ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y.– For all its darkness, night can be the most illuminating time of day. Sometimes restful, sometimes restive, night is the domain of dreamers and insomniacs, lovers and thieves, prayers and despair, insights and perplexities. Conjunctions:72, Nocturnals—the latest issue of the innovative literary magazine published by Bard College—gathers fiction, poetry, and essays from leading writers, both emerging and established, on the theme of night, its denizens and its chronicles. Edited by novelist and Bard literature professor Bradford Morrow, Nocturnals features a new translation of Robert Walser poems, an essay in verse celebrating George Shiras by National Book Award finalist Cole Swensen, new work by Bard Fiction Prize and Shirley Jackson Award winner Carmen Maria Machado, as well as innovative writing from Rick Moody, Frederic Tuten, Kathryn Davis, Joyce Carol Oates, James Morrow, Brian Evenson, Han Ong, Cole Swensen, G. C. Waldrep, Bin Ramke, Peter Gizzi, Ann Lauterbach, Anne Waldman, Sallie Tisdale, Heather Altfeld, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge,  and Sejal A. Shah.

“Night shrouds, but also illuminates. It is a time of meditation and celebration, but also of madness and grief. . . . Whether awake or asleep, we spend half our lives during the night, lives that are often very different during the day,” writes Morrow. “In order to sustain her life, Scheherazade spun her stories for a thousand and one nights. In a spirit that recognizes how vital it is to voice our own stories, these fictions, poems, essays, and memoirs in Nocturnals address the myriad ways in which the night, from dusk to daybreak, is central to our experience of life.”

Additional contributors to Nocturnals include Laynie Browne, Gillian Conoley, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Danielle Dutton, Rita Chang-Eppig, Sarah Gridley, William Hicks, Erika Howsare, Raven Leilani, Carole Maso, James McCorkle, Paul Park, Cecily Parks, Steven Potter, Elizabeth Robinson, Martha Ronk, Bennett Sims, and Daniel Torday.