Hartwick College has put out a press release, “Routine, Rejection All Part of the Process, Says Poet,” about my new book, 2013 – 2017: Sonnets.
Brad Fest
Book Launch for 2013–2017: Sonnets and Other Fall Readings
In support of my new book, 2013–2017: Sonnets, I will be giving three readings this fall in and around Oneonta, NY.
On Thursday, August 29, 2024 at 7:00 p.m., in collaboration with the Green Toad Bookstore, there will be a book launch for 2013–2017: Sonnets at Roots Public Social Club.
On Wednesday, September 25, 2024 at 7:00 p.m., I will be reading more poems from 2013–2017: Sonnets, along with poems from its (already completed) sequel 2018–2024: Sonnets, at Hartwick College for the 2024–25 Visiting Writers Series.
And on Thursday, November 21, 2024 at 7:30 p.m., I will be reading a range of poems, including a variety of my newest work (including from Postrock), at the Writers Salon at the Community Arts Network of Oneonta (CANO).
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.
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.

“2023.29–30,” “2024.01–02,” “2024.03,” “2024.05–06,” and “2024.08–09” in Does It Have Pockets?
I have five brand-new multisonnets, “2023.29–30,” “2024.01–02,” “2024.03,” “2024.05–06,” and “2024.08–09,” in Does It Have Pockets? I’m thrilled to have these all together in a great July issue.
Oneonta Literary Festival, October 17–21, 2024 and the 2024–25 Babcock Lecture.

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.
“2015.10,” “2015.23,” and “2016.10” Reprinted in What We Did during the Apocalypse: The Archive of “The Babel Tower Notice Board”
The Babel Tower Notice Board, a pandemic project that existed between August 2020 and December 2021 edited by Richard Capener, was just collected in What We Did during the Apocalypse: The Archive of “The Babel Tower Notice Board” (Hem Press, 2024). I was thrilled then and continue to be thrilled that three sonnets of mine, “2015.10,” “2015.23,” and “2016.10,” are part of that project. Thanks again to Capener for his amazing work on The Babel Tower Notice Board, for his monthly Babel Parish Newsletter–a welcome dispatch during those difficult months–and for his continued great work with Hem Press.
(And “2015.10,” “2015.23,” and “2016.10” will all be collected in my third book of poems, 2013–2017: Sonnets, forthcoming in July from LJMcD Communications.)
Spring Semester 2024: Syllabus

Because I am the 2022–25 Cora A. Babcock Chair in English, I again have a course release this spring. As such, I’ll only be teaching one class this semester, but I’m super excited to teach ENGL 352 Critical Game Studies again.
The 2023–24 Visiting Writers Series at Hartwick College
This year, Hartwick College and the Department of Literature, Media, and Writing will present four readings in the 2023–24 Visiting Writers Series. Readings take place at 7:00 in the Eaton Lounge, Bresee Hall at Hartwick College in Oneonta, New York.
Novelist and essayist Shena McAuliffe will read on Wednesday, October 11, 2023 from her new book of short stories, We Are a Teeming Wilderness: Stories (Press 53, 2023).
Poet and emeritus Hartwick professor Robert Bensen will read from his new book, What Lightning Spoke: New and Selected Poems (Bright Hill, 2023), on Wednesday, November 8, 20223.
Yumei Kitasei will read from her new novel, The Deep Sky (Flatiron Books, 2023), on Monday, March 4, 2024.
And poet essayist Joshua Zelesnick will read from his forthcoming poetry collection, Insert Coin (Finishing Line Press, forthcoming 2025), on Thursday, April 11, 2024.
For more information, visit the Visiting Writers Series webpage.
“2023.15–16” in Osmosis
I have a new (double) sonnet, “2023.15–16,” in Osmosis.
“2023.07–08” and “2023.10” in Pere Ube
I’m thrilled to have new sonnets from my ongoing sequence, “2023.07–08” and “2023.10,” in the new avant-garde journal Pere Ube.
