2013–2017: Sonnets

Now available! 2013–2017: Sonnets, my third book of poetry and the first volume of my American Sonnet sequence, has been published by LJMcD Communications. It can be ordered through Amazon

Fest, Bradley J--Cover for 2013-2017--cover

2013–2017: Sonnets is the first volume in Bradley J. Fest’s ongoing sequence of American sonnets, a project concerned with how the distributed networks of the twenty-first century construct and filter time. Continuing the program of poetic assemblage explored in his first two books, these poems were composed consecutively as emergent temporal snapshots documenting certain experiences of what it was like to live precariously in the overdeveloped world between 2013 and 2017. Over the past decade, this ongoing experimental sonnet sequence has become: a complex encounter with time and its twenty-first-century rhythms; a document of artistic maturation; a personal archive of occasions, moments, days; a continually refreshed confrontation with the global computational hyperarchive; a discography of popular music; an extended reflection on contemporary literature, art, and culture; an increasingly multiplex meditation on the sonnet; an historical record of the troubling national situation in the United States; and a work of mourning for a world disappearing into climate emergency. The second volume, currently in progress, begins in 2018.

Eternal thanks to Lachlan J. McDougall for bringing 2013–2017 into the world and to Taylor Baldwin for the cover image.

Fest, Bradley J--Cover for 2013-2017--spread

Hartwick College’s Faculty Lecture Series, Fall 2024

This fall, the Faculty Development Committee and the Office of Academic Affairs at Hartwick College will present three speakers in the annual Faculty Lecture Series.

All talks take place at during the common hour: 12:20–1:20 p.m. in Eaton Lounge, Bresee Hall at Hartwick College, Oneonta, New York.

Admission to the readings is free and the events are open to the public.


William Kowalczyk, “Sex and Drugs but No Rock and Roll,” Friday, September 13, 2024.

Stephanie Carr, “Coming from a Land Down Under: Researching New Life from the Marine
Subsurface,” Friday, October 4, 2024.

Richard Barlow, “Seeking Sources,” Friday, November 8, 2024.

For more information, visit the Faculty Lecture Series webpage.

Spring 2024 Links

Nuclear and Environmental

W. J. Hennigan, “The US Has Received a Rare Invitation from China. There Is Only One Right Answer.”

Kathleen Kingsbury and W. J. Hennigan, “At the Brink: A Series about the Threat of Nuclear Weapons in an Unstable World.”

Anton Troianovski, “Putin Says West Risks Nuclear Conflict if It Intervenes More in Ukraine.”

David E. Sanger, “Biden’s Armageddon Moment: When Nuclear Detonation Seemed Possible in Ukraine.”

Catie Edmondson, “Senate Approves Expansion of Fund for Nuclear Waste Exposure Victims.”

Anton Troianovski, “Russia to Hold Drills on Tactical Nuclear Weapons in New Tensions with West.”

Noah Smith, “Americans Are Still Not Worried Enough about the Risk of World War.”

Emily Faux, “Deserted Myths and Nuclear Realities: Revisiting the Symbolism of Nuclear Weapons in Contemporary Popular Culture through Oppenheimer.”

Paul Thompson, “Become Death: On Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer.”

Motoko Rich and Kiuko Notoya, “Oppenheimer Opens in Nuclear-Scarred Japan, Eight Months After US Premiere.”

Ariel Kaminer, Oppenheimer, My Uncle, and the Secrets America Still Doesn’t Like to Tell.”

Jimmy So, “Killerheimer: American Betrayal in Martin Scorsese and Christopher Nolan.”

Anna Kornbluh, “We Didn’t Start the Fire: Death Drive against Ecocide.”

Bill McKibben, “‘D Is for Despair’ Didn’t Sound so Good: A Conversation between Bill McKibben and Elizabeth Kolbert.”

Continue reading

Oneonta Literary Festival, October 17–21, 2024 and the 2024–25 Babcock Lecture.

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In collaboration with SUNY Oneonta’s Department of English, the Community Arts Network of Oneonta (CANO), the Huntington Library, and Oneonta High School, my colleague Tessa Yang and I are co-organizing the Oneonta Literary Festival, which will take place October 17–21, 2024 at various places in and around Oneonta.

For our part, Hartwick College is bringing in Anna Kornbluh to deliver the 2024–25 Babcock Lecture, “Historical Fictions, Heist Flicks, and other Climate Genres for a Burning World,” as part of the festival, along with Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Ross Gay, and Willy Palomo. For more information, please visit the Oneonta Literary festival website at www.hartwick.edu/literaryfestival. (The festival also takes place throughout the year [more info about year-long events here].)

At Hartwick College, the festival is supported by the Arts and Humanities Division, the Babcock Chair in English, the Department of Literature, Media, and Writing, a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Office of Academic Affairs, and the Visiting Writers Series.