Bread Loaf School of English begins summer sessions June 22

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. — Tuesday, June 22, marks the start of the 91st summer session of Middlebury College’s Bread Loaf School of English in the Green Mountains of Vermont. In addition to its original location, the six-week summer graduate program takes place on three other campuses: St. John’s College in Santa Fe, N.M.; the University of North Carolina in Asheville; and Lincoln College at the University of Oxford in England.

Since 1920, the Bread Loaf School of English has offered an array of graduate courses in literature, the teaching of writing, creative writing and theater arts. This June, approximately 480 students from 46 states and 12 countries, many of them secondary school teachers, will work toward a Master of Arts or Master of Letters degree while studying with 50 faculty members from distinguished colleges and universities throughout the United States and United Kingdom.

Throughout the summer, many students also attend poetry and fiction readings, evening lectures and panels, and numerous theater and music performances. The Vermont campus will feature readings by Bread Loaf faculty, with a reading by Julia Alvarez, a return visit from poet John Ashbery, as well as the annual theatrical performance by the Bread Loaf Acting Ensemble, a group of Equity actors. This year’s production will be “Mad Forest” by Caryl Churchill. The annual Elizabeth Drew Memorial Lecture will be given by long-time Princeton University and Bread Loaf faculty member and celebrated literary critic Michael Wood. All events are open to the public. More information is available here.

The other campuses feature similar events, such as a reading and workshop led by award-winning poet Jimmy Santiago Baca at the New Mexico campus, and theatrical performances by the Royal Shakespeare Company for students attending the Oxford campus.

Over the years, Bread Loaf faculty members have included such distinguished teachers and scholars as Harold Bloom, James Britton, Richard Brodhead, Elizabeth Drew, A. Bartlett Giamatti and Laurence Holland. Robert Frost first came to the school in 1921 and returned nearly every summer for 42 years. Middlebury College still owns and maintains the nearby Robert Frost homestead, the Homer Noble Farmhouse, as a National Historic Site.

For more information about the Bread Loaf School of English, contact the administrative offices at 802-443-5418 or blse@breadnet.middlebury.edu.