Friday, January 31, 2014

New Poetry Bestseller!


We are pleased that Poetry of Witness (2014) edited by Carolyn Forche (who visited us yesterday), has flown to the to the top of poetry bestseller lists nationwide. Among other things, it is the #1 best selling poetry anthology on Amazon.com and the #4 best selling poetry volume overall (trailing slightly behind Poe, Shakespeare and Homer).

http://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Books-Poetry-Anthologies/zgbs/books/10250

http://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Books-Poetry/zgbs/books/10248

Her appearance Wednesday on the PBS NewsHour may have helped in this regard:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/poet-carolyn-forche-gathers-500-years-of-suffering-in-new-anthology/

Forche reads poems from the collection here:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/poetry/carolyn-forche-explores-writing-as-an-outcry-of-the-soul-in-poetry-of-witness/

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Crime is the High Road to Philosophy

 
Walter Mosley, who visits the Writers Institute on Tues. Feb. 4th, was the subject of a memorable profile more than two decades ago in the New York Times:

Crime is the high road to philosophy for Walter Mosley. In fact, what draws him to write mysteries is the chance to attack moral questions, and the novel that has most affected his writing and his outlook is not a crime story but ''The Stranger'' by the French existentialist Albert Camus.

''Mysteries, stories about crime, about detectives, are the ones that really ask the existentialist questions,'' he says, ''such as 'How do I act in an imperfect world when I want to be perfect?' I'm not really into clues and that sort of thing, although I do put them in my stories. I like the moral questions.'' Mr. Mosley's sometimes mischievous humor is habitually expressed in understatement. The ''imperfect world'' in which ''Devil in a Blue Dress'' is set is the Watts section of Los Angeles in the late 1940's. It is an area where policemen and rotten politicians are presiding menaces but no more dangerous to ordinary citizens like Easy Rawlins than some of his neighbors and friends.

More:  http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/11/15/specials/mosley-moral.html

More about Mosley's visit with Frankie Bailey:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/mosley_bailey14.html

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A Serial Killer in Albany

Michele Leber reviews Frankie Bailey's new crime fiction novel, The Red Queen Dies (2013), in Booklist. Bailey will share the stage with bestselling author Walter Mosley on Feb. 4th.

More about the events: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/mosley_bailey14.html

Here's the Booklist review: "In 2019, a serial killer is on the loose in Albany, New York. Two women in their twenties have been murdered by having phenol injected into their hearts, and when Broadway actress Vivian Jessup, known as the Red Queen for her role in Alice in Wonderland, is killed in the same manner, Albany PD detective Hannah McCabe and partner Mike Baxter struggle to connect the dots in what has become an even higher-profile case. In the near future, everyone has an ORB (smartphone successor?), a drug named Lullaby can erase memories of crime victims (but causes a problem when used by a witness), and a threader (blogger successor?) with inside knowledge plagues the police. What has not changed is that crime solving requires hard work and good instincts. McCabe shows she has what it takes to succeed at her work and to win readers. University of Albany criminal justice professor Bailey, author of the Lizzie Stuart mysteries, leaves some intriguing questions unanswered in this strong start to a projected series."

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Walter Mosley Brings Easy Rawlins Back from the Grave

 
Bestselling crime fiction author Walter Mosley, who visits UAlbany this coming Tuesday, 2/4, brings
back his iconic detective "Easy Rawlins," who drove his car over a cliff some years ago, to star in a new mystery novel set in Los Angeles during the heyday of "Flower Power."

More about Mosley's upcoming visit with crime author and UAlbany professor Frankie Bailey: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/programpages/vws.html#walter

R. A. Brooks Sr. has a review in Black Books and Reviews:

"Powered by some weird concoction called Gator’s Blood given to him by good friend and conjure woman Mama Jo, [Rawlins'] latest journey takes him to the Los Angeles hippie culture and community in 1967. It is a world of free love, psychedelic drugs and for the first time since his days as a soldier in World War II France, Rawlins sees a truly color-blind world."

"But once he steps back outside that world, all the demons, evil and racism remain, stronger than ever. There are the racist cops who want to arrest and destroy him, and the racist thugs who want to kill him. And, oh, the black thugs too."

More:  http://blackbooksandreviews.com/little-green-an-easy-rawlins-mystery-by-walter-mosley/

Picture:  Denzel Washington as Easy Rawlins in the movie adaptation of the first mystery in the series, Devil in a Blue Dress.

