Thursday, December 27, 2012
Institute in the Times Union's "Year in the Arts"
So writes Steve Barnes in today's Times Union. Read more in "2012: Year in the Arts"--
http://www.timesunion.com/entertainment/article/2012-Year-in-the-arts-4146769.php#page-3
Read More......
Friday, December 7, 2012
We're on C-SPAN 2's Book TV This Weekend
Read More......
Wednesday, December 5, 2012
J. Hoberman at the Movies this Friday
December 7 (Friday)
Reading/Discussion — 8:00 p.m., Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center, Uptown Campus
(see Classic Film Series Listing).
Thursday, November 29, 2012
New York Times 100 Notable Books
Numerous Writers Institute visitors are featured in this year's edition of the New York Times 100 Notable Books.
Recent visitors (who have discussed the new books featured on the list) include Lauren Groff (Arcadia), Shalom Auslander (Hope: A Tragedy), Junot Diaz (This is How You Lose Her), David Quammen (Spillover), and Robert Caro (Passage of Power).
Other past visitors with new books on the list include Colm Toibin, Nathan Englander, Sherman Alexie, Steve Stern, Richard Ford, Barbara Kingsolver, Dave Eggers, Toni Morrison, John Irving, Louise Erdrich, T. Coraghessan Boyle, Kevin Young and David Nasaw.
Wednesday, November 21, 2012
Writers Institute on Jeopardy! and C-SPAN
“The waiting, which began with the tryout in January, extended through the taping in August and then through all the months Joshua Bartlett had to smile and say nothing, is over: The University at Albany graduate student will finally appear Thursday on Jeopardy!”
A special program on the City of Albany, in which the Writers Institute, William Kennedy, Donald Faulkner and The Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza are prominently featured, will air on C-SPAN2's Book TV and C-SPAN3's American History TV on the weekend of Dec. 8 and 9. The program is part of C-SPAN’s LCV (Local Content Vehicle) 2012 Cities Tour of all of America’s state capitals.
"The idea is to look at a city's rich history and unique literary life," said producer Debbie Lamb, whose three-member crew will fan out across the city all week. "We wanted to get outside Washington and highlight medium-sized cities that a national audience normally wouldn't get to see."
Here’s a link to the C-SPAN Local Content page: http://www.c-span.org/LocalContent/
Read More......
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
Lincoln Fans are "Just Nutty"
[Blight] is currently immersed in writing a biography of Frederick Douglass, scheduled to be published by Simon & Schuster in 2013, a subject he has been researching since his doctoral dissertation 23 years ago.
"You have to make a subject an obsession to write seriously about it, although I have moments I'd like to get Frederick Douglass out of my life," Blight said. What spurred him to sign a book contract for a biography of the abolitionist, orator and writer was his discovery three years ago of nine personal scrapbooks kept by Douglass' sons, mostly newspaper clippings that documented the final 35 years of the life of their father, who died in 1895. The scrapbooks are owned by a collector in Savannah, Ga., who made them available to Blight.
"I figured if there can be more than 11,000 books on Lincoln, I can write the fifth or sixth biography of Douglass," Blight said.
He added, "I've only written essays on Lincoln, but I've encountered a lot of Lincoln people and their obsession is crazy. They need a shrink. They're just nutty."
More in the Times Union: http://www.timesunion.com/living/article/Civil-War-historian-to-speak-4021294.php
Read More......
Civil War Historian David Blight in the Times Union
Paul Grondahl wrote an article about Blight this past Sunday in the Times Union:
"Even after 150 years, the Civil War exerts a powerful and conflicting hold on the collective American imagination unlike any other event in the nation's history."
"David Blight, a professor of American history at Yale University and author of two books on the Civil War that have been called 'memory studies,' will present a lecture titled 'America Divided, Then and Now: The Civil War in our National and Local Imagination.'"
More: http://www.timesunion.com/living/article/Civil-War-historian-to-speak-4021294.php
More on the event: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/blight_david12.html
Read More......
