ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y.– Unlike blood kinship, friendships are forged with people we choose, and continue to choose. People who become, in essence, a free-will kind of family which, like our blood family, can be a strong source of happiness and, sometimes, of grand miseries. Friendships are as mercurial as they are essential. Conjunctions:66, Affinity—the latest issue of the innovative literary magazine published by Bard College—investigates the phenomenon of friendship in its many forms, collecting innovative, provocative fiction, poetry, and essays by writers of every ilk. Edited by Conjunctions editor, novelist, and Bard literature professor Bradford Morrow, Affinity includes a never-before-published poem by Robert Duncan in his original handwriting, as well as new work from Rick Moody and Darcey Steinke, Robert Coover, Paul Lisicky, John Ashbery, and Joyce Carol Oates, among other leading contemporary writers. The issue is dedicated to poet and longtime Conjunctions contributor C. D. Wright.
 
“This issue is a gathering of writings that address some of the myriad ways in which we encounter one another as friends,” writes Morrow. “The nimble dance between love and friendship is part of the dialogue. Staunch friendships and fraught ones. False friendships and fading ones. Friendships brought into being in the cauldron of illness, friendships that make us feel most alive. Friendships between people long dead and friendships that are still going strong right now. It’s a theme about which, over the millennia, much has been written, but one I believe readers of this issue will find framed and investigated in new ways.”
 
Affinity also features new work from Roberta Allen, Jedediah Berry and Emily Houk, Jonathan Carroll, Matthew Cheney, Robert Clark, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Andrew Ervin, Elizabeth Gaffney, Isabella Hammad, Michelle Herman, Brandon Hobson, Tim Horvath, Diane Josefowicz, Spencer Matheson, J. W. McCormack, M. J. Rey, Elizabeth Robinson, Stephen O’Connor, Charles B. Strozier, Gilles Tiberghien, and Sallie Tisdale.

Conjunctions is edited by Bradford Morrow and published twice yearly by Bard College. For more information on the latest issue, please visit http://www.conjunctions.com/affinity.htm. To order a copy, go to http://annandaleonline.org/conjunctions, call the Conjunctions office at 845-758-7054, e-mail [email protected], or write to Conjunctions, Bard College, P.O. Box 5000, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504-5000. Visit the Conjunctions website at www.conjunctions.com.