Latest Issue of Conjunctions Invites Leading Contemporary Writers and Poets to Examine Exile

ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y.– From Africa to China, Pakistan to the Philippines, to locales that are not to be found on any map, Conjunctions:62, Exile—the latest issue of the innovative literary magazine published by Bard College—examines exile as both a literal expulsion or ostracism and, as Primo Levi has it, “the prevalence of the unreal over the real.” The issue features Richard Sieburth’s first English translation of a hilarious, vitriolic work by Charles Baudelaire, written while self-exiled to Belgium; a cover photograph of an installation by Chiharu Shiota; and new writing from Laura van den Berg, Paul West, Brian Evenson, Peter Straub, H. G. Carrillo, Marjorie Welish, Maxine Chernoff, Aleš Šteger, Edie Meidav, Can Xue, and Arthur Sze.

“Few subjects are as rich, complex, and profound as exile,” writes Conjunctions editor, novelist, and Bard literature professor Bradford Morrow. “This is especially true if one allows its definition to venture beyond the political, religious, or cultural, so that it embraces the deeply personal, psychological, and emotional terrains in which individuals inhabit a place of self-exile, or even exile from sanity and surety. We hope this issue provides some fresh insights into the exiles’ worlds, and makes a modest contribution to a literature that is ancient, essential, and multifarious.”

In addition to the writers mentioned above, Exile features new work from Gabriel Blackwell, Robyn Carter, Gillian Conoley, Robin Hemley, Christie Hodgen, Stephen O’Connor, Lance Olsen, John Parras, Matthew Pitt, Martin Riker, and Wil Weitzel.

Conjunctions is edited by Bradford Morrow and published twice yearly by Bard College