Bard College Celebrates 25 Years of Publishing Renowned Literary Magazine Conjunctions

ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y. – This year, Bard College is celebrating its 25th anniversary as publisher of the renowned literary magazine Conjunctions. Edited by Bradford Morrow—novelist, Bard Center Fellow, and professor of literature—Conjunctions is widely respected as the preeminent source for the best in innovative, provocative, rigorously realized fiction, poetry, and narrative nonfiction. Events to celebrate the anniversary include a special reading on Thursday, March 26, featuring Conjunctions contributors and Bard faculty members Mary Caponegro ’78, Ann Lauterbach, Neil Gaiman, Benjamin Hale, Robert Kelly, Francine Prose, and Morrow. The reading takes place at 7 p.m. in Olin Hall and is free and open to the public; no tickets or reservations are required. The anniversary will also be marked by a special exhibition at Stevenson Library, as well as a celebratory reading and fund-raiser in the Spiegeltent on July 23. For more information about these events, call 845-758-7054 or e-mail [email protected].

Conjunctions has published such leading voices in contemporary literature as William H. Gass, Joyce Carol Oates, Brian Evenson, and Rick Moody, along with illustrious Bard professors John Ashbery, Norman Manea, Luc Sante, Caponegro, Lauterbach, and others, while being steadfast in its commitment to publish new voices. Conjunctions was one of the first journals to publish the work of William T. Vollmann, David Foster Wallace, and Karen Russell. Over the past 10 years, Conjunctions has received, among many other awards, more Pushcart Prizes in fiction than any other journal.

“Placing a story with Conjunctions felt like being beamed up into the spacecraft of my dreams,” says Russell, winner of the 2011 Bard Fiction Prize. “It’s a translation into a multiverse of stories and poems and essays and even weirder hybrid forms, the mutant menagerie of literary fiction. I read Conjunctions with Christmas pleasure, and I’m always excited to see who Brad has invited to the party. There is no reader and no editor out there whose taste is more exciting or surprising.”

Founded by Morrow and San Francisco Renaissance poet Kenneth Rexroth, Conjunctions launched its first issue in 1981, and had various publishers before Bard became its publisher and partner in 1990. While referring to Conjunctions as “a living notebook of contemporary literature,” Morrow says he has always resisted efforts to define the scope or mission of the journal.

“From the very beginning, Conjunctions has challenged accepted forms and styles, with equal emphasis on groundbreaking formal exploration and fundamental literary quality,” says Morrow, winner of the PEN/Nora Magid Award for editorial excellence. “Tastes change, styles of writing change. Through it all, Bard’s heroic and consistent publication of Conjunctions for these 25 years demonstrates that the College has taken an ongoing stand in support of literature that exists beyond boundaries and transcends expectations.”

Conjunctions, which maintains editorial offices in New York City and Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, has now published 63 issues, each containing more than 300 pages of poetry, fiction, drama, translations, interviews, essays, memoirs, ethnography, musicology, art, reviews, and literary works that defy categorization. New initiatives include an e-book line, a revitalized website, and an expansion of its successful reading series in New York City to indie bookstores across the country. In addition, Morrow’s Innovative Contemporary Fiction series at Bard will continue to bring cutting-edge authors to the Annandale campus to discuss their work with students and hold free public readings. As Bard’s partner for 25 years, Conjunctions has infused both the College’s undergraduate Program in Written Arts and the literary culture of the Hudson Valley with ongoing vitality.

Conjunctions “has continued to sustain and enhance Bard’s reputation as a teaching home for distinguished international and domestic writers,” says Michèle D. Dominy, dean of the College. “It also signals to our students the value we place on their work as aspiring poets and fiction and nonfiction writers. Conjunctions continues to delight and surprise with the imaginative, timely, and conceptually rich themes that define each issue.”

For more than three decades, Conjunctions has offered a literary space in which authors can write fearlessly and audiences read dangerously. In addition to the print and e-book issues that appear every May and November, Conjunctions’ free weekly online magazine showcases one writer each week, giving the journal a place to publish the exceptional work that doesn’t fit into the theme of a given anthology, feature high-quality visual work, and delve into the exciting new field of e-writing. Conjunctions’ website also features a multimedia vault of recorded readings, unavailable elsewhere; as well as full-text selections from the anthologies and a constantly updated table of contents for its upcoming issue. For more information, please visit www.conjunctions.com. 

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(2.19.15)

This event was last updated on 02-19-2015

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