Karan Mahajan's article, "State Capture: How the Gupta Brothers Hijacked South Africa Using Bribes Instead of Bullets" appears in this month's issue of Vanity Fair. This piece chronicles how three brothers from India apparently "captured" the government of Africa's second-largest economy; not only were they hiring and firing ministers, but they had the President in their pocket.

Literary Arts graduate student Gbolahan Adeola MFA '18 and former student Rachel B. Glaser have been named as fellowship recipients by the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, NH.

Literary Arts is pleased to announce the Spring 2018 recipients of Prizes and Premiums

In April 2018, Brown University celebrated Robert Coover and his contributions to literary fiction as well as to the cause of freedom to write. During the three-day festival, about three-dozen writers, digital artists and critics came to share their work and their appreciation. Chuck Hinman of R.I. Public Radio covered the festival, and posted a report, focusing on Coover and the literary scene. Click here to hear Hinman's report.

John Cayley, professor of Literary Arts was named the 2017 Marjorie C. Luesbrink Career Achievement Award recipient by the Electronic Literature Organization. The award was given based on Cayley's decades-long contributions to the field, for digital works ranging from riverIsland (1999) through The Reader's Project (with Daniel Howe) and his latest work, The Listeners, which uses a data-gathering robot to conduct literary experimentation.

At an Awards Ceremony on the first of May, Carolyn Bergonzo, MFA  graduate student in poetry, will be presented with a 2016-2017 Presidential Award for Excellence in Teaching. She was selected by Brown's Graduate Council, who made the selection based on a close review of her teaching during the current academic year. We congratulate Carolyn on earning this recongition.

“No Modernism,” a poem by Monroe Lawrence MFA ’17, has been selected for inclusion in Best American Experimental Writing 2016, guest edited by Charles Bernstein and Tracie Morris.  Monroe, who received his B.A. in English Literature from the University of British Columbia, has also seen his poetry published in magazines and journals including Prelude, Flag + Void, The Capilano Review, and others.  He is a Peter Kaplan Memorial Fellow at Brown.

Mark Baumer, MFA class of 2011, died in late January 2017, killed when struck by a vehicle as he continued his long-distance cross-country walk, undertaken to highlight concerns about climate change.

A memorial celebration will be held at 2 pm on Saturday, Feb. 4, in the Granoff Center for the Arts, 154 Angell St., Providence. All are welcome.  

PRY, a hybrid, online interactive novella created by Literary Arts alums Samantha Gorman  AB ’06, MFA ’10, and Danny Cannizzaro, AB ’06, has been released for iPad.

PRY was one of three finalists for the inaugural Time Warner Future of Storytelling Prize, awarded in October 2014.  The FoST prize seeks to recognize “the world’s most adventurous story creators, working across platforms to mastermind boldly interactive narratives.”