Thursday, November 1, 2012
Crazy Brave Review
"Readers familiar with Joy Harjo's poetry, or, better, who have experienced her live performances, will recognize a familiar cadence and overarching mythic quality in the voice she creates for her newest work, Crazy Brave. In a memoir steeped in her Mvskoke (also known as Muscogee) worldview, Harjo relates narratives of abuse, persistence and reclamation that tap into universal human emotions. Harjo's text resonates for and with readers, whether longtime fans or not; as she asserts, 'A story matrix connects all of us.'"
Read more: http://www.startribune.com/entertainment/books/161501475.html?vi_adid=W
More about the Writers Institute events: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/harjo_joy12.html
You are invited to attend a free catered reception with Harjo, sponsored by SUNY Press, after the evening event at approximately 9:30 p.m.
Joy Harjo, Native American poet and musician
November 1 (Thursday)
Seminar — 4:15 p.m., Campus Center Room 375, Uptown Campus
Reading — 8:00 p.m., Campus Center Room 375, Uptown Campus Read More......
Taiwanese Film Friday
Wesley Morris in the Boston Globe reviews Goodbye, Dragon Inn, which will be screened this Friday....
Read more: http://www.boston.com/ae/movies/articles/2004/10/29/say_hello_to_an_eerily_exquisite_movie/
More on the film series: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/programpages/cfs.html#goodbye Read More......
Sandy's Impact on NYC Publishing
"The wind and rain may have died down in New York City, but the metropolis is far from recovered. In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, which has left thousands throughout the tri-state without power, many publishers are struggling to get their systems back online, and some are reporting issues at their warehouses, as well."
More: http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/54560-new-york-publishing-struggling-to-get-back-online-post-sandy.html
Read More......
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
NPR Interview with Joy Harjo
"I [had] felt like I had lost my voice, too. And sometimes, to find it ... what I've learned is it needs to be lost for a while. And when it wants to be found, you'll find it.
"But I would say is that you just put yourself in the place of poetry. You just go where poetry is, whether it's in your heart or your mind or in books or in places where there's live poetry or recordings.
"And, you know, it's like looking for love. You can't look for love, or it will run away from you. But, you know, don't look for it. Don't look for it. Just go where it is and appreciate it, and, you know, it will find you."
Read more or listen to the interview: http://www.npr.org/2012/07/09/156501436/joy-harjos-crazy-brave-path-to-finding-her-voice
Harjo visits UAlbany tomorrow, 4:15 and 8pm, Campus Center 375, with a catered reception by SUNY Press to follow the evening event. Read More......
The Big Read in Albany
You may have missed the kick-off event yesterday at The Palace, but there are also two panel discussions, a documentary screening and a musical performance.
You may also be interested in this:
American Place Theatre performance of The Things They Carried
November 7 (Wednesday)
Pre-Performance discussion at 7 p.m.
Performance — 7:30 p.m., Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center, Uptown Campus
$15 general public / $12 seniors & faculty-staff / $10 students Box Office: (518) 442-3997
Tim O’Brien’s masterwork of contemporary literature about the Vietnam War is taken from book to stage by American Place Theatre, the award-winning New York City based company. The verbatim adaptation of this compassionate tale of the American soldier includes five of the short stories from the book including “The Rainy River” and “The Man I Killed.” With original cello music as underscoring, the audience plays witness to the complex issues of war and the universal struggle of the soldier.
For more about the Big Read, visit the website of the Albany Public Library:
http://www.albanypubliclibrary.org/documents/thebigread_2012.pdf Read More......
Poet Joy Harjo talks about her tattoo...
The tattoo on my hand is a tattoo. It’s not henna. The style is from the Marquesas Islands. The Marquesas are north of Tahiti.
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Joy Harjo: A Poem to Get Rid of Fear
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAYCf2Gdycc Read More......
Joy Harjo coming Thursday
Joy Harjo, Native American poet and musician
November 1 (Thursday)
Seminar — 4:15 p.m., Campus Center Room 375, Uptown Campus
Reading — 8:00 p.m., Campus Center Room 375, Uptown Campus
Joy Harjo is an award-winning poet and musician of the Mvskoke/Creek Nation. The author of seven collections of poetry, she was praised by the late Adrienne Rich for her “breathtaking complex witness and world-remaking language.” Her poetry collections include How We Became Human (2002), The Woman Who Fell From the Sky (1994), and In Mad Love and War (1990), which received the American Book Award and the William Carlos Williams Award of the Poetry Society of America. Her new book is the memoir, Crazy Brave (2012), about her journey from a troubled childhood and teenage motherhood to her accomplishments in the arts.
