Fresh on the heels of this glowing review in The New York Times, Creative Writing Program Director Daniel Torday’s debut novel, The Last Flight of Poxl West, made the cover of the Times’  Sunday Book Review. On Tuesday, March 17, Torday sat down with Fresh Air’s Terry Gross to discuss the book. The Last Flight […]

Daniel Torday is the director of Bryn Mawr’s Creative Writing Program. His debut novel, The Last Flight of Poxl West, has garnered significant attention, including this review by Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times. From the review: “It’s Mr. Torday’s ability to shift gears between sweeping historical vistas and more intimate family dramas, and […]

Elizabeth Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, visited campus on Monday, Nov. 10 for a special talk and book signing especially for members of the Class of 2018. Kolbert came to campus as part of the The Emily Balch Speaker Series. Linked to the Emily Balch Seminars, past speakers have included Alison […]

Bryn Mawr Creative Writing Program faculty member J.C. Todd is one of 12 Philadelphia artists granted a 2014 Pew Fellowship. In awarding Todd the fellowship, the Pew Foundation noted: “J.C. Todd’s (b. 1943) poems investigate the impact of war, with an insistent eye and ear on language. Her current project, War Zone, explores containments and […]

Creative Writing Visiting Assistant Professor Daniel Torday was among the writers asked to contribute to The Book of Men: Eighty Writers on How to be a Man. From the publisher: To help launch the literary nonprofit Narrative 4, Esquire asked 80 of the world’s greatest writers to chip in with a story, all with the […]

Bryn Mawr’s Emily Balch Speaker Series for first-year students is once again bringing a highly celebrated young author to campus. The 2013-14 speaker is Zadie Smith, whose latest book, NW, made the “best of 2012” lists of The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Time. NW was also nominated for a number of […]

Bryn Mawr College is holding a digital humanities workshop on Thursday, March 21 and Friday, March 22, in the Benham Gateway Conference Room. All are invited to attend. The workshop, titled “Traces of Mind Control From Cold War America: Exploring the Challenges of International Digital Humanities Initiatives,” covers the challenges of completing small scale cooperative […]

Bryn Mawr Director of Creative Writing Daniel Torday received the 2012 Foundation for Jewish Culture’s Goldberg Prize for Outstanding Debut Fiction for his novella, The Sensualist. The Goldberg Prize is one of several awards given as part of the National Jewish Book Awards. In addition to Torday, this year’s NJBA winners include Nobel Laureate Eric […]

Creative Writing Program Director Daniel Torday interviewed with WYPR’s “Maryland Morning,” an NPR affiliate, about his new novella, The Sensualist. During the interview, Torday discusses his connection to Baltimore, the setting of the novella. The entire interview, as well as several outtakes, can be found on the WYPR website. For more information about Torday’s The […]

In the Oct. 14 Philadelphia Inquirer article “Oh, those onerous college essays,” Elizabeth Mosier ’84 gives advice to parents and students anguishing over the college application essay. From the article: “Most of our worry is aimed at the application essay because, as admissions reps cheerfully reassure us at every info session, it offers the best […]

Click here To view these photos on Flickr. Bryn Mawr’s first-year students got to spend an evening with acclaimed author Alison Bechdel last Thursday as part of the Emily Balch Speaker Series. Best known for her comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For and her 2006 graphic memoir Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, Bechdel’s latest […]

In the August 13 Philadelphia Inquirer article “Rethinking Life’s Priorities,” Elizabeth Mosier ’84 writes about the unexpected aspects of her role as “a fulcrum between developing kids and declining parents.” From the article: “Maybe because my grandparents died when my parents (and I) were young, I didn’t know how a longer life curve could change […]

In The Song Remains the Same, Creative Writing Program Director Dan Torday writes about how words of wisdom given to him as a struggling young bluegrass musician by “Tattooed Guitarist” came back to help him years later as he tried to soothe his infant daughter to sleep. From the article: “Suddenly I was just playing, […]

Creative Writing Program Director Daniel Torday’s novella The Sensualist was published earlier this month to great praise. On the website fwriction.com, novelist Andrew Ervin writes about The Sensualist : “One passage in particular has lodged itself in my brain and I’d like to quote it here at length; it’s, I think, the most profound and […]

POST UPDATED NOV 3 Five of the most important short-fiction writers working today—Frank O’Connor Award finalist Robin Black and four of the New Yorker’s “20 Under 40” honorees, Chris Adrian, David Bezmozgis, Rivka Galchen and Karen Russell—discussed the place of the short story in America, as well as their work and influences, at Bryn Mawr […]

Celebrated author Karen Russell inaugurated the Emily Balch Speaker Series for first-year students on Wednesday, Oct. 19, with a lively presentation about her work, noting how valuable her undergraduate liberal-arts education has been to her career as a writer.

