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01-17-2020: "One of the most celebrated new voices in epic fantasy."—Salon.com

The Fisher Center at Bard, in association with Oblong Books & Music, presents a public conversation between two leading writers of fantasy and science fiction: Neil Gaiman, Bard professor in the arts, and Hugo Award-winning author N. K. Jemisin (Broken Earth trilogy), whose new work The City We Became will be published in March. 

The program takes place on Saturday, May 2, at 7:30 p.m. in the Sosnoff Theater of The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College. Tickets are $25 and can be ordered online at fishercenter.bard.edu or by calling the box office at 845-758-7900. $5 student tickets available to Bard undergraduate students through the Passloff Pass.

The conversation is part of an ongoing series in which author Gaiman discusses the creative process with another artist. Following the program, N. K. Jemisin will sign books in the lobby, which will be available for purchase, courtesy of Oblong Books. Signed titles by Neil Gaiman will also be available for purchase.

N. K. Jemisin is the first author in history to win three consecutive Best Novel Hugo Awards, all for her Broken Earth trilogy. Her work has also won the Nebula, Locus, and Goodreads Choice Awards. Her most recent work is the acclaimed short fiction collection How Long ‘Til Black Future Month?, and her next novel will be The City we Became in March 2020. Jemisin has been a reviewer for the New York Times Book Review, and she has been an instructor for the Clarion and Clarion West writing workshops. In her spare time she is a gamer and gardener, and she is also single-handedly responsible for saving the world from King Ozzymandias, her dangerously intelligent ginger cat, and his phenomenally destructive sidekick Magpie.

Neil Gaiman is a New York Times bestselling author of novels, poetry, short stories, graphic novels, comics, journalism, and screenplays, who is listed in the Dictionary of Literary Biography as one of the top 10 living postmodern writers. Works include The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Neverwhere, Stardust, Anansi Boys, Good Omens (with Terry Pratchett), the award-winning Sandman series of graphic novels, and the short story collections Smoke and Mirrors and Fragile Things. Novels for younger readers include Fortunately, the Milk; Coraline, also an Academy Award–nominated film; and The Graveyard Book, winner of the Newbery (U.S.) and Carnegie (U.K.) Medals. He has written and directed for film and television, including a 2011 episode of Doctor Who that won the Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation and the 2012 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form. Make Good Art, the text of a commencement speech he delivered at Philadelphia’s University of the Arts, was published in a volume designed by graphic artist Chip Kidd. At Bard since 2014.
About the Fisher Center
The Fisher Center develops, produces, and presents performing arts across disciplines through new productions and context-rich programs that challenge and inspire. As a premier professional performing arts center and a hub for research and education, the Fisher Center supports artists, students, and audiences in the development and examination of artistic ideas, offering perspectives from the past and present, as well as visions of the future. The Fisher Center demonstrates Bard’s commitment to the performing arts as a cultural and educational necessity. Home is the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, designed by Frank Gehry and located on the campus of Bard College in New York’s Hudson Valley. The Fisher Center offers outstanding programs to many communities, including the students and faculty of Bard College, and audiences in the Hudson Valley, New York City, across the country, and around the world. Building on a 159-year history as a competitive and innovative undergraduate institution, Bard is committed to enriching culture, public life, and democratic discourse by training tomorrow’s thought leaders.

01-15-2020: Kelly Reichardt, S. William Senfeld Artist in Residence at Bard College, has been given a $50,000 Film Independent Spirit Awards Filmmaker Grant designed to recognize a midcareer female director. Reichardt won the third annual Bonnie Award, named for Bonnie Tiburzi Caputo, who became the first woman to pilot a major U.S. airline when she joined the award’s sponsor, American Airlines, in 1973.

Kelly Reichardt is an award-winning independent filmmaker whose most recent work, First Cow, was screened at the 2019 New York Film Festival. Other films include Certain Women, starring Laura Dern, Michelle Williams, Kristen Stewart, and Lily Gladstone; Night Moves (2013), Meek’s Cutoff (2010), Wendy and Lucy (2008), Old Joy ( 2006), and River of Grass (1994). Honors received include a United States Artists Fellowship, Guggenheim Fellowship, Anonymous Was a Woman Award, and Renew Media Fellowship. Her work has been screened at major international film festivals, with retrospectives at several leading institutions devoted to the cinematic arts.

Reichardt has been teaching in the Film and Electronic Arts Program at Bard College since 2006.
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01-13-2020: Cecilia Alemani MA ’05, director and chief curator of New York’s High Line, has been named curator of the 59th Venice Biennale. She will be only the fifth woman to curate the biennale in its century-long history, and the first Italian woman to do so.
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01-12-2020: On Tuesday, February 4, esteemed filmmakers Charles Burnett, Julie Dash, and Bradford Young will take part in a discussion at Bard College exploring their career trajectories, works, creative processes, and commitments to the humanities. The event is part of a series, “Creative Process in Dialogue: Art and the Public Today,” which seeks to diversify perspectives on the arts disciplines and to offer models for collective and inclusive community dialogues. The discussion is made possible through a 2019 FilmCraft Grant from the Academy Foundation of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and is cosponsored by Bard’s Film and Electronic Arts Program, Center for Civic Engagement, Art History Program, American Studies Program, and Africana Studies Program. The conversation will be moderated by Tabetha Ewing ’89, Social Studies Division chair and associate professor of Historical Studies, and Dariel Vasquez ’17, director of program design and management at Brothers@Bard (BAB). It takes place from 6–8 p.m. in Olin Auditorium (Olin Hall) and is free and open to the public. Registration is required. For more information or to register, click click here.
 
“Through this public dialogue, we hope to highlight the rich forms of black filmmaking that unfold on university campuses and celebrate the extraordinary work of these marvelous and generous practitioners who have not only changed which actors and stories appear on screen but also the ways audiences interpret and use films in their daily lives,” said Director of Africana Studies at Bard and Assistant Professor of Africana and Historical Studies Drew Thompson, organizer of the discussion series. “Ultimately, these conversations between artists aim to inspire underrepresented groups to pursue careers in the visual and performing art and to highlight the productive and impactful ways in which visual and performing artists engage communities.”
 

01-08-2020: Bard College announces the appointment of Elmira Bayrasli as the new director of the Bard Globalization and International Affairs Program (BGIA) in New York City. BGIA provides a unique opportunity for college students and recent college graduates from around the world to take advanced courses in international affairs while working in carefully selected internships based on individual interests. BGIA students engage in the study and practice of international law; international relations theory; global public health; political economy; international reporting; and other aspects of international affairs.

Bayrasli has taught in the program for the past four years. She is the co-founder of Foreign Policy Interrupted and the host of Project Syndicate's podcast, Opinion Has It. She is the author of From the Other Side of the World: Extraordinary Entrepreneurs, Unlikely Places a book that looks at the rise of entrepreneurship globally. Bayrasli has lived in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina where she was the Chief Spokesperson for the OSCE Mission. From 1994-2000 she was presidential appointee at the U.S. State Department, working for Madeleine Albright and Richard Holbrooke, respectively. Elmira is a regular contributor on global entrepreneurship for Techcrunch. She also provides analysis on foreign policy, particularly on Turkey. Her work has appeared in Reuters, Foreign Affairs, Washington Post, Quartz, Fortune, Forbes, CNN, NPR, BBC, Al Jazeera, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times. Bayrasli sits on several boards, including Invest2Innovate, Turkish Women's International Network, and Our Secure Future.