ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y.– Conjunctions:69, Being Bodies—the latest issue of the innovative literary magazine published by Bard College—is an exploration of the complex circumstances of flesh-and-blood existence. A memoir of distance running counterpoints a meditation on resurrection. The story of an injury is juxtaposed with an uncommonly candid confession of a young man who struggles with gender identity and sexual orientation. In every contribution come fresh insights into what it means to inhabit our bodies for a brief moment in time. Edited by Conjunctions editor, novelist, and Bard literature professor Bradford Morrow, Being Bodies features new work from Mary Caponegro, Edward Carey, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Nomi Eve, Michael Ives, Carole Maso, Rick Moody, Kyoko Mori, Dina Nayeri, Stephen O’Connor, Peter Orner, Jorge Ángel Pérez, Rosamond Purcell, Sallie Tisdale, Anne Waldman, and others.

“If the body is a temple, it is one very complex, heterogeneous, mutable temple,” writes Morrow. “We are conceived by bodies neither ours nor of our own choosing. We then are born, grow up, live our lives, and perish—all within the ever-changing context of our bodies’ encounters with the world. The writers and artists in Being Bodies address a wide range of what can happen to a body.” 

Additional contributors to Being Bodies include Gregory Norman Bossert, Maud Casey, Elizabeth Gaffney, Emily Geminder, Rebecca Hanssens-Reed, Jena Osman, Kristin Posehn, Bin Ramke, Jessica Reed, Alan Rossi, Fern Seiden, Sejal Shah, Aurelie Sheehan, Samantha Stiers, and Michael M. Weinstein.