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Thursday, January 30, 2014

E. L. Doctorow talks about what he's reading

E. L. Doctorow, titan of American historical fiction who will visit us Feb. 27, talks about what he's reading in a recent edition of "By the Book" in the  New York Times:

What’s the best book you’ve read recently?
 
Well, it could be Herodotus’ “The Histories” in the Landmark edition published by Pantheon. Herodotus is spectacular — part historian, part investigative reporter and inveterate storyteller. Or maybe “Mind and Cosmos,” by Thomas Nagel, an intense philosophical takedown of Neo-Darwinism and scientific materialism. It’s a brave contrarian book. Reminds me of Wittgenstein’s remark: “Even if all our scientific questions are answered, our problem is still not touched at all.” Another best is Don DeLillo’s “Cosmopolis.” A beautiful conceit runs this novel — an epic journey by limo across Midtown Manhattan. And then his new story collection, “The Angel Esmeralda.” DeLillo has a consummate comprehension of the world. And then Harold Bloom’s “The American Religion,” which argues that our domestic Christian religions are more Gnosticism than Christian. Mormonism in his view is the religious future of this country. And I’m recently into “From Eternity to Here” — the physicist Sean Carroll’s fascinating book about time. Time confounds the physicists. They ask why it goes only one way. And finally, if a reread qualifies, I’m going again through Seamus Heaney’s translation of “Beowulf.” Here’s a book that can be sung.
 
More in the New York Times:  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/19/books/review/e-l-doctorow-by-the-book.html
 
More about Doctorow's visit to the University at Albany:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/programpages/vws.html#doctorow
 
Picture:  A Roman copy (2nd c. AD) of a Greek bust of Herodotus from the first half of the 4th c. BC

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Carolyn Forche on PBS NewsHour Yesterday!


Carolyn Forche who visits us today appeared yesterday on the PBS NewHour, January 29, 2014:

Poet Carolyn Forché gathers 500 years of suffering in new anthology....

The poets featured in Carolyn Forché’s anthology “Poetry of Witness” have endured extreme conditions: warfare, censorship, forced exile. The Georgetown professor and poet herself calls the collection an “outcry of the soul.” Jeffrey Brown sat down with Forché to discuss this style of writing and its enduring power.

Website:  http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/poet-carolyn-forche-gathers-500-years-of-suffering-in-new-anthology/

She also reads two poems:  Major John McCrae's poem "In Flanders Field," and Emily Dickinson's poem "They Dropped Like Flakes."  Watch and listen here:  http://www.pbs.org/newshour/poetry/carolyn-forche-explores-writing-as-an-outcry-of-the-soul-in-poetry-of-witness/

More on Forche's visit to UAlbany here:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/forche_carolyn14.html

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Is Twitter a Literary Form?


Recent Institute visitor Teju Cole discusses the limits and possibilities of Twitter as a literary form in the "6th floor blog" of the New York Times:

"When the merits of Twitter are debated, one sentiment invariably is at the top of the con column: 140 characters are seldom enough to express the full weight of an idea. Or at least an idea that’s worth expressing."

"People have found ways around this: conjoined tweets, live-tweeting, etc. … The novelist Teju Cole expanded on this theme on Wednesday, when he posted an entire short story via tweet. Yes, that has been done before. But Cole’s project was different, because the individual tweets were posted not by him, but by his followers, and then @TejuCole retweeted them in chronological order to form a sort of quilted story."

More in the New York Times:  http://6thfloor.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/09/teju-cole-puts-story-telling-to-the-twitter-test/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

More about Teju Cole's visit in February 2012: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/cole_teju12.html

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Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Carolyn Forche explains "Poetry of Witness"

Carolyn Forche, who opens our series on Thursday 1/30, elucidates the meaning of  "Poetry of Witness," a sub-genre of poetry about political violence that she named with the publication of her landmark 1993 anthology, Against Forgetting: A Poetry of Witness.

During her Albany visit, Forche will present the new sequel to that anthology, Poetry of Witness: The Tradition in English, 1500-2001 (2014).