Cosponsored by SUNY Press in conjunction with the annual John G. Neihardt Lecture
Read more: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/harjo_joy12.html
Read More......
Friday, October 26, 2012
Edwin Torres: A Startling Performer, Tonight in the Ballroom
"I have seen Edwin Torres dancing to the sound of a musical saw while wearing a hat of dirt on his head in a store window, and once wearing pure white with the painter/poet Elizabeth Castagna on New Year's day 1999. I've always wanted to be Edwin Torres for a day, to think like him, to wear cool glasses, to be as tall and thin, to have Puerto Rican soul so I could write 'I'm near a tiger's smooch, BURP!'"
Read more of Brenda Coultas' Electronic Poetry Center review of Edwin Torres' poetry collection, Fractured Humorous here: http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/torrese/fractured.html
Get a taste of Torres' performance style on YouTube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8uOPBn5jW4 Read More......
Larry La Fountain-Stokes on Sexual Persecution and Migration
View his talk on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoyjL23Bwhc
Books by La Fountain-Stokes include the scholarly work, Queer Ricans: Cultures and Sexualities in the Diaspora (2009), and the bilingual fiction collection, Uñas pintadas de azul/Blue Fingernails (2009). Read More......
Thursday, October 25, 2012
A Cascade Of Words: Jesus Papoleto Melendez
http://www.uctv.tv/shows/A-Cascade-Of-Words-Jesus-Papoleto-Melendez-2645
More about the Diasporican Poets Cafe tomorrow at UAlbany: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/puerto_rican_diaspora12.html
Photo: Melendez on the Boricua Poetry website. Read More......
Giannina Braschi this Friday at the Diasporican Cafe
Giannina Braschi, major contemporary bilingual poet and fiction writer, will join a number of other "Diasporican" poets on stage 5:30-7:45 p.m., Friday, October 26th in the Campus Center Ballroom.
Written in inventive mixtures of English, Spanish and Spanglish, Braschi's work explores collisions of language, culture and history with regard to the lives and experiences of 50 million Hispanic-Americans living in the United States.
In the Evergreen Review, Barney Rosset said of Braschi's 2011 novel, The United States of Banana, “Revolutionary in subject and form, United States of Banana is a
beautifully written declaration of personal independence. Giannina Braschi’s
take on U.S. relations with our southern neighbors in Latin America and the
Caribbean, most especially Puerto Rico, is an eye-opener. The ire and irony make
for an explosive combination and a very exciting read.”
In advance praise of Braschi's bilingual novel, Yo Yo Boing! (2011), Harvard scholar Doris Sommer said, “A bilingual rollercoaster....A rush of gloriously nuanced sentences that teeter
between the grotesque and burlesque…the text transmutes poetry into novel, into
screenplay, dialogue, and by extension to more and sometimes unidentified
variants.”
The Literature of Bullying-- Replies, Rebuttals, Confessions, and Catharsis
Gomez will participate in two events on Friday:
Conversations with Diasporican Writers — 2:15 – 3:45 p.m., Assembly Hall, Campus Center, Uptown CampusModerator: Tomás Urayoán Noel, University at Albany
Guest Writers: Magdalena Gómez, Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes, Jesús Papoleto Meléndez, and Edwin Torres
Diasporican Café: Performing Voices of the Puerto Rican Diaspora — 5:30 – 7:45 p.m., Campus Center Ballroom
Guest Writers: Giannina Braschi, Magdalena Gómez, Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes, Jesús Papoleto Meléndez, and Edwin Torres
Five internationally known U.S. Puerto Rican writer-performers will discuss their work in an afternoon panel discussion and present readings/performances in the evening. Both events are part of the 20th Anniversary Conference of the Puerto Rican Studies Association, which is being held at UAlbany October 24 – 27. For more information on the Conference go to: http://www.puertoricanstudies.org. Read More......
