ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y.– Curiosity is as central to life as breathing. Curiosity leads to discoveries both beneficent and, at times, destructive. It often occasions wonderment, but also terror. It prompts the precise scientist, but also the nosy gadfly. Conjunctions:71, A Cabinet of Curiosity —the latest issue of the innovative literary magazine published by Bard College— gathers fiction, poetry, and essays that investigate the wide spectrum of curiosity and the curious, and their consequences. Edited by novelist and Bard literature professor Bradford Morrow, A Cabinet of Curiosity features an early excerpt of Elizabeth Hand’s forthcoming novel Curious Toys, a personal essay by Hugo and Nebula Award winner Samuel R. Delany, new work by Nathaniel Mackey and Can Xue, as well as innovative writing from Bard Fiction Prize winner Laura van den Berg, 2018 National Book Award finalist Brandon Hobson, and Pulitzer Prize finalist Diane Ackerman.

“A double-edged sword, curiosity has forever held a crucial role in myth, literature, science, philosophy, history—nearly every field of human endeavor,” writes Morrow. “Curiosity in all its guises is the wellspring of revelation. It is a prime mover behind our deeds, good or evil, simple or complicated. While the thirty-one writers gathered here individually explore many of the ways in which curiosity drives and defines us, together they propose that the realms of curiosity are, finally, inexhaustible.”

Additional contributors to A Cabinet of Curiosity include Julianna Baggott, Ann Beattie, Matt Bell, Martine Bellen, Sarah Blackman, Gregory Norman Bossert, Maud Casey, Jeffrey Ford, Karen Gernant, Lauren Green, Catherine Imbriglio, Greg Jackson, A. D. Jameson, Madeline Kearin, Dave King, William Lychack, Gerard Malanga, Joyce Carol Oates, Stephen O’Connor, Kelsey Peterson, Bin Ramke, Lynn Schmeidler, Joanna Scott, Eleni Sikelianos, Laura van den Berg, and Quintan Ana Wikswo.