My own journey began in 1980, upon my return from El Salvador, where I had worked for human rights, and led me through the occupied West Bank, Lebanon, and South Africa. Something happened along the way to the introspective poet I had been. My new work seemed controversial to some of my American contemporaries, who argued either against its "subject matter," or against my right as a North American to contemplate issues viewed as "foreign" to her work, or against any mixing of what they saw as the mutually exclusive realms of the poetic and the political. In attempting to come to terms with the question of poetry and politics, and seeking the solace of poetic camaraderie, I turned to Anna Akhmatova, Yannis Ritsos, Paul Celan, Federico Garcia Lorca, Nazim Hikmet, and others. I began collecting their work, and soon found myself a repository of what began to be called "the poetry of witness." In thinking about these poems, I realized that the arguments regarding poetry and politics had been too narrowly defined. Regardless of apparent "subject matter," these poems bear the trace of extremity within them, and they are, as such, evidence of what occurred. They are also poems as much about poetry as are poems that have no subject other than poetry itself.

More from The Writer in Politics. Ed. William H. Gass and Lorin Cuoco (1996) on the website of the English Department, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign: http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/a_f/forche/witness.htm

More about Forche's Albany visit:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/forche_carolyn14.html

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Chicago Review film review calls "Cyclo" a masterpiece

 

The Writers Institute will screen the Vietnamese film Cyclo about a bicycle taxi driver caught up in a world of crime on Friday, Jan. 31, 7:30PM in Page Hall.

Jonathan Rosenbaum reviews the film in the Chicago Reader:

Rating **** Masterpiece

"Cyclo is a visionary piece of work, shot through with passion and poetry."

More in the Chicago Review:  http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/horror-show/Content?oid=891917

The complete film series on the UAlbany Downtown Campus, 135 Western Ave.:
http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/programpages/cfs.html

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Vietnam-themed events at the Writers Institute

The New York State Writers Institute will feature film, fiction and nonfiction in three events exploring recent history in Vietnam:

CYCLO [XICH LO]

January 31 (Friday)
Film screening — 7:30 p.m., Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, Downtown Campus
Directed by Tran Anh Hung (Vietnam, 1995, 123 minutes, color, in Vietnamese with English subtitles)
Starring Le Van Loc, Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Tran Nu Yên-Khê
The first Vietnamese film to be nominated for an Oscar, and the winner of two top prizes at the Venice Film Festival, CYCLO tells the tale of a bicycle-taxi driver in Ho Chi Minh City who becomes entangled in a world of drugs and crime. The Chicago Reader’s Jonathan Rosenbaum called it, “a visionary piece of work, shot through with passion and poetry.”
 
James D. Redwood, short story writer
February 18 (Tuesday)
Reading — 4:15 p.m., Standish Room, Science Library, Uptown Campus

James D. Redwood,
Professor of Law at Albany Law School, is the author of a first collection of stories, Love Beneath the Napalm (2014), inaugural winner of the Notre Dame Review Book Prize. Based on Redwood’s experiences as an English teacher and social worker in 1970s Vietnam, the stories have been published previously in leading literary magazines, including the Virginia Quarterly Review, Kenyon Review, and TriQuarterly.
 
Nick Turse, investigative journalist and military historian
February 19 (Wednesday)
Reading and discussion — 4:15 p.m., Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center
Nick Turse, award-winning journalist specializing in national security and military issues, is the managing editor of TomDispatch.com and Investigative Fund fellow at the Nation Institute. His newest book is the New York Times bestseller Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam (2013), an account of U.S. war crimes against Vietnamese civilians based on previously classified documents. His investigations of U.S. war crimes have earned him a special Ridenhour Prize for Reportorial Distinction. His earlier books include The Changing Face of Empire (2012), The Case for Withdrawal from Afghanistan (2010), and The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives (2008).
Cosponsored by Women Against War, and UAlbany’s Journalism Program in conjunction with its 40th Anniversary

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Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Booklist Review of Carolyn Forche's New Book

Carolyn Forche's new anthology of poems about political violence receives a rave from Donna Seaman in Booklist.  Forche visits UAlbany to make two free presentations this coming Thursday.

http://www.booklistonline.com/Poetry-of-Witness-The-Tradition-in-English-1500-2001-/pid=6421407

