Hannah Bronfman ’11: Spinning Wellness
photo Benjamin Rosser
Hannah Bronfman ’11 is an internationally known DJ, model, and founder of the online wellness startup HBFIT.com. Bronfman began DJing while she was at Bard. “My friend and I convinced the owner of the Black Swan pub [now Traghaven] in Tivoli to let us have a night at the bar,” she says. “We made the bar a lot of money, so from then on it was an easy sell.” When she went home to New York City, she was given the opportunity to DJ at some clubs, which launched a career that has had her traveling the world for nearly a decade. She spins for high-profile corporate clients: recent gigs include the launch of Adidas’s Futurecraft 4D sneaker, Art Basel events for American Express and London-based fashion label COS, and at Dean & Deluca for the New York City Wine and Food Festival.
HBFIT features original content pertaining to health, beauty, and wellness. “Growing up with a mother who was into holistic medicine, I’ve always had a love for wellness,” says Bronfman. “While I was at Bard my grandmother passed away. She suffered from anorexia in her early years and later years. This led to me becoming a health and wellness expert and devoting my life to living my healthiest and happiest version of myself.” In 2015, as Bronfman’s Instagram followers began to grow, she had an epiphany. “People were resonating with the content I was putting up, and it was about healthy lifestyle,” she says. “I realized that people wanted more conversation around wellness.” So she started a company to help others achieve that lifestyle as well. HBFIT is an online destination geared toward millennial women seeking knowledge about wellness and beauty. “We talk about ways to implement change into your life, body positivity, healthy habits to enforce,” Bronfman explains. Another facet of HBFIT’s platform comes from Bronfman’s love of cooking, which also developed at Bard. “There was a community of Bard students living off campus in Tivoli,” she reminisces. “We would host dinner parties that rotated every week. We would all bring a dish, or I would cook for everyone. I was really able to explore cooking, which is a huge part of my healthy lifestyle and HBFIT today. We’re not strict in how we define our eating habits. It’s about an overall higher consciousness of living.” Bronfman also cultivated her athletic side at Bard. She took dance classes and played intramural sports. Now she is a global ambassador for Adidas, appearing in print and digital campaigns, producing social media content, and traveling the world as a representative of the brand. “All my jobs feed into each other and work very well together,” she says. “I went to New Zealand to DJ for the opening of a new Tiffany’s store, so while I was there Adidas put together a promotional event and invited a bunch of women to do a dance class with me.” Bronfman married fellow DJ Brendan Fallis in 2017 and says the wedding was “one of the most incredible moments of my life.” She is proud of HBFIT and focused on staying at the forefront of wellness so that she can deliver the content her audience wants and needs. She is leading by example and honoring her grandmother by being the healthiest, happiest version of herself.
Genre-Bending Writer Wins Bard Fiction Prize Carmen Maria Machado has received the Bard Fiction Prize for her debut short story collection, Her Body and Other Parties (Graywolf Press, 2017). Machado shapes startling, genre-bending narratives centered around women and their bodies, often giving the metaphorical (women are invisible, for example) a queasy corporeality. The Bard Fiction Prize committee writes, “Machado’s stories are bizarre, hilarious, sexy, and addictively entertaining while troubling, complex ideas about femininity, queerness, gender, and sexuality lurk around the corner of every sentence. This book is an oddball masterpiece.” The collection was also a finalist for the 2017 National Book Award and Kirkus Prize. “I’m incredibly honored to receive the Bard Fiction Prize, the former winners of which I’ve long admired. I’m looking forward to joining the Bard community, meeting the students I’ve heard so much about, and working on my essay collection and novel(s)-in-progress in the Hudson Valley as the weather turns,” says Machado, who will be in residence at Bard College for the fall 2018 semester, during which time she will continue her writing, meet informally with students, and give another public reading. Machado’s memoir, House in Indiana, is forthcoming in 2019 from Graywolf Press. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and has been awarded fellowships and residencies from the Michener-Copernicus Foundation, Elizabeth George Foundation, CINTAS Foundation, Speculative Literature Foundation, Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Workshop,
28 on and off campus
photo Tom Storm
University of Iowa, Yaddo Corporation, Hedgebrook, and the Millay Colony for the Arts. She is an artist in residence at the University of Pennsylvania, and lives in Philadelphia with her wife. Since 2001, the annual Bard Fiction Prize has recognized promising emerging writers who are American citizens aged 39 years or younger at the time of application. Recipients receive a $30,000 cash award and appointment as writer in residence at Bard College for one semester.