MARTINE BELLEN
MARTINE BELLEN has been associated with Conjunctions—holding the positions of assistant, senior, and contributing editor—since receiving her MFA from Brown University in 1987. Additionally, she has worked as an editor at Henry Holt and Company, Carroll & Graf Publishers, and Martine Bellen Literary Services. As a poet, Bellen’s tenth collection, An Anatomy of Curiosity (MadHat Press) was published in 2023, from which a poem is featured in The Best American Poetry, 2023, edited by Elaine Equi. Her other books include This Amazing Cage of Light: New and Selected Poems (Spuyten Duyvil), The Vulnerability of Order (Copper Canyon Press), and Tales of Murasaki and Other Poems (Sun & Moon), which won the National Poetry Series. Bellen is the librettist for the following operas that have been performed throughout the United States: Ovidiana, based on Ovid’s Metamorphoses (composer, Matthew Greenbaum), AH! Opera No-Opera (in collaboration with David Rosenboom), and Moon in the Mirror (composer: Stephen Dembski and text cowriter: Zhang Er). Bellen’s poetry has been translated into Chinese, German, and Italian, among other languages. She has been a recipient of the City Artist Corps Grant, Queens Art Fund, New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, Fund for Poetry, and has received a residency from the Rockefeller Foundation at the Bellagio Center in Bellagio, Italy.
WHAT I'M LOOKING FOR
Bard College’s biannual literary journal Conjunctions publishes innovative fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction by emerging voices and contemporary masters. For some four decades, Conjunctions has challenged accepted forms and styles, with equal emphasis on groundbreaking experimentation and rigorous quality. We are committed to launching and supporting the careers of unknown authors—William T. Vollmann, David Foster Wallace, Karen Russell, Isabella Hammad, and Raven Leilani all had some of their very first publications in Conjunctions—while providing a space for better-known voices—like John Ashbery, Sandra Cisneros, William H. Gass, Sigrid Nunez, or Joyce Carol Oates—to work outside audience expectations.
We strongly suggest that writers new to Conjunctions read our recent issues to acquaint themselves with our publications.
SAMPLE AUTHORS OR TITLES
Authors who appear in Conjunctions' Numina: Enchantment Issue (Fall 2023) include Julia Alvarez, Aimee Bender, Brian Evenson, and Laird Hunt.
The biannual anthology of new writing appears every spring and fall in print and e-book editions and generally collects pieces that form a conversation around a central theme. The upcoming theme is posted on the website. Past themes include new-wave fabulism, Caribbean writing, sanctuary, desire, climate change, and so on. We also publish a weekly online magazine which is not subject to theme restrictions.