The 300 poems gathered so astutely in this authoritative and stirring anthology were written by poets of the past whose lives were changed, even destroyed, by war, oppression, imprisonment, torture, slavery, and exile. Poet Forché (Blue Hour, 2003) has long been a champion and practitioner of poetry of conscience, creating the genre-defining Against Forgetting (1993). She now teams up with fellow English professor Wu to excavate the roots of this essential tradition of poetry that confronts “evil and its embodiments” in “appeals for a shared sense of humanity and collective resistance.” The sheer enormity of this “living archive,” an artistic record of five centuries of violence and suffering and protest and truth-telling, illuminates humankind at its most horrific and most glorious. The selections are blazing and haunting, poems of fierce precision, communal consciousness, courage, and reverberating beauty, and Forché and Wu succinctly establish the historical context for each poet’s work in glinting biographical essays. William Blake, John Keats, Walt Whitman, and Emily Dickinson are all seen from fresh vantage points. Here, too, are antislavery poet Lydia Maria Child; Olaudah Equiano, an enslaved Nigerian; Harlem Renaissance writer Claude McKay; WWII veteran and dissident Karl Shapiro; and conscientious objector William Stafford—“You walk on toward / September, the depot, the dark, the light, the dark.”

More about Forche's visit:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/forche_carolyn14.html

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Carolyn Forche in the New Yorker

Carolyn Forche's new anthology of poems written by prisoners, slaves, victims of torture, and others testifying to conditions of political oppression, Poetry of Witness (2014), is featured in a capsule review in the New Yorker's "Books to Watch Out For." Forche visits the Institute on Thursday.

Reviewer Andrea Denhoed says, "The editors’ extensive and varied selection amounts to a reconfiguration of English literary history and a consideration of the purposes and achievements of poetry."

More in the New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2014/01/books-to-watch-out-for-january-1.html

Details of Forche's visit:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/programpages/vws.html#forche

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Friday, January 24, 2014

Carolyn Forche, Winner of 2013 Poetry Academy Fellowship



Carolyn Forche, the first guest of the NYS Writers Institute's Spring 2014 Visiting Writers Series, is the recent recipient of the 2013 Academy of American Poets Fellowship, awarded annually to an individual poet for "distinguished poetic achievement."

More:  Prestigious Poetry Prize Goes to Professor, Activist Carolyn Forché
http://www.georgetown.edu/news/carolyn-forche-wins-prestigious-poetry-fellowship.html

Forche will visit the University at Albany to present her new anthology of poetry written under duress by men and women as they face political violence and persecution, Poetry of Witness: The Tradition in English, 1500 – 2001 (2014), a sequel to her landmark anthology, Against Forgetting (1993).

More about Forche's visit here:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/forche_carolyn14.html

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Tuesday, January 21, 2014

New York State sponsors Poetry Unites writing contest



Open to all New York State residents for the
best short essay about a favorite poem

After a successful six-year run in Europe, the Poetry Unites contest, inspired by Robert Pinsky's Favorite Poem project, is coming to New York State.

Marie Howe, the New York State Poet under the sponsorship of the New York State Writers Institute, and Corinne Evens, a philanthropist, in co-ordination with the Academy of American Poets, the New York State Writers Institute, and the New York State Office of Cultural Education, are pleased to announce a contest for the best short essay about a favorite poem. The contest is open to all New York State residents.

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Wednesday, January 8, 2014

Spring Writing Workshops with James Lasdun

NYS Writers Institute Announces Spring 2014 Community Writing Workshops Open to the Public

New York State Writers Institute Fellow and award-winning author James Lasdun will conduct two creative writing workshops for community writers during the spring 2014 semester. Lasdun, a fiction and nonfiction writer, poet, and screenwriter, will offer two eight-week workshops: one on fiction writing, and one on poetry. The workshops are offered for non-credit and will be held at the University at Albany's uptown campus. Admission to both workshops is based on the submission of writing samples. Complete information on the workshops and submission guidelines may be obtained by calling the Institute at 518-442-5620 or by visiting the Institute's website at:

http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/programpages/workshop.html

Fiction Writing Workshop

The Fiction Writing Workshop (starting March 6) will focus on detailed discussion of students' work but there will also be readings from published novels, novellas, and short stories. These will range from the classic to the contemporary, and will be selected with a view to broadening the discussion of topics such as character, plot, style and form, as they arise. Participants will be expected to be strongly self-motivated and to submit two works of up to twenty pages each over the course of the semester. These may be short stories or excerpts from longer works.

Poetry Writing Workshop

The Poetry Writing Workshop (starting March 5) is for self-motivated students who already have some writing experience, and is intended to give participants an opportunity to develop and revise poems within a context of constructive peer-group criticism. Course work will concentrate on students' writing, but will also include close reading of selected texts with a view to discussing specific aspects of the art of poetry, such as voice, metaphor, and the relation of style to subject. Participants will be expected to submit up to ten pages of poetry every second week.

