercenter.bard.edu.

Cage’s Alphabet began life as a highly imaginative radio play in 1982, a commission from Klaus Schöning and Cologne’s West German Radio (WDR). Working on the principles of collage, Cage created a cast of unlikely characters— the three title artists, Henry David Thoreau, Buckminster Fuller, Robert Rauschenberg, Brigham Young, and seven others. The result is a remarkably democratic intermingling of perspectives, suffused throughout with humor and irreverence for the particulars of history.

In 2001, nearly a decade after Cage’s death, director Laura Kuhn created a theatrical version of the radio play, directing its premiere in Edinburgh that same year. Sound and music designer Mikel Rouse collaborated with Kuhn and a team of composers, musicologists, and performers, collecting and cataloguing sounds for Cage’s score, which consists of almost 200 sounds “as varied and suggestive as the dialogue itself: a lawn mower, x-rays, an earthquake, a Xerox machine, a bullfight, and a marriage ceremony, to name just a few,” says Rouse.

Acclaimed actor John Kelly will perform the role of the Narrator, which he created for the theatrical version of the work. The cast also includes Mikel Rouse as James Joyce; Larry Larson as Jonathan Albert; Joan Retallack as Buckminster Fuller; Emma Reed as Mao Tse Tung; Victoria Miguel as Thorstein Veblen;Richard Teitelbaum as Robert Rauschenberg; John Seidman as Marcel Duchamp; Ferran Carvajal as Oppian; Trevor Carlson as Brigham Young; and Robin Preiss as the wife of Brigham Young. Erik Satie will be played by Merce Cunningham (on tape).  Ralph Benko, in the role of Henry David Thoreau, has dropped out and is replaced by Rebeccah Johnson. 

This production of James Joyce, Marcel Duchamp, Erik Satie: An Alphabet celebrates the onset of John Cage’s centennial year, the first of many events scheduled to take place around the world. It also celebrates the fourth year of the John Cage Trust’s residence at Bard College. 

For tickets and information call the Fisher Center Box Office at 845-758-7900, or go to fishercenter.bard.edu.

The John Cage Trust at Bard College was established in 1993 as a not-for-profit institution whose mission is to gather together, organize, preserve, disseminate, and generally further the work of the late American composer John Cage. Its founding trustees were Merce Cunningham, artistic director of the Cunningham Dance Company; Anne d’Harnoncourt, Director of the Philadelphia Museum; and David Vaughan, Archivist of the Cunningham Dance Foundation, all long-time Cage friends and associates. Laura Kuhn, who from 1986 to 1992 worked directly with John Cage, serves as both a founding trustee and ongoing executive director.

New Albion Records was founded in San Francisco in 1984, to explore the world of art music. Its current catalogue includes 138 releases. In recent years, with the onset of the Internet, its focus has moved from recording projects to concert events. New Albion has partnered with the John Cage Trust and Merce Cunningham Dance Company.