Media Kit 2016

Cover of the Inaugural Issue

About Bennington Review is a national biannual print journal of innovative, intelligent, and moving poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and film writing, housed at Bennington College. We intend to reinforce the value of the bound print journal as an intimate, curated cultural space in which a reader can encounter and experience new work with a degree of immersion not wholly possible through other media. We hope to bring together writing that is as playful as it is probing, that simultaneously makes lasting intellectual and emotional connections with a reader. Bennington Review aims to contribute distinctive style and substance to the national literary conversation through publishing sharp, unexpected, original poetry and prose from a geographically br oad and culturally rich spectrum of prominent, up-and-coming, and new voices. The magazine was originally founded in 1966 by Laurence J. Hyman, the son of Stanley Edgar Hyman and Shirley Jackson. The first iteration of the magazine focused on publishing work by distinguished faculty and alumni — Bernard Malamud, Helen Frankenthaler, and Kenneth Burke — but gradually more and more work came from outside the college community, and the magazine increasingly received national attention. In 1978, Bennington Review was relaunched as a highly visible national journal. Under editors Robert Boyers and later Nicholas Delbanco, Bennington Review became a testing ground for contemporary arts and letters, publishing work by such established figures as John Updike, Joyce Carol Oates, Annie Dillard, and John Ashbery, and by emerging writers like David Remnick and Louis Menand. Fifty years after its original founding and thirty years after its last issue, in 1985, Bennington Review is resuming publication, with poet Michael Dumanis as Editor. Our first issue will be out in April 2016, and will available at the annual AWP Conference in Los Angeles.

Contributors Bennington Review aims to publish works by up-and-coming writers as well as prominent authors. The issue includes work by National Endowment for the Arts and Guggenheim fellows, authors of New York Times Notable books, Ruth Lilly/Poetry Foundation fellows, and winners of the Whiting Writers’ Award. Multiple contributors have previously appeared in The New Yorker, Paris Review, New England Review, and The Oxford American, among other publications, as well as in The O. Henry Prize Stories Anthology, Best American Essays, Best American Non-Required Reading, and Best American Poetry. Issue One also includes work by the Pulitzer Prize winners Rae Armantrout and Tracy K. Smith, LA Times Book Award finalists David James Poissant and Rick Barot, NAACP Image Award finalist and Anisfield-Wolf Book Award winner Jericho Brown, and Man/Booker International Prize finalist Josip Novakovich. Contributors include creative writing faculty at Bucknell, Columbia, Emory, Johns Hopkins, Oberlin, Princeton, the University of Alabama, and the University of Iowa, among others. Bennington Review strives to publish work by under-represented groups. More than 30% of contributors to Issue 1 are writers of color; more than 60% writers are women. The 57 contributors represent 21 states, as well as Canada and China.

Table of Contents - Poetry KIMBERLY GREY System with a Letter at the Time of Marriage No System for Death DOROTHEA LASKY You Thought Is It a Burden JERICHO BROWN Independence SANDRA SIMONDS Dear Diary, EMILY KENDAL FREY During That Time I Was Doing a Lot of Deep Work with Women ILIANA ROCHA Tabloid for the Black Dahlia Tabloid for JonBenét Ramsey MONICA SOK Strategy Against Dying SAFIYA SINCLAIR Autobiography August in the Country of Another KAVEH AKBAR Desunt Nonnulla Love Poem Wild Pear Tree S.E. SMITH Fat-Necked Singer

MONTREUX ROTHOLTZ Arm ANDREW MICHAEL ROBERTS Letters, Unwritten LAURA KASISCHKE The Recipe for This SARAH MESSER Address to a Flowering Field Stutter JOSEPH MASSEY On the Solstice ZACH SAVICH [Presently blackbirds] ROBYN SCHIFF The Action of Worms RAE ARMANTROUT Seams Refresh Echo SHANE MCCRAE Carrie Kinsey’s Letter to Theodore Roosevelt HAI-DANG PHAN The Late Eddie Adams RICK BAROT Girl Carrying Ladder

SARAH BLAKE The Body How the Knots Made Me Fire Mountain from the Deadly Journey ALISON MONCRIEF BROMAGE About Silence WENDY XU I Must Change My Form CHRISTOPHER DEWEESE Soul to Squeeze Sucked Out ERICA BERNHEIM The Correct and Meaningful Installation of Accurate Sprinklers and Terror NOELLE KOCOT Sense of Entitlement Insomnia for a Month ADAM CLAY In Process Without You LO KWA MEI-EN The Diamond Rule CAROLINA EBEID Passerine G.C. WALDREP Neither Winter Nor a Golden Dust Epithet Testimony

DORA MALECH as[k] [ ]or[ ]ask[ ]