Upstate Nuyorican Poets Cafe
Featured performers will include Jesus Papoleto Melendez, one of the founders of the Cafe in the 1970s, Edwin Torres, a transformational figure at the Cafe in recent decades, and Giannina Braschi and Magdalena Gomez, both leaders of the Nuyorican poetry movement.
More on the event in Albany: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/puerto_rican_diaspora12.html
More on the Nuyorican Cafe: http://www.nuyorican.org/
And here's a recent article about a newly announced $7 million renovation of the cafe: http://www.thelodownny.com/leslog/2012/10/nuyorican-cafe-looks-to-undertake-a-7-million-dollar-renovation.html Read More......
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Poet Joy Harjo profile in High Country News
Native American poet and musician Joy Harjo, who visits Albany on Thursday, Nov. 1, is profiled in High Country News, a Colorado based magazine about public policy and culture in the American West:
http://www.hcn.org/hcn/issues/44.17/already-gone-a-profile-of-native-american-poet-joy-harjo Read More......
The Hungry Ear: Kevin Young
"It delivers such a groaning board of things to love, from Seamus Heaney on oysters and Lucille Clifton on collard greens to Theodore Roethke on root cellars and Jane Kenyon on shopping at an IGA."
More: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/22/books/the-hungry-ear-poems-of-food-drink-kevin-young-editor.html
More on Young's 2005 visit to Albany:
http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/young_kevin.html Read More......
Performing Voices of the Puerto Rican Diaspora
October 26 (Friday)
Conversations with Diasporican Writers — 2:15 – 3:45 p.m., Assembly Hall, Campus Center, Uptown Campus
Moderator: Tomás Urayoán Noel, University at Albany
Guest Writers: Magdalena Gómez, Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes, Jesús Papoleto Meléndez, and Edwin Torres
Diasporican Café: Performing Voices of the Puerto Rican Diaspora — 5:30 – 7:45 p.m., Campus Center Ballroom
Guest Writers: Giannina Braschi, Magdalena Gómez, Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes, Jesús Papoleto Meléndez, and Edwin Torres
Five internationally known U.S. Puerto Rican writer-performers will discuss their work in an afternoon panel discussion and present readings/performances in the evening. Both events are part of the 20th Anniversary Conference of the Puerto Rican Studies Association, which is being held at UAlbany October 24 – 27. For more information on the Conference go to: http://www.puertoricanstudies.org.
Giannina Braschi is the author of the collection of poetry and fiction El imperio de los sueños (1988; Empire of Dreams, 1994) and the novels Yo-Yo Boing (1998) and United States of Banana (2011).
Magdalena Gómez, poet, playwright, and actor, is the co-founder and artistic director of Teatro V!da, a performing arts collective that explores multicultural and multigenerational issues.
Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes is a poet, fiction writer, playwright, and performer. His publications include the story collection Uñas pintadas de azul (2009, Blue Fingernails), and the play Escándalo! (2003).
Jesús Papoleto Meléndez is one of the founders of New York’s Nuyorican Poets Café. An award-winning poet, his forthcoming book Hey Yo/Yo Soy! 40 Years of Nuyorican Street Poetry, is the first volume of his collected work.
Edwin Torres is known internationally for his experimentalist performance poetry that incorporates sound, visual theatre, and audience participation. He is the author of the poetry collection In the Function of External Circumstances (2010).
Sponsored by the Center for Latino, Latin American, and Caribbean Studies; the Department of Latin American, Caribbean, and US Latino Studies; and the College of Arts and Sciences at UAlbany
Friday, October 19, 2012
The Execution of Wanda Jean in the news....
There's an article on Jackson's fight that mentions Wanda Jean Allen in an October 2012 issue of The Nation:
http://www.thenation.com/article/170284/jesse-jackson-fights-capital-punishment-gambia#
Photo: Jackson with Gambian president Yahyah Jammeh. Read More......
Coetzee Event: UAlbany Photo of the Day
Nobel Visit
Thursday, October 18, 2012
Vivien Ng and James Acker at the Movies
Vivien Ng is chair of the UAlbany Women's Studies Department and the first president of the National Women's Studies Association (1993-4). More on Vivien: http://www.albany.edu/womensstudies/fac-ngv.shtml
James Acker is Distinguished Teaching Professor of the School of Criminal Justice and author of the standard textbook, Criminal Procedure: A Contemporary Perspective (1999, now in its 3rd edition, 2012). More on Acker: http://www.albany.edu/scj/james_acker.php Read More......
