BENNINGTON, VT — Literature Evenings, Bennington College’s distinguished Wednesday night readings series, will highlight prestigious authors, faculty members, and student voices during its Spring 2021 series.
All Literature Evenings readings will be presented remotely over Zoom. All events begin at 7 p.m. and are free, open to the public, and can be accessed and shared from the Literature Evenings webpage.
“Our Literature Evenings are normally held in the Franklin living room,” said Benjamin Anastas, a member of the Literature faculty. “It’s an intimate setting with a lot of history: writers like Bernard Malamud, Anaiïs Nin and poet Mary Oliver all read their work in front of that fireplace.”
“Temporarily,” Anastas continued, “we’ll have to gather at the hearth of Zoom.”
On Wednesday, March 17, Literature Evenings celebrates the book launch of Small Bibles for Bad Times by Liliane Atlan and translated by faculty member Marguerite Feitlowitz. Visionary French poet/playwright/novelist Liliane Atlan was driven to “find language to say the unsayable . . . to (find a way) to integrate within our conscience, without dying in the attempt, the shattering experience of Auschwitz.”
This event will begin with a staged reading from Mister Fugue (Atlan’s best-known play, also translated by Feitlowitz) performed by Drama Faculty Kirk Jackson, with students Joshua Goldberg, David Guzman, and Ruby Loewenstein.
On Wednesday, April 28, faculty member Paul La Farge will read. La Farge is the author of four novels: The Night Ocean (Penguin/Random House), The Artist of the Missing (FSG), Haussmann, or the Distinction (Picador), and Luminous Airplanes (FSG), which continues as a large Web-based hypertext. He has also written a book of imaginary dreams, The Facts of Winter (McSweeney’s). His stories and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The New Republic, The Paris Review, Harper’s, and elsewhere.
The Literature Evenings series concludes in May with two events led by Bennington students. Details for both events are forthcoming and will be available on the College’s Event Calendar.
Literature Evenings are a hallmark of Bennington College’s active literary community. Literature and writing at Bennington are grounded in the idea that good writers are by definition good readers.
Bennington College’s alumni include twelve Pulitzer Prize winners, three U.S. poets laureate, four MacArthur Geniuses, and countless New York Times bestsellers and National Book Award recipients. Learn more at bennington.edu.