JESSICA FISHER Speedwell The Voice YI LEI from Love’s Dance translated from Chinese by Changtai Bi and Tracy K. Smith JOHN GALLAHER Sometimes I Find the Idea of the Sun Expanding and Swallowing the Earth Comforting, Sometimes It Makes Me Sad TED MATHYS Night Bloom Primate House JEFFREY MCDANIEL The Bottom of My Hourglass My Adobe Bouquet APRIL BERNARD Across the Lawn EMILY PÉREZ Ambition CAROLINE MANRING One Day I Will Tell You What I Know CYNTHIA CRUZ The Porcelain Room Self-Portrait with Face Covered in Tiny White Diamonds HENRY ISRAELI The Life and Death Machine

Table of Contents - Prose FICTION

NONFICTION

SABRINA ORAH MARK Let’s Do This Once More but This Time With Feeling

DAVID STUART MACLEAN Golden Friendship Club

ANNIE JOSEY Jill

URSULA VILLARREAL-MOURA Le Divorce: Living (and Not Living) with Diane Johnson

MICHAEL MARTONE from The Collected Writings of Art Smith, the Bird Boy of Fort Wayne, Edited by Michael Martone

JOSIP NOVAKOVICH Timing

REGINALD MCKNIGHT Spit Shine

DANA LEVIN Double Exposure: On Reading Ted Mathys; On Reading Wallace Stevens; On Reading Them Together

POROCHISTA KHAKPOUR The Pariah and I DAVID JAMES POISSANT First Day

FILM CRITICISM J.M. TYREE 25 Love Lane: Robert Vas’s Refuge England

MARY PEELEN Draw

INTERVIEWS RAE ARMANTROUT in conversation with KATY LEDERER DOROTHEA LASKY in conversation with MICHAEL DUMANIS

Publications We Admire Some of the many literary journals we admire in terms of their aesthetic and format, which we think are at the forefront of a revitalized print litmag subculture, include AGNI Bat City Review Black Clock Black Warrior Review Boston Review Colorado Review The Common Copper Nickel Denver Quarterly Ecotone Fence Freeman’s Green Mountains Review Gulf Coast Harvard Review

Iowa Review jubilat Kenyon Review Lana Turner LIT The Literary Review New England Review Ninth Letter NOON The Normal School Ploughshares A Public Space Salt Hill Tin House Washington Square

Masthead Editor MICHAEL DUMANIS is a member of the Literature faculty at Bennington College. He is the author of My Soviet Union (University of Massachusetts Press), winner of the Juniper Prize for Poetry. With poet Cate Marvin, he coedited the younger poets anthology Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century (Sarabande Books). Dumanis is a former poetry editor of Gulf Coast and served for five years as the Director of the Cleveland State University Poetry Center, a small press. Managing Editor JEVA LANGE is a staff writer at The Week. An alumna of Bennington College, she has written for The Atlantic, The Awl, Drift, Electric Literature, Gothamist, New York Daily News, The Rumpus, Seattle Weekly, and VICE. Contributing Editors: All contributing editors are members of the Literature faculty at Bennington College. BROOKE ALLEN is the author of five books of nonfiction and literary journalism, most recently a biography of the late Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto. She recently coedited a collection of author Terry Southern’s letters. Her writing on literature and film appears regularly in The Atlantic, The New York Times Book Review, The Wall Street Journal, The New Criterion, and Hudson Review. BENJAMIN ANASTAS is the author of the novels An Underachiever’s Diary (Dial/ Random House) and The Faithful Narrative of a Pastor’s Disappearance (FSG), a New York Times Notable selection. His memoir, Too Good to Be True (Little A/New Harvest) came out in 2012. DOUG BAUER is the author of the novels The Book of Famous Iowans, The Very Air, and Dexterity. He has also published three works of nonfiction and edited two anthologies. He has received fellowships in both fiction and creative nonfiction from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Masthead ANNABEL DAVIS-GOFF is the author of three novels, The Dower House, This Cold Country, and The Fox’s Walk, as well as Walled Gardens, a family memoir describing the life and history of the Anglo-Irish. She has written for television and films, and for a variety of magazines. She is also the editor of an anthology, The Literary Companion to Gambling. MARGUERITE FEITLOWITZ is the author of A Lexicon of Terror: Argentina and the Legacies of Torture, a New York Times Notable selection and a finalist for the PEN/New England-L.L. Winship Prize. Her fiction, poetry, essays, art criticism, and translations have appeared in Bomb, TriQuarterly, Salmagundi, The Literary Review, and numerous other journals and anthologies. She has held a Bunting Fellowship in nonfiction at Harvard, among other honors. MARK WUNDERLICH is the author of three collections of poetry, The Anchorage (University of Massachusetts Press), which received the Lambda Literary Award, Voluntary Servitude (Graywolf), and The Earth Avails (Graywolf), a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Award and winner of the Rilke Prize. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Provincetown Fine Arts Works Center, and the Amy Lowell Trust. Designer AMY FREELS is the Editorial and Design Coordinator at the University of Akron Press, and a longtime designer for the literary journal Barn Owl Review and the poetry press at the Cleveland State University Poetry Center. Website LAUREN HALDEMAN is the author of the poetry collection Calenday (Rescue Press). She holds an MFA from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop and is the web developer, web designer, and editor of multiple websites, including the Writing University website at the University of Iowa, the Iowa Summer Writing Festival, and The Iowa Review.