The Next Big One, Tonight with David Quammen
Read more in Yale Environment 360: http://e360.yale.edu/mobile/feature.msp?id=2579
Quammen visits today at 4:15 and 8PM in the UAlbany Campus Center:
http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/programpages/vws.html#david
Photo from the 1918 flu pandemic. Read More......
Quammen on Fact vs. Fiction
"Fact or truth, yeah, that question. I utterly distrust the word truth. I detest it when writers claim they are hedging on factuality in service to higher truth. Or sometimes it's the essential truth of a situation. Bullshit. Nonfiction should be composed, artfully but conscientiously, like a mosaic, from bits of accurate fact. Is it an art form? well, it can be, it should be. Artful, imaginative, accurate: this combination of adjectives is not contradictory. Readers should demand this of their nonfiction, and not settle for self-indulgent, falsified jive. The form in which this boundary has been most egregiously violated recently is the memoir. Ugh."
Read more: http://www.terrain.org/interview/21/ Read More......
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
Of Bats, Pythons and the Marburg Virus
Quammen visits the Writers Institute tomorrow, Thursday.
"Astrid Joosten was a 41-year-old Dutch woman who, in June 2008, went to Uganda with her husband. At home in Noord-Brabant, she worked as a business analyst. Both she and her husband, Jaap Taal, a financial manager, enjoyed annual adventures, especially to Africa. The journey in 2008, booked through an adventure-travel outfitter, took them to the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, home to mountain gorillas. While there, the operators offered an optional trip, to a place called the Maramagambo Forest, where the chief attraction was a peculiar site known as Python Cave. African rock pythons lived there, languid and content, grown large and fat on a diet of bats."
More in The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/sep/28/deadly-viruses-ebola-marburg-sars
More on Quammen's visit: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/quammen_david12.html
Picture: Egyptian fruit bats, Queen Elizabeth National Park, Uganda Read More......
They're Coming!... The Zoonotic Diseases
"In September 1994, a violent disease erupted among racehorses in a suburb of Brisbane, Australia. The place, called Hendra, was a quiet old neighborhood filled with racecourses, stables, newsstands that sell tip sheets, corner cafés with names like The Feed Bin, and racing people. The first victim was a pregnant mare named Drama Series, who started showing symptoms in an outlying pasture and was brought back to her trainer's stable for doctoring, where she only got worse. Three people worked to save her—the trainer himself, his stable foreman, and a veterinarian. Within two days Drama Series died, leaving the cause of her trouble uncertain. Had she been bitten by a snake? Had she eaten some poisonous weeds out in that scrubby, derelict meadow? Those hypotheses were eliminated two weeks later, when most of her stablemates fell ill. This wasn't snakebite or toxic fodder. It was something contagious."
Read more: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2007/10/infectious-animals/quammen-text
More about his visit: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/quammen_david12.html Read More......
Capital Punishment Documentary and Discussion Friday
October 19 (Friday)
Film Screening — 7:30 p.m., Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, Downtown Campus
Directed by Liz Garbus
(United States, 2007, 94 minutes, color)
|
An Embarrassment for the Pulitzer Jury
"Mr. Quammen... is not just among our best science writers but among our best writers, period.... That he hasn’t won a nonfiction National Book Award or Pulitzer Prize is an embarrassment."
So writes Dwight Garner this month in the New York Times.
Read the article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/03/books/spillover-by-david-quammen-on-how-animals-infect-humans.html?_r=0
Quammen visits us tomorrow:
David
Quammen, nature writer and author
October 18
(Thursday)
Seminar — 4:15 p.m., Assembly Hall, Campus Center, Uptown
Campus
Reading — 8:00 p.m., Assembly Hall, Campus Center, Uptown
Campus
David Quammenis one of America’s leading
nature writers. His new book is Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next
Human Pandemic (2012), about his travels in the remote corners of the globe
with field researchers investigating disease outbreaks in rats, monkeys, bats,
pigs, and other species, with the potential to “spillover” to humans. Walter
Isaacson described the book as “a frightening and fascinating masterpiece of
science reporting that reads like a detective story.” A widely-travelled
contributing writer for National Geographic, and the author of the
column, “Natural Acts,” for Outside magazine for 15 years, Quammen has
written several nonfiction bestsellers, including The Reluctant Mr. Darwin
(2006), Monster of God (2003), The Boilerplate Rhino
(2001), and The Song of the Dodo (1996).
