March 1st
7pm
Join us to celebrate the launch of Conjunctions:79, Onword! The evening will feature readings by contributors Jai Chakrabarti, Peter Gizzi, Carole Maso, and Shane McCrae, introduced by Colin Channer.
The literary journal Conjunctions, edited by novelist Bradford Morrow and published by Bard College, has been a living notebook for provocative, risk-taking, rigorously composed fiction, poetry, and narrative nonfiction since 1981. As PEN America has it: “Conjunctions is one of our most distinctive and valuable literary magazines: innovative, daring, indispensable, and beautiful.”
Our Fall 2022 issue is a celebration of continuing both onward and Onword—on with Conjunctions, on with the words.
While this issue has no theme, what we’ve collected here could simply be described as “great writing by great writers.” And themes do, of course, emerge: Inside, you’ll find explorations of survival, migration, loss and renewal, as well as meditations on how to live with disappointment, how to reimagine and rebuild, and how to move onward through difficult existential terrains.
Conjunctions 79, Onword features new work from Fred Moten, Can Xue, John Crowley, Nathaniel Mackey, Sofia Samatar, Yxta Maya Murray, Russell Banks, Deb Olin Unferth, Rae Armantrout, G. C. Waldrep, Bonnie Nadzam, Vi Khi Nao, Carole Maso, Julia Alvarez, Fred D’Aguiar, and more, as well as three previously unpublished poems by C. D. Wright.
Featured Authors
Jai Chakrabarti’s short fiction has been anthologized in The O. Henry Prize Stories and The Best American Short Stories and was awarded a Pushcart Prize. His debut novel, A Play for the End of the World (Knopf), won the National Jewish Book Award’s Goldberg Prize for Debut Fiction and was long-listed for the PEN/Faulkner Award. His story collection, A Small Sacrifice for an Enormous Happiness, is forthcoming this month from Knopf. Born in Kolkata, India, he now lives in New York.
Colin Channer is a Cullman Fellow at the New York Public Library. His books include the poetry collection Console, forthcoming in July from Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He teaches at Brown.
Peter Gizzi’s recent books include Now It’s Dark (Wesleyan), Sky Burial: New and Selected Poems (Carcanet), and Archeophonics (Wesleyan), which was a finalist for the National Book Award.
Carole Maso is the author of ten books, including AVA (Dalkey Archive), Defiance (Dutton), and Break Every Rule (Counterpoint). She won the 1993 Lannan Literary Award for Fiction. The excerpt in Conjunctions:79 is from her recently completed novel, Why So Soon Asleep?
Shane McCrae’s latest books include Sometimes I Never Suffered, a finalist for the Maya Angelou Book Award, the T. S. Eliot Prize, and the Rilke Prize; and Cain Named the Animal, both published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He lives in New York City.
We recommend that guests wear masks on the night.
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