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Tuesday, January 7, 2014

NYS Writers Institute Announces Spring 2014 Schedule of Events


E. L. Doctorow! Julia Glass! Walter Mosley! Christopher Durang! And many more….

The New York State Writers Institute at the University at Albany announces its Spring 2014 schedule of visiting writer appearances and film series screenings. Events take place on the UAlbany uptown and downtown campuses and are free and open to the public (unless otherwise noted).

Spring 2014 Visiting Writers Series:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/programpages/vws.html

Spring 2014 Classic Film Series:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/programpages/cfs.html

"The Spring 2014 Visiting Writers Series features old friends and new faces, always a good mix for literary events," said Institute Director Donald Faulkner. Highlighting the spring season are appearances by literary icon E. L. Doctorow, author of the new novel Andrew's Brain, which Booklist described as "an exquisitely disturbing, morally complex, tragic, yet darkly funny novel of the collective American unconscious;" poet and human rights activist Carolyn Forché, co-editor of the new anthology Poetry of Witness: The Tradition in English, featuring poems "composed at an extreme of human endurance;" a performance of American Place Theatre's adaptation of Richard Wright's classic autobiographical work Black Boy; Robert H. Patton, the grandson of legendary World War II General George S. Patton, and author of Hell Before Breakfast, a history of American War journalism; and Austin Bunn, who co-wrote the screenplay for the hit film KILL YOUR DARLINGS.

In addition to Doctorow, visiting fiction writers will include National Book Award winner (Three Junes) Julia Glass; novelist Walter Mosley, best known for his detective fiction, who will be reading with mystery writer and UAlbany's criminal justice scholar Frankie Y. Bailey; Dinaw Mengestu and Akhil Sharma, two distinguished young writers whose new work explores African and Asian immigrant experiences; and three authors with new short story collections-Albany Law School professor James D. Redwood; Italian novelist and Oscar-nominated screenwriter Francesca Marciano; and 2013 Man Booker International Prize winner Lydia Davis.

Nonfiction authors include investigative journalist Nick Turse, whose New York Times bestseller Kill Anything that Moves documents U. S. war crimes in Vietnam; and Walter Kirn, author of the new true crime nonfiction book Blood Will Out, about serial con artist Clark Rockefeller.

Playwright Christopher Durang, winner of the 2013 Tony Award for his comic Broadway hit Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike will deliver the 18th Annual Burian Lecture on his career as a playwright. The Institute and UAlbany's English Department will also cosponsor a special celebration of the work of poet, translator, and former UAlbany professor Pierre Joris.

The Spring 2014 Classic Film Series features several film screenings that tie in with guests of the Visiting Writers Series, as well as appearances by three filmmakers. In addition to screening KILL YOUR DARLINGS followed by commentary by co-screenwriter Austin Bunn, the Institute will also be screening SWEET DREAMS, a documentary about a group of Rwandan women who form the first all-female drumming troupe and open the country's first ice cream parlor, with the film's director, Rob Fruchtman, providing commentary; and the Italian film MIELE (HONEY), with commentary by the film's screenwriter Francesca Marciano, who will also be visiting the Institute to read from her new story collection. Additional screenings of films with visiting writer tie-ins will include RAGTIME, based on E. L. Doctorow's award-winning novel, and UP IN THE AIR, based on the novel by Walter Kirn.

Rounding out the Classic Film Series will be screenings of the Vietnamese film CYCLO [XICH LO]; a Valentine's Day treat, the musical LOVELY TO LOOK AT; THE GRAPES OF WRATH, sponsored in conjunction with UAlbany's School of Criminal Justice's Food, Crime, and Justice Film Series; a St. Patrick's Day offering, THE QUIET MAN, starring John Wayne as a retired prizefighter; the Satyajit Ray film MAHANGAR [THE BIG CITY]; and the silent film THE DOCKS OF NEW YORK, with live piano accompaniment by Mike Schiffer.

The complete listing of the Visiting Writers Series and Classic Film Series schedules follows.

VISITING WRITER SERIES

January 30 (Thursday): Carolyn Forché, poet and human rights activist

Seminar - 4:15 p.m., Standish Room, Science Library

Reading - 8:00 p.m., Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center

Carolyn Forché has written poetry about her firsthand experiences of political strife and violent conflict around the globe. Most recently, she is the co-editor with Duncan Wu of a new anthology, Poetry of Witness: The Tradition in English, 1500 – 2001 (2014), featuring 300 poems "composed at an extreme of human endurance." The book is a companion to Forché's landmark 1993 anthology, Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness. Forché received the 2013 Academy of American Poets Fellowship for "distinguished poetic achievement."

