News

Selected stories from the Beinecke Library, YaleNews, and external media outlets (the latter noted by source in parentheses after title of article).

  • Eight authors share $1m prize as writers face coronavirus uncertainty (The Guardian)

    March 19, 2020

    The day before British-Indian poet Bhanu Kapil learned she had won a Windham Campbell prize, she had been wondering about how to balance writing, teaching and caring for her elderly mother. The next day, she received an email from the prize’s director, Michael Kelleher, informing her that she had been awarded $165,000 (£141,000). “Sitting in bed, wondering about the future, I’d said, aloud, ‘Help’,” said the 51-year-old, who had never won a poetry prize before. “The moment Michael told me I’d won, I felt as if what I’d called out had been received. And I am not a religious person.”

  • Maria Tumarkin on winning the 2020 Windham Campbell: 'It feels like a complicated gift' (The Guardian)

    March 19, 2020

    Maria Tumarkin learned she was one of eight writers around the world to win the world’s richest literary prize, the US$165,000-per head Yale-administered Windham Campbell, on the same day the World Health Organisation declared the novel coronavirus a pandemic. For those familiar with her work, the devastating synchronicity of these two events is unsurprising. The writer and cultural historian’s atmospheric, unclassifiable non-fiction blends commentary, reportage and memoir, traversing the difficult grounds of trauma, grief, friendship, memory and war. Her body of work demonstrates an exceptional ethical rigour and profound empathy – qualities of great literature necessary for a world in crisis.

  • Women’s voices dominate the 2020 Windham-Campbell Prizes

    March 19, 2020

    Yale University today announced a female-dominated slate of recipients for the 2020 Windham-Campbell Prizes. The eight writers, including seven women, were honored for their literary achievement or promise and will receive $165,000 each to support their work. This year’s prize recipients are: in fiction, Yiyun Lee (United States/China) and Namwali Serpell (Zambia); in nonfiction, Maria Tumarkin (Australia) and Anne Boyer (United States); in poetry, Bhanu Kapil (United Kingdom/India) and Jonah Mixon-Webster (United States); and in drama, Julia Cho (United States) and Aleshea Harris (United States).

  • 14 Beautiful London Libraries That Will Bring Out The Bookworm In Everyone (Secret London)

    March 10, 2020

    The British Library. No self-respecting list of London libraries is complete without it, really. The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom, boasting a whopping 170 million items – including artefacts from every age of written civilisation, which is damn impressive. The library doesn’t rest on its laurels, either, as three million new items join the collection each year. Anyone is welcome to visit (although the Reading Rooms are for members only), and the library’s inner six-storey glass tower, which was inspired by Yale University’s Beinecke Library, has become a rather photogenic addition. The tower is home to the the King’s Library, accommodating 65,000 printed volumes, 19,000 pamphlets, and manuscripts and maps collected by King George III between 1763 and 1820. Cheers George!

  • Cooking from Georgia O’Keeffe’s Recipes (The New Yorker)

    March 5, 2020

    On Thursday, the day of the auction, Sotheby’s announced that the card file would go to the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, at Yale University, where scholars can visit them ... This means that they will be kept pristine for future generations.

  • Frederick Douglass Railed Against Economic Inequality (Jacobin)

    February 20, 2020

    No single document, of course, can solve the riddle of Douglass’s complex political ideas. But while doing research at Yale’s Beinecke Library, I came across two articles in the 1856 Frederick Douglass’ Paper that have not, to my knowledge, been reprinted or digitized since. (Most of Douglass’s journalistic writing remains unpublished, though a forthcoming volume in the Frederick Douglass Papers should help address that problem.) Nor have they been excerpted, quoted, or discussed at length in the extensive scholarship on Douglass.

  • At Yale, you can now study Hebrew and Arabic — in the same course

    February 18, 2020

    Al Ani and Roginsky spent some three years developing the course, identifying materials and weekly themes, and planning cultural events that would interest students. In addition to the topics of food, identity, music, and gender relations noted by Van Deusen-Scholl, other weekly class themes include cultural manners; etiquette, gestures, and body language; ecology and the environment; and globalization’s effect on Hebrew and Arabic. In addition, the class features a visit to the Beinecke Library to explore the Arabic calligraphy collection and the decorated Jewish Ketubah collection.

  • In Memoriam: Frederick R. Koch (New York Times obituary)

    February 13, 2020

    His most substantial gift was to the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale, to which he donated an exceptional collection of musical and literary manuscripts. His core collection held more than 2,000 items, including scores by Debussy, Wagner and Verdi. “These working scores are really important because they show how something evolved from its first appearance through subsequent productions,” Timothy Young, curator of modern books and manuscripts at the Beinecke, said in an interview. Mr. Koch’s literary donations to the Beinecke included Noël Coward’s diaries, page proofs of parts of Proust’s “Remembrance of Things Past” and the corrected typescript of Henry Miller’s “Tropic of Cancer.” A separate donation was of 50,000 photographs, most of them of celebrities, taken by Jerome Zerbe, the photographer of mid-20th century cafe society.

  • Clark art Institute’s research and academic program presents Lecture on the Collages of Henri Chopin (Hudson Valley 360)

    February 13, 2020

    Caitlin R. Woolsey is the Manton Post-doctoral Fellow in the Clark Art Institute’s Research and Academic Program. Her research revolves around the historical confluence of visual art, performance, and media in the twentieth century. Before joining the Clark, she assisted in curating an exhibition of experimental poetry at Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library in fall 2019.