In his introductory blog post to a special web feature from the Kenyon Review marking the 10th anniversary of the 9-11 attacks, Director of the Bryn Mawr College Creative Writing Program Daniel Torday writes: “The morning the planes flew into the towers, the US president was reading ‘The Pet Goat’ to a group of second-graders […]

Creative Writing Program Director and Professor of the Arts Karl Kirchwey, who is currently serving as the American Academy in Rome’s Andrew Heiskell Arts Director, is featured in this Wall Street Journal article about the difficulty of translating works of poetry. The article focuses on Kirchwey’s recent translation of Paul Verlaine’s Poems Under Saturn. From […]

The Echoing Green Foundation, which supports emerging visionaries of social change from around the world, has awarded a 2011 Echoing Green Fellowship to Deborah Ahenkorah ’10 of Accra, Ghana. Ahenkorah’s Golden Baobab Prize, an award for children’s literature by and about Africans, is one of fifteen projects Echoing Green has selected for the fellowship in 2011. Ahenkorah began […]

This Allentown Morning Call article marking the 100th anniversary of poet Hilda Doolittle’s journey to London quotes Bryn Mawr English Professor Jane Hedley, Creative Writing Lecturer J.C. Todd and Research Associate for the Center for Visual Culture Emily Wallace. A native of Bethlehem, Pa., Doolittle briefly attended Bryn Mawr before traveling to London to meet […]

As part of a yearlong initiative titled “Class Dismissed? Furthering the Dialogue About Class,” the Diversity Leadership Group and Diversity Council in early March invited members of the Bryn Mawr campus community to submit proposals for collaborative projects designed to spark dialogue on the topic of class. The group expected to select three proposals to […]

Katherine Lewis ’12, a philosophy major and English minor from Dallas, Texas, recently won first prize for her poem “October” in the Lydia Pinkham Memorial Foundation’s Sylvia Plath poetry contest (read the poem or listen to Lewis reading it below). The contest, now in its sixth year, is open to students at Bryn Mawr, Wellesley, […]

Bryn Mawr College senior Didem Uca recently learned that a short story she penned in German will be published in an upcoming issue of Trans-Lit2, the journal of the Society for Contemporary American Literature in German. Uca, a comparative literature and German double major from Syosset, New York, was surprised that her piece was selected […]

Author Ha Jin, winner of the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award, will read from his work on Thursday, Dec. 2, at 7:30 p.m. in the Goodhart Music Room, Goodhart Hall, at Bryn Mawr College. The reading is part of Bryn Mawr College’s Creative Writing Program Reading Series. All readings in the series are […]

A play by Amy Herzog, who teaches playwriting in the Bryn Mawr College Creative Writing Program, has earned an enthusiastic review from The New York Times‘ Charles Isherwood. After the Revolution, the chronicle of a proud family of Marxists that faces new revelations about its revered patriarch, is a “smart, engrossing play,” in Isherwood’s estimation. “Just […]

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Charles Simic will read from his work on Thursday, Nov. 11, at 7:30 p.m. in the Ely Room of the Wyndham Alumnae House at Bryn Mawr College. The reading is part of Bryn Mawr College’s Creative Writing Program Reading Series. All readings in the series are free and open to the public. […]

Jamaica Kincaid, author of the bestseller The Autobiography of My Mother, will give a free reading of her work in Bryn Mawr College’s Thomas Great Hall at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 30. The reading is part of Bryn Mawr’s Creative Writing Program Reading Series. Kincaid is the author of a nearly a dozen works […]

Associate Professor of the Arts and Director of the Creative Writing Program Karl Kirchwey reviews Derek Walcott’s newest collection of poems for The New York Times’ Sunday Book Review.

Associate Professor of the Arts and Director of the Creative Writing Program Karl Kirchwey has been named the fifth Andrew Heiskell Arts Director at the American Academy in Rome, a position he will hold for a three-year term beginning July 1 until he returns to Bryn Mawr for the fall 2013 semester. Visiting Assistant Professor […]

Two-time National Book Award winner Peter Matthiessen, author of At Play in the Fields of the Lord, will read from his work on Tuesday, April 20, at 7:30 p.m. at Bryn Mawr’s Thomas Great Hall. Part of Bryn Mawr’s Creative Writing Program Reading Series, the event is free and open to the public. Matthiessen has […]

Acclaimed short-story writer and essayist Robin Black will read from her first story collection in Ely Room at Wyndham Alumnae House on Tuesday, April 6, at 7:30 p.m. Read more»

Former Poet Laureate of the United States and Pulitzer Prize winner Mark Strand will read from his work on Thursday, March 25, at 7:30 p.m. in the Ely Room of the Wyndham Alumnae House at Bryn Mawr College. Part of Bryn Mawr’s Creative Writing Program Reading Series, the event is free and open to the […]

Director of Creative Writing Karl Kirchwey is the featured poet of the day on Poetry Daily for Tuesday, Nov. 17. The Web site will post a selection from Kirchwey’s long poem Mutabor, a work in progress.

MacArthur “genius” fellow and frequent New Yorker contributor George Saunders will read from his work at 7:30 p.m. on Monday, Nov. 9, in  Ely Room at the Wyndham Alumnae House as part of the College’s 2009-10 Creative Writing Program Reading Series. The Creative Writing Program’s Reading Series is free and open to the public. Best […]