Masthead Advisory Board

SVEN BIRKERTS is the author of nine books, most recently Changing the Subject: Essays on the Mediated Self (Graywolf). He is the director of the Bennington Writing Seminars MFA program and Editor of the journal AGNI. He has received grants from the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Foundation and the Guggenheim Foundation. ROBERT BOYERS was Editor of Bennington Review from 1978 to 1984. The author of nine books of poetry, fiction, and criticism, he has taught since 1969 at Skidmore College, where he edits the journal Salmagundi and serves as Director of the New York State Summer Writers Institute. NICHOLAS DELBANCO is the Robert Frost Distinguished University Professor Emeritus of English Language and Literature at the University of Michigan. He has published twenty-five books of fiction and non-fiction. A faculty member at Bennington College from 1966 to 1985, Delbanco served as Editor of Bennington Review from 1984 to 1985. BRET EASTON ELLIS is the author of six novels, including American Psycho, Less Than Zero, and The Rules of Attraction; and one story collection. He is an alumnus of Bennington College. Four of his books have been made into Hollywood films. KATY LEDERER is the author of the poetry collections Winter Sex and The Heaven-Sent Leaf; and the memoir Poker Face: A Girlhood Among Gamblers (Crown), a New York Times Book Review “Editor’s Choice” and one of Esquire’s “Best Books of the Year.” She has been profiled in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and NPR. For twelve years she worked in quantitative finance. Previously the editor of The Poetry Project Newsletter, and Fence Magazine, she also writes on climate change for The New Yorker and other publications. JONATHAN LETHEM is the author of nine novels, including Motherless Brooklyn, a National Book Critics Circle Award Winner; The Fortress of Solitude; and, most recently, Dissident Gardens. He has also written a novella, five short story collections, and six works of nonfiction. He attended Bennington College. A professor at Pomona College, he is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship. His work has appeared in numerous publications, including The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, and McSweeney’s.

Masthead ADA LIMÓN is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently Bright Dead Things, a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Books Critics Circle Award, and a New York Times Top Ten Book of Poetry for 2015. She serves on the faculty of the MFA program at the Queen’s University of Charlotte. CATE MARVIN is the author of three collections of poetry, including Oracle (Norton, 2015). She is coeditor, with Michael Dumanis, of the younger poets anthology Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century. A recipient of the Whiting Writers Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, she teaches at the College of Staten Island and the MFA program at Lesley University. ROXANA ROBINSON is the president of the Authors’ Guild. She is the author of nine books, including five novels and a biography of Georgia O’Keeffe. Four of her works have been chosen Notable Books of the Year by The New York Times, and she was named a Literary Lion by The New York Public Library. She attended Bennington College. Her writing appears regularly in such publications as The Atlantic, Harper’s, The New York Times, The New Yorker, and Washington Post. The recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, she teaches in the MFA program at Hunter College. ROBERTO TEJADA is the author of the poetry collections Mirrors for Gold and Exposition Park. The coeditor of the journal Mandorla: New Writing from the Americas, he is also an art historian, curator, and editor specializing in Latino and Latin American art. Formerly a professor of art history at Southern Methodist University. Tejada now serves as the Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz Cullen Distinguished rofessor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Houston. MONICA YOUN is the author of the poetry collections Barter (Graywolf) ; Ignatz (Four Way Books), a finalist for the National Book Award; and the forthcoming Blackacre (Graywolf). Her poetry has also been recognized with a Witter Bynner Fellowship from the Library of Congress and a Rockefeller Foundation residency in Bellagio, Italy. A former lawyer who is a member of the bar of the U.S. Supreme Court and has testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the House Judiciary Committee, and the House Committee on Administration, she now teaches poetry at Princeton University.

Contact General Queries [email protected] Michael Dumanis, Editor [email protected] Jeva Lange, Managing Editor [email protected] Website (Launching Feb. 20, 2016) www.benningtonreview.org Submittable https://benningtonreview.submittable.com/submit  In an effort to be more connected to our readers and contributors, Bennington Review has accounts on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Facebook facebook.com/benningtonreview Twitter https://twitter.com/bennreview Instagram https://www.instagram.com/bennreview