Cosponsored by UAlbany’s School of Public Health
Monday, October 15, 2012
Poet Without Borders
Palestinian-American poet Fady Joudah, a practicing physician in the ER unit of a VA Hospital in Houston, Texas, published his first poem while working abroad for Doctors Without Borders in Zambia (he has also worked for that organization in Sudan).
Winner of Yale University's Younger Poets Series prize, Joudah will visit with major Palestinian poet Ghassan Zaqtan tomorrow October 16th (rescheduled from April 10th).
Joudah served as translator for Zaqtan's first collection in English, Like a Straw Bird It Follows Me (2012) from Yale University Press.
Joudah was profiled and interviewed by David Thies in the Texas Observer in 2008:
"Poetry comes from a pre-evolutionary space," he says when asked about the origins of his work. He looked back to the Arabic poetry he had shared with his father and began working at translating the cadence-the feel-of that language into English. "I told myself that if I could reproduce that childhood cadence in English, I could be a poet."
Why didn't he write poetry in his native Arabic? Joudah describes the decision to write in English as an embrace and a rebuke. Writing in English is "a way to embrace the world," he says, and a riposte to the "Orientalist" view of Arabic culture that it is exotic and underdeveloped. More.
Zaqtan in the Times Union
Paul Grondahl of the Times Union profiles major Palestinian poet Ghassan Zaqtan, and interviews Palestinian-American poet Fady Joudah. Both will visit Albany tomorrow:
Palestinian poet Ghassan Zaqtan, whose application for a visa was held up in a case described as "ethnic profiling," has rescheduled a hastily canceled April U.S. tour and will visit the University at Albany on Tuesday on a triumphant note.
"We are so happy to have him here finally, but it was a disappointing and frustrating case of an entrenched and bizarre U.S. bureaucracy," said Dr. Fady Joudah, a Houston physician who also is a Palestinian-American poet, winner of the Yale Younger Poets prize and a translator of the poetry of Zaqtan (pronounced ZOCK-tawn), who writes in Arabic.
Read more: http://www.timesunion.com/living/article/Poetic-license-3943081.php#ixzz29NwMLZTw
Ghassan Zaqtan on PBS NewsHour
NewsHour link: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/indepth_coverage/entertainment/poetry/profiles/poet_zaqtan.html
Here are the event details:
Ghassan Zaqtan, Palestinian poet, with Fady Joudah, Palestinian-American poet and translator
October 16 (Tuesday)
Seminar — 4:15 p.m., Campus Center Room 375, Uptown Campus
Reading — 7:00 p.m. [Note early start time], Campus Center Room 375, Uptown Campus
Ghassan Zaqtan, poet, novelist, journalist, screenwriter, and playwright, is a major Palestinian poet and a leading representative of the avant-garde in Arabic literature. His most recent collection—the first to appear in English—is Like a Straw Bird It Follows Me (2012), which was translated by Fady Joudah, a Palestinian-American poet and winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition for his own collection, The Earth in the Attic (2008). A past participant in numerous panels and colloquia with leading Israeli writers on peaceful coexistence and mutual concerns, Zaqtan is also the co-founder and director of the House of Poetry in Ramallah and is currently the Director General of the Literature and Publishing Department of the Palestinian Ministry of Culture.
Note: This event has been rescheduled from April 10, 2012.
Read More......
Friday, October 12, 2012
Animal Rights Activist and Nobel Laureate to Speak
He is a leading figure of the Australian organization, Voiceless-- The Animal Protection Institute, and co-selected the stories and essays that appear in the 2013 Voiceless Anthology, which will be published in December 2012.