February 4 (Tuesday): Walter Mosley, novelist, and Frankie Y. Bailey, mystery writer and criminal justice scholar

Seminar - 4:15 p.m., Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center

Reading - 8:00 p.m., Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center

Walter Mosley, bestselling author of more than 40 books, and "one of this nation's finest writers" (Boston Globe), is America's leading author of detective fiction in the tradition of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. Mosley is best-known for a series of mystery novels set in Los Angeles featuring African American private investigator Easy Rawlins. Mosley's twelfth Rawlins mystery, his first in six years, is Little Green (2013).

Frankie Y. Bailey, UAlbany Criminal Justice professor and novelist, is the author most recently of The Red Queen Dies (2013), the first novel in a "near-future" police procedural series set in Albany. She is also the author of five books in the Silver Dagger mystery series, featuring crime historian Lizzie Stuart.

February 12 (Wednesday): American Place Theatre performance of Black Boy

Performance - 7:30 p.m., Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center

Pre-performance discussion at 7 p.m.

Tickets: general public $15 in advance, $20 day of; students/seniors/UA faculty & staff $10 in advance, $15 day of

Box Office: (518) 442-3997; tickets@albany.edu

The "Literature to Life" program of American Place Theatre presents a verbatim one-man adaptation of the first half of Richard Wright's classic autobiographical work, Black Boy. The performance, in which the actor plays more than a dozen characters, dramatizes Wright's journey from childhood innocence to adulthood in the Jim Crow South.

Presented by the Performing Arts Center in conjunction with the Writers Institute, with support provided by the Diversity Transformation Fund, administered through the Office of Diversity and Inclusion; and the Holiday Inn Express.

February 18 (Tuesday): James D. Redwood, short story writer

Reading - 4:15 p.m., Standish Room, Science Library

James D. Redwood, Professor of Law at Albany Law School, is the author of a first collection of stories, Love Beneath the Napalm (2014), inaugural winner of the Notre Dame Review Book Prize. The stories are based on Redwood's experiences as an English teacher and social worker in 1970s Vietnam.

February 19 (Wednesday): Nick Turse, investigative journalist and military historian

Reading and discussion - 4:15 p.m., Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center

Nick Turse, award-winning journalist specializing in national security and military issues, is the author of the New York Times bestseller Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam (2013), an account of U.S. war crimes against Vietnamese civilians based on previously classified documents. His investigations of U.S. war crimes have earned him the Ridenhour Prize.

Cosponsored by Women Against War, and UAlbany's Journalism Program in conjunction with its 40th Anniversary

February 27 (Thursday): E. L. Doctorow, fiction writer

Reading - 8:00 p.m., Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, Downtown Campus

E. L. Doctorow, recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters 2013 Gold Medal, and the National Book Foundation's 2013 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, is "a writer of dazzling gifts and boundless, imaginative energy.... our great chronicler of American mythology" (Joyce Carol Oates). His novels include World's Fair (1985), winner of the National Book Award, and four other finalists for the same prize--The Book of Daniel (1971), Loon Lake (1980), Billy Bathgate (1989) and The March (2005). His newest novel is Andrew's Brain (2014), one man's reflections on his eventful life, loves, and tragedies, and a probing inquiry into the reliability of memory.

March 5 (Wednesday): A Celebration of Poet and Translator Pierre Joris

Panel discussion on the works of Pierre Joris - 2:00 p.m., Standish Room, Science Library

Moderated by Donald Faulkner, with poets and scholars Robert Kelly, Peter Cockelbergh, Belle Gironda, and Don Byrd

Conversation with Pierre Joris - 4:15 p.m., Standish Room, Science Library

Moderated by Tomás Urayoán Noel

Reading by Pierre Joris - 8:00 p.m., Standish Room, Science Library

Pierre Joris, poet, translator, and scholar taught at UAlbany from 1992 to 2013. Joris's work bridges North American, European, and North African literary traditions and cultures. He is the author of more than 25 books and chapbooks of poetry, including Breccia: Selected Poems 1972-1986 (1987), Poasis: Selected Poems 1986-1999 (2001), and Barzakh: Selected Poems 2000-2012 (forthcoming 2014). Other notable works include three volumes of the avant-garde anthology series, Poems for the Millennium. He received the 2005 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation.

