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The Harvard Advocate Presents The Harvard Advocate Bestiary, a Special Winter Issue
January 14, 2010
The Harvard Advocate presents its 2010 Winter Issue: The Harvard Advocate Bestiary
The Harvard Advocate, the nation’s oldest continuously published collegiate literary magazine presents a special publication, The Harvard Advocate Bestiary. Inspired by the medieval idea of the bestiary as a collection of (sometime fantastical) information exploring the natural world, the issue starts by exploring nature and ends by bringing into focus man's creativity. Compiled and edited in the shadow of the 2009 Copenhagen Conference on Climate Change, the issue’s art, fiction, poetry, and prose contemplates questions of plant, animal, and human existence that are more urgent than ever before as we reevaluate and conceive anew man’s relationship with the natural world.
Alongside the Advocate’s selection of content from within the Harvard Community, the issue features the work of accomplished artists and writers from without. In its pages is the periodical premier of Bright Lights, Big City author Jay McInerney’s “Sleeping with Pigs,” from his 2009 short story collection How It Ended, along with acclaimed short story writer Amy Hempel's "In the Animal Shelter" and “Caiman” by Bret Anthony Johnston, Director of Creative Writing at Harvard. Animals flit in and out of the poems of former Poet Laureate Mark Strand, 2009 nominees for the National Book Award, Rae Armantrout and Carl Phillips, and 2004 Lenore Marshall Award recipient Donald Revell. Found within the 32-page spread of art that lies at the heart of the magazine are the catlike creatures of major 20th century artist Louise Bourgeois, Chimères by Annette Messager, recipient of the 2005 Venice Biennale’s Golden Lion, and Stanford Associate Professor of Art Gail Wight’s unique fusing of science with art in such pieces as Zoo Kit. Nonfiction by student authors on subjects as diverse as France’s complicated relationship with bears, the art of M.C. Escher (from the perspective of his lizards), and how the D.C. sniper brought blood ties into focus, are augmented by Harvard Professor Maria Tatar’s article on the phoenix in ancient and modern literature and Director of University of Virginia Art Museum Bruce Boucher’s overview of animals in western art.
The Harvard Advocate Bestiary is to be sold for $12 on the Advocate’s website (www.theharvardadvocate.com) and at bookstores in Boston and New York City.
About The Harvard Advocate
The Harvard Advocate, founded in 1866, is the oldest continuously published collegiate literary magazine in the country. Over its past 143 years, it can count T.S. Eliot, Conrad Aiken, and Norman Mailer among its members and e.e. cummings, Jack Keroauc, and Tom Wolfe as contributors to its pages. A quarterly magazine, its mission is to publish the best art, fiction, poetry, and prose that the Harvard undergraduate community offers. Its website is www.theharvardadvocate.com.
