The Written Arts Program
encourages students to experiment with their own writing in a context sensitive to intellectual, historical, and social realities, and the past and current literary landscapes. Students are encouraged to consider how their writing is and can be an act of critical and creative engagement, a way of interrogating and translating the world around us. It is expected that Written Arts students are also passionate readers.Why I Chose Bard Written Arts
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Alex BeattyBorn and raised in St. Petersburg, Florida, Alex Beatty decided on Bard after visiting a literature class taught by Professor Marina Van Zuylen. Once at Bard, he chose to moderate into Written Arts. “I wanted to have the opportunity to focus on my own creative projects.”
Alex Beatty
Born and raised in St. Petersburg, Florida, Alex Beatty decided on Bard after visiting a literature class taught by Professor Marina Van Zuylen. Once at Bard, he chose to moderate into Written Arts. “I wanted to have the opportunity to focus on my own creative projects.”
After spending the second semester of his first year at Bard College Berlin, he became a double major in Written Arts and German Studies. For his German Studies Senior Project, Alex translated Der Stein von Werder [The Stone of Werder], a novella by the Baltic-German animal behaviorist Jakob von Uexküll. In it, three sisters attempt to uncover the meaning of a semilegible stone inscription. “I was drawn to The Stone by Uexküll’s use of narrative to explain his theory of meaning,” says Alex, “which also figured into my creative Senior Project, Pistacia Atlantica, a novel about stories written in the margins of old books.”
Of translation, Alex says: “As a learning experience, a creative challenge, and a valued service, translation work has allowed me to continue pursuing my interests since graduating Bard while also helping me to grow as a writer. It has also given me the opportunity to travel, last year to Uexküll’s archives in Tartu, Estonia, and later this year to Perth, Australia, where I’ll be presenting my research on Uexküll and his literary legacy.” It has given him the opportunity to translate contemporaries of Uexküll, such as Heine Hediger, whose research on the dreams of animals has been neglected by translators in the past. Alex has also been working with the writer Rivka Galchen, for whom he’s translating testimonies from the 17th-century witch trial of Katharina Kepler.
Alex also works as an administrative assistant at The Robert B. Silvers Foundation, a nonprofit organization established by the late editor of the New York Review of Books to support writers in the fields of reportage and criticism. “It’s had a profound impact on how I think of writing as a career,” Alex says. “Silvers’s legendary work ethic and passion for nuanced writing and the writers with whom I correspond in my capacity as an administrative assistant have been a daily inspiration for me to continue writing. I have never been sure exactly how writing will fit into my future, because it has taken so many unexpected forms since I decided to make it a career, but I look forward to pursuing new opportunities and continuing my projects in fiction, nonfiction, and translation.” -
Julie JaremaJulie Jarema transferred to Bard from NYU, drawn by its flexible curriculum and eclectic community. She arrived intending to take a critical approach to the study of literature, but a fiction workshop with Porochista Khakpour drew her to Written Arts.
Julie Jarema
Julie Jarema transferred to Bard from NYU, drawn by its flexible curriculum and eclectic community. She arrived intending to take a critical approach to the study of literature, but a fiction workshop with Porochista Khakpour drew her to Written Arts.
Julie explains, “I’ve always enjoyed writing and illustrating stories, primarily for children. However, my Senior Project pushed me toward approaching writing in a more absurd, experimental way and taught me that writing for an older audience doesn’t mean that the writing has to lose its playfulness.”
Julie’s project, “The Museum,” is a novel about a rootless girl whose employer, a reclusive author and the owner of an obscure museum, sends her on a scavenger hunt through Manhattan to gather artifacts for a new exhibition. As Mia’s quest draws her into spiraling mysteries of identity and artifact, the roles of the author and the reader become increasingly entangled.
At Bard, Julie’s interests also drew her to French, comparative literature, and the experimental humanities. In addition, during her undergraduate years she served as an editorial assistant at Bard’s literary journal Conjunctions, as an intern with Miriam Altshuler at the literary agency DeFiore & Co., and as a children’s marketing and publicity intern with Simon & Schuster. The last of these led to Simon & Schuster taking her on full-time as a children’s books associate immediately upon her graduation in 2016.
Spotlight on Our Faculty
The Written Arts Program is staffed by distinguished writers of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction who emphasize both innovative, experimental work and work that foregrounds the conventions of writing.
