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More than 100 people attended the Ben Belitt Colloquium on Arts and Literary Culture in Tishman Auditorium on 51��������’s campus on Wednesday, May 15, 2024. They joined panelists Pulitzer Prize Winner Jericho Brown, the MacArthur Award-winning novelist Jonathan Lethem ’86, celebrated poet Camille Rankine, and moderator and Bennington faculty member Benjamin Anastas to learn about the life and work of Queer Black poet and essayist Reginald Shepherd ’88, an underrecognized member of the Bennington literary community in the eighties. Below is a piece Lethem wrote for and read at the event.

Those who knew Reginald Shepherd and those who know his work shared their insights at the 2024 Ben Belitt Colloquium on Arts and Literary Culture.

The latest additions to Bennington’s rich literary history have hit bookstore shelves. Their authors join Bennington notables, including Donna Tartt '86, Kiran Desai '93, Michael Pollan '76, ​Ann Goldstein '71, Anaïs Duplan '14, Anne Waldman '66, Cynthia Sweeney MFA '13, Jamie Quatro MFA '09, Amy Gerstler '01, Morgan Jerkins MFA '16, and Charles Bock '97.

Kroll & Co. Entertainment has acquired the film rights to The Feral Detective, the upcoming novel from Jonathan Lethem '86.

A documentary film on the life and work of author Jonathan Lethem ’86 will be screened at the Metrograph, in New York City, on Sunday, September 17, at 7:00 pm.

51�������� announced today that poet Mark Wunderlich has been named the next director of the Bennington Writing Seminars, the College’s MFA program in writing.

The class is called Literary Bennington and so is the blog. Both take the canon of Bennington writers—from recent Pulitzer Prize winner Donna Tartt ’86 to Mann Booker Prize winner Kiran Desai ’93 to MacArthur “Genius” Jonathan Lethem ’86 and best-selling author Bret Easton Ellis ’86, as well as the scores of faculty members who laid the literary ground for those who came after: Bernard Malamud, Kenneth Burke, Stanley Edgar Hyman (and his wife, novelist Shirley Jackson), Edward Hoagland, and Lucy Grealy among others—as their subject. The blog, of course, draws more than just the Bennington crowd. Led by faculty member Benjamin Anastas, students publish in-depth interviews with Bennington authors and journalists, and share archival reviews of visiting poets from the school’s student paper and recaps of current literary Bennington controversies among other pieces. It is, at once, a look back and forward and is inviting to the unfolding investigation all of what makes a Bennington writer, and what makes Bennington such a hotbed for writing talent. Below is just one of the many interviews students have conducted, this one with author and journalist Summer Brennan ’01 whose recently released book is featured on page 8, and who was interviewed by An Nguyen ’18.

The New York Times examined the "oddball trove" of manuscripts, notes, letters, and other personal artifacts that novelist Jonathan Lethem '86 recently sold to Yale University for inclusion in its American literature collection—which also houses materials by Walt Whitman, Sinclair Lewis, James Baldwin and Marilynne Robinson, among others. 

Two alumni were included in Buzzfeed's list of 21 Incredible New Books You Need to Read this Fall. A "colorful new novel" by Jonathan Lethem '86, A Gambler's Anatomy, was featured, along with Safiya Sinclair's '10 new "lyrical and provocative" book of poetry Cannibal.

Jonathan Lethem '86 has been a fixture in the pages of The New Yorker, The New York Times, and other publications following the release of his acclaimed new book A Gambler's Anatomy. 

In a New York Times Magazine feature on famous writers’ rooms, Jonathan Lethem ’86 shares a view of the study in his Blue Hill, Maine, summer home, where he wrote portions of several books, including his latest, Dissident Gardens, which is due out this fall.

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Author Jonathan Lethem '86's new novel  was hailed as "astonishing" this week in The New York Times .