Coetzee calls animal protection, "one of the more urgent social and philosophical issues of our times." His bestselling novel, Elizabeth Costello (2003), explores many of these issues.
More on the anthology: http://www.voiceless.org.au/grants-and-prizes/writing-prize/2013anthology
Coetzee will share the share with his friend Paul Auster twice today at UAlbany.
More about the events: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/coetzee_auster12.html
Photo of pigs in an industrial farming facility from an op-ed piece by Coetzee in the Sydney Morning Herald decrying Biblical justifications for the eating of meat:
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/animals/nothing-biblical-in-factory-farming-20111205-1oe2o.html Read More......
Thursday, October 11, 2012
John Malkovich in Coetzee's "Disgrace"
See the trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqvIssZT6cg
Coetzee, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, visits UAlbany tomorrow, Friday, 10/12: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/programpages/vws.html#jm Read More......
Cycling with Coetzee
ALBANY — The literary coup that the University at Albany scored by bringing Nobel Prize-winning South African novelist J.M. Coetzee to campus on Friday began with a bike ride in Oklahoma a decade ago
More: http://www.timesunion.com/default/article/UAlbany-s-literary-coup-a-long-winding-road-3937098.php
More about Coetzee's visit: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/coetzee_auster12.html Read More......
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
A Nobel Prize for One of Ours?
The most noteworthy at the moment is Paul Auster (100:1 odds), who shares the stage on Friday with actual Nobel Prize winner J. M. Coetzee. Link here.
Ladbrokes gives the following authors among our visitors a 16:1 chance: Philip Roth, Amos Oz and Margaret Atwood.
At 20:1, we have Les Murray and Chinua Achebe.
At 33:1, Adam Zagajewski, Don DeLillo, Nurrudin Farah, Joyce Carol Oates and New York State Author E. L. Doctorow.
At 50:1, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Chang-Rae Lee, Peter Carey, Bei Dao, Ernesto Cardenal and
A. B. Yehoshua. At 66:1, Kazuo Ishiguro, Colm Toibin, William Gass, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Julian Barnes and New York State Poet John Ashbery. At 100:1, in addition to Auster, Michael Ondaatje, New York State Author Mary Gordon, Marge Piercy and Louise Gluck. If you have any nominations of your own, feel free to post! |
Ah Bartleby! Ah humanity! on Friday afternoon 10/12
You can prepare for the event by reading the story here: http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=1479870
J. M. Coetzee, Nobel Prize winner from South Africa, and Paul Auster, bestselling author, will present a rare opportunity to discuss one of the classic and most influential short stories of modern times:
Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-street by Herman Melville
"I AM a rather elderly man. The nature of my avocations for the last thirty years has brought me into more than ordinary contact with what would seem an interesting and somewhat singular set of men, of whom as yet nothing that I know of has ever been written:—I mean the law-copyists or scriveners." More. Read More......
Thursday, October 4, 2012
Insight into How We Pick Our Visiting Writers
Since that time, we have been trying to work out a suitable date with Mann, who was born and raised in Albany, and who attended the Albany Academy.
Mann visits this coming Tuesday. His mother plans to attend both events.
James Mann, journalist and nonfiction writer
October 9 (Tuesday)
Seminar — 4:15 p.m., Assembly Hall, Campus Center, Uptown Campus
Reading — 8:00 p.m., Assembly Hall, Campus Center, Uptown Campus
Born and raised in Albany, NY, journalist James Mann is a sought-after authority on the behind-the-scenes deliberations over foreign policy within recent American presidential administrations. His newest book is The Obamians: The Struggle Inside the White House to Redefine American Power (2012), an insider’s guide to the events, ideas, personalities, and conflicts that have defined Barack Obama’s foreign policy. In a New York Times review Michiko Kakutani said, “Drawing upon some 125 interviews…Mr. Mann writes with shrewdness and insight about the evolution of the president’s thinking, tensions among his staff…and contrasts and continuities between his conduct of foreign policy and that of the previous two presidents.” Mann achieved international renown with Rise of the Vulcans (2004), a revelatory and much-cited study of George W. Bush’s war cabinet. A former Beijing Bureau Chief for the L. A. Times, Mann is also the author of three award-winning books on America’s evolving relationship with China. Read More......