The Vermont Academy of Arts and Sciences is excited to welcome our slate of three new Fellows for 2021.
Our annual Fellows Luncheons have had to be postponed for the last two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but we are planning to celebrate our 2020 and 2021 Fellows at an upcoming luncheon in September at the UVM campus. Keep an eye out for your invitation!
You can learn more about our 2021 Fellows below.
Chard deNiord, Poet Laureate
Chard deNiord is an American author, poet and teacher who lives in Westminster West, Vermont with his wife Liz. He is the author of six books of poetry, including Asleep in the Fire (University of Alabama, 1990), Sharp Golden Thorn (2003), Night Mowing (2005), The Double Truth (2011), Interstate (2015), and In My Unknowing (2020), all published by the University of Pittsburgh. He has also published two books of interviews with American poets, Sad Friends, Drowned Lovers, Stapled Songs: Conversations and Reflections on 20th Century American Poets (2011) which includes interviews with Robert Bly, Lucile Clifton, Donald Hall, Galway Kinnell, Maxine Kumin and Ruth Stone among others and I Would Lie to You if I Could: Interviews with Ten American Poets (2018). In 2017 deNiord co-edited an anthology of Vermont poetry with Sidney Lea, Roads Taken: Contemporary Vermont Poetry (Green Writers Press). He has published over 30 essays on poetry and writing in a number of journals and newspapers, including The Harvard Review, The New England Review, Poetry International, The Green Mountain Review and The Cortland Review among others. He was Vermont’s most recent Poet Laureate, serving from 2015-2019.
DeNiord was born in New Haven, CT in 1952, and raised in Virginia. He earned a B.A. in religious studies at Lynchburg College, a Master of Divinity from Yale, and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop. He taught comparative religion and philosophy at a number of private schools, including the Putney School before moving to Providence College.
DeNiord is currently teaches English and Creative Writing at Providence College where he is a Professor of English. He has been a Poetry Fellow at the Swanee Writer’s Conference and the Allan Collins Scholar in Poetry at the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference in Middlebury. He co-founded the New England College Master of Fine Arts program in poetry. He is a frequent reader in Vermont and New England.
Emily Bernard, Writer
South Burlington
Emily Bernard is the Julian Lindsay Green and Gold Professor of English at the University of Vermont and the author of numerous books, articles, and essays. The winner of many distinguished awards for her writing, Professor Bernard received her bachelor and doctoral degrees from Yale University. She began teaching at the University of Vermont in 2004(?) and since that time has inspired, challenged, and befriended thousands of students, colleagues, and readers through her teaching and writing.
The New York Times selected her first book, Remember Me to Harlem: The Letters of Langston Hughes and Carl Van Vechten, as a Notable Book of the Year. Her recent memoir, Black is the Body: Stories from my Grandmother’s Time, My Mother’s Time, and Mine, won the Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose from the Los Angeles Times. In addition, she has written Some of My Best Friends: Writings on Interracial Friendships, and Carl Van Vechten and the Harlem Renaissance. As noted in her website biography, Professor Bernard “has received fellowships and grants from Yale University, Harvard University, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Vermont Arts Council, the Vermont Studio Center, and The MacDowell Colony.”
In Black is the Body, Professor Bernard personalizes the themes that dominate her scholarly work: the quest for interracial understanding, the struggles around defining Blackness as personal and cultural identity, and the powerful examples of the great ones, writers and artists as well as family matriarchs, who came before.
Over the course of twenty years Emily Bernard has emerged as a leading scholar of Black literature, and as a beloved teacher and colleague at the University of Vermont.
Mark Levine, MD
Vermont Commissioner of Health
“Right Man, Right Place, Right Time: Health Commissioner Mark Levine, MD” (vermontbiz 3/14/2021)
Dr. Mark Levine is the Vermont Commissioner of Health. He was appointed to this position by Vermont Governor Phil Scott in March 2017. The following background information was taken from https://www.healthvermont.gov/about-us/organization-locations/our-leaders
“Prior to his appointment, Dr. Levine was a professor of medicine at the University of Vermont, associate dean for graduate medical education, and designated institutional official at the College of Medicine and UVM Medical Center. He also served as vice chair for education in the Department of Medicine.
Dr. Levine received his B.A. in biology from the University of Connecticut and M.D. from the University of Rochester. He completed his internal medicine residency and chief resident year at the University of Vermont, and a fellowship in general internal medicine at the University of North Carolina. Dr. Levine’s general internal medicine practice focused on health promotion and disease prevention, preventative health screening and clinical nutrition, chronic disease management, and solving complex diagnostic dilemmas.
With this experience, Dr. Levine understands the challenges our health care system holds for both patients and physicians. This informs his interest in improving public health through policies that foster a culture of health.
Dr. Levine has served on the American College of Physicians Board of Regents, and as governor of its Vermont chapter; as vice president and president-elect of the Vermont Medical Society; and was a longstanding member of the Vermont Department of Health’s Primary Care-Public Health Integration Workgroup. He successfully directed large NIH and HRSA educational grants related to nutrition-preventive medicine competencies for general physicians.”
Dr. Mark Levine has led the Vermont Health Department’s response to the Coronavirus pandemic. There have been many news stories regarding Dr. Levine’s exemplary leadership during this unprecedented time. The following is taken from https://vermontbiz.com/news/2021/march/14/right-man-right-place-right-time-health-commissioner-mark-levine-md.
“In September 2020, Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, video-visited a Vermont press conference with Governor Scott and Commissioner of Public Health and Dr. Mark Levine. He called Vermont “a model for the rest of the nation” and said he wished he “could bottle (the state's response) and take it with me when I go around talking to other parts of the country."
People believe that Dr Levine — a very tall man at 6' 5”, sort of wonky, smart, accessible, calm, earnest and a surprisingly witty man —has been the right man in the right place at the right time. Scott certainly believes it. He calls Dr Levine, whom he appointed to be health commissioner in 2017, “Vermont's own Dr Fauci.”
“Dr Levine’s expertise and talent were clear from the start, that’s why we wanted him on our team,” Scott said. “But I think what makes him so well suited to help us navigate this once-in-a-century health crisis is his even-keeled style and his ability to explain and offer solutions to complex problems in a way that the everyday Vermonter understands. His counsel has had a huge impact on Vermont’s nation-leading response. I think Vermonters have been able to see for themselves, in the nearly 240 hours’ worth of media briefings we’ve had since March, why his thoughtful and compassionate demeanor makes him the right person for the job.”
Dr. Mark Levine is most deserving of being recognized for his many accomplishments by being selected as a Fellow in the Vermont Academy of Arts and Sciences.