Written Arts Faculty Reading Series
From 2020
Upcoming Events
- 4/02TuesdayTuesday, April 2, 2024
Film Screening and Director Q&A with Michael Lockshin
Avery Art Center 5:30 pm – 9:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
“…one of the most dramatic and charged Russian film debuts in recent memory. The movie refashions the novel as a revenge tragedy about a writer’s struggle under censorship, borrowing from the story of Bulgakov’s own life” (Paul Sonne, New York Times).
“… a blistering critique of Soviet power and authoritarianism… a box-office smash and a cultural phenomenon …” (Christopher Vourlias, Variety).
“As Russia becomes more repressive, it is possible that Master and Margarita could be one of the last films of its kind, a blockbuster where the criticism of the state lies on the surface.” (Andrew Roth, Guardian).
The American-Russian film-maker Michael Lockshin was born in the US and moved to the Soviet Union as a child in 1986. His first feature film, Silver Skates (2020) became the first Russian-language original film on Netflix. Lockshin directed and coauthored The Master and Margarita after Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel, composed in 1928–1940 and published posthumously in 1967–68. Released on January 25, the film was blasted by pro-Kremlin propagandists for its “sharp, anti-Soviet, anti-modern Russian theme.” Russian ideologues’ appeals to cancel Lockshin and his film have been brought about by the director’s pronouncements against the war and his support for Ukraine. - 4/02Tuesday
Photo by Annie ForrestTuesday, April 2, 2024
A Performance with JJJJJerome Ellis
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
In this performance, artist JJJJJerome Ellis presents portions of their latest project Aster of Ceremonies. Using piano, saxophone, electronics, and voice, they’ll perform excerpts from “Benediction,” a devotional song cycle attending to 18th and 19th century Black runaway slaves who stuttered. This lecture-performance is an ongoing attempt to, in the words of critic Hortense Spillers, “hear [slavery’s] stutter more clearly.”
JJJJJerome Ellis (any pronoun) is a disabled animal, artist, and person who stutters. Through music, performance, writing, video, and photography, the artist asks what stuttering can teach us about justice. Born in 1989 to Jamaican and Grenadian immigrants, the artist lives in Norfolk, Virginia, USA with their wife, ecologist-poet Luísa Black Ellis. Ellis has been a lecturer in Sound Design at Yale University. Their debut album, The Clearing (2021), was called “an astonishing, must-listen project” (The Guardian). It was co-produced by NNA Tapes and The Poetry Project, and it was released with an accompanying book published by Wendy’s Subway. The Clearing won the 2022 Anna Rabinowitz Prize.
The artist has received a Fulbright Fellowship (2015), a United States Artists Fellowship (2022), a Foundation for Contemporary Art Grants to Artists Award (2022), a Creative Capital Grant (2022). The artist has received residencies at MacDowell (2019, 2022), Ucross (2021), Lincoln Center Theater (2019), ISSUE Project Room (2021), and La MaMa (2021).
JJJJJerome’s solo and collaborative musical/performance work has been presented by Lincoln Center, The Poetry Project, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Sawdust, WNYC, and ISSUE Project Room (New York); Venice Biennale 2023; Haus der Kunst (Munich); Rewire Festival (The Hague); Schauspielhaus Zürich; Chrysler Hall (Norfolk, Virginia); MASS MoCA (North Adams, Massachusetts); Arraymusic (Toronto); and the Center for African American Poetry and Poetics (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), among others. The artist’s visual work (video and photography) has been presented by Oklahoma Contemporary (Oklahoma City), Juf (Madrid), Artspace New Haven (New Haven, Connecticut), and Ballroom Marfa (Marfa, Texas). They have received commissions from the Virginia Symphony Orchestra, The Shed, and REDCAT.
Ellis is a signed artist with NNA Tapes and is represented by Michaël Gardiner at Heavy Trip, Pascal Mungioli at Stay Service, and Ben Izzo at A3 Artists Agency. The artist’s work has been covered by the Guardian, This American Life, Pitchfork, Artforum, Black Enso, and Christian Science Monitor.
Read more about JJJJerome's work here. - 4/18Thursday
Photo by Tasha PineloThursday, April 18, 2024
Bard Hall 6:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
On Thursday, April 18 at 6pm in Bard Hall, Aaliyah Bilal will read from her work.
Aaliyah Bilal was born and raised in Prince George’s County, Maryland. She has degrees from Oberlin College and the University of London School of Oriental and African Studies. She’s published stories and essays with the Michigan Quarterly Review and The Rumpus. Temple Folk is her first short story collection.
Read more about Aaliyah's work here.