Cosponsored by the Writers Institute and UAlbany's English Department, with additional support from University Auxiliary Services, the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, Fence, and Barzakh.

March 10 (Monday): The 18th Annual Burian Lecture presented by Christopher Durang, playwright

Seminar - 4:15 p.m., Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center

The Burian Lecture - 8:00 p.m., Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center

Christopher Durang is the author of the comic Broadway hit, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, winner of the 2013 Tony Award, New York Drama Critics' Circle Award, and Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Play. Winner of three Obie Awards for playwriting, Durang was also a Pulitzer Prize finalist for his 2005 play, Miss Witherspoon.

Cosponsored by UAlbany's Theatre Department and funded by the Jarka and Grayce Burian Endowment

March 13 (Thursday): Dinaw Mengestu, fiction writer and journalist

Seminar - 4:15 p.m., Standish Room, Science Library

Reading - 8:00 p.m., Campus Center Room 375

Dinaw Mengestu received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2012, and was named one of the New Yorker magazine's "20 under 40" writers in 2010. Born in Ethiopia, and raised in Illinois, Mengestu is the author of the novels The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears (2007), which received the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His newest novel is All Our Names (2014), about an African university student who attempts to escape his revolutionary past and invent a new identity for himself in America.

March 25 (Tuesday): Walter Kirn, journalist, and fiction and nonfiction writer

Seminar - 4:15 p.m., Assembly Hall, Campus Center

Reading - 8:00 p.m., Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center

Walter Kirn is the author of the new nonfiction book Blood Will Out: The True Story of a Murder, a Mystery, and a Masquerade (2014), about the author's 10-year "friendship" with Clark Rockefeller, the serial con artist and murderer, who is currently serving a life sentence. Kirn is the National Correspondent for the New Republic, where he covers "politics and culture and their convergence." His books include the memoir, My Mother's Bible (2013) and the novels, Up in the Air (2001), and Thumbsucker (1999) that were made into major films. (see Classic Film Series March 7 listing for screening of UP IN THE AIR)

April 3 (Thursday): Julia Glass, novelist

Seminar - 4:15 p.m., Campus Center Room 375

Reading - 8:00 p.m., Huxley Theatre, NYS Museum, Cultural Education Center, Downtown Albany

Julia Glass published her first novel, Three Junes (2002), at the age of 46. The book earned extraordinary praise from reviewers and received the National Book Award for Fiction. Her new novel, And the Dark Sacred Night (2014), set in the Vermont woods and on Cape Cod, tells the story of a middle-aged man who seeks to discover the identity of the father he never knew.

Cosponsored by the Friends of the New York State Library

April 11 (Friday): Francesca Marciano, novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter

Reading - 4:15 p.m., University Hall Room 110

Francesca Marciano is an acclaimed Italian novelist and short story writer who writes her fiction in English, and an Oscar-nominated screenwriter who writes her scripts in Italian. Her newest book is the story collection, The Other Language (2014), which Jhumpa Lahiri called "an astonishing collection.... a vision of geography as it grounds us, as it shatters us, as it transforms the soul." Her novels include The End of Manners (2008), and Casa Rossa (2002). (see Classic Film Series April 11 listing for the screening of MIELE [HONEY], written by Francesca Marciano)

April 16 (Wednesday): Lydia Davis, short story author and translator

Reading and McKinney Writing Contest Award Ceremony - 8:00 p.m., Biotech Auditorium, Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies Building, Rensselaer (RPI), Troy

Lydia Davis, winner of the 2013 Man Booker International Prize, will read from her newest story collection, Can't and Won't (2014). Masterpieces in miniature, the stories feature complaint letters, reflections on dreams, and small dilemmas. Davis has been called "one of the quiet giants of American fiction" (Los Angeles Times Book Review), and "one of the best writers in America" (Oprah's O Magazine). Her previous collections include The Collected Stories (2009), Varieties of Disturbance (2007), and Samuel Johnson is Indignant (2001).

Cosponsored in conjunction with Rensselaer's 72nd Annual McKinney Writing Contest and Reading and Vollmer W. Fries Lecture. For map and directions see: http://rpi.edu/tour/directions.html

April 22 (Tuesday): Akhil Sharma, Indian-American fiