News and Events

On Monday, November 13, at 2:30 p.m. in Weis Cinema, Bertelsmann Campus Center, the fantasy writer and critic Elizabeth Hand reads from her fiction collection Saffron and Brimstone. Presented by the Innovative Contemporary Fiction Reading Series, introduced by novelist and Bard literature professor Bradford Morrow, and followed by a Q&A, the reading is free and open to the public; no tickets or reservations are required. Bard's literary journal, Conjunctions, will be giving away copies of its Other Aliens issue, coedited by Hand and Morrow.

Elizabeth Hand flunked out of college a couple of years after seeing Patti Smith perform and became involved in the nascent punk scenes in DC and New York. From 1979 to 1986 she worked at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air & Space Museum before returning to university to study cultural anthropology. Her many books include Hard Light, Radiant Days, Available Dark, Generation Loss, and Ilyria. Her fiction has received the Nebula, World Fantasy, Mythopeoic, Tiptree, and International Horror Guild Awards, and her novels have been chosen as notable books by the New York Times and Washington Post. Hand also writes spin-offs, tie-ins, and novelizations of such films as X-Files, Stars Wars, and 12 Monkeys; and contributed a take on the Bride of Frankenstein to Dark Horse Comics' series of classic movie monster novels.
"Waking the Moon is a potent socio-erotic ghost story[, while] Elizabeth Hand's Cass Neary novels, rightly praised for their icy tension and remarkable darkness, are threaded, like the best of punk in any medium, on a bloodied yet admirably stubborn humanism." —William Gibson

"Hand's work is pulsing with tension throughout, charged with its own chilling luminosity." ―Washington Post

"Elizabeth Hand's prose is a wiry, intelligent force that ranges from blunt athleticism to fluid luminosity. The propulsive power of her narrative is all the more stunning for her meticulous observation of sensory detail, art, and the human complexity it reveals. Ferocious, aching with compassion and cruelly brilliant, Available Dark is a sinful pleasure." ―Katherine Dunn

"Poignant and terrifying by turns, Last Summer at Mars Hill isn't for the easily shocked, but it will satisfy readers who long for rich prose and deep, dark dreams." —Publishers Weekly

Any supporter who donates $500 or more to Bard’s literary journal Conjunctions receives a BackPage Pass providing VIP access to any Fall 2017 or future event in the Innovative Contemporary Fiction Reading Series. Have lunch with a visiting author, attend a seminar on their work, and receive premium seating at their reading. Or you can give your BackPage Pass to a lover of literature on your gift list! To find out more, click here or contact Nicole Nyhan at [email protected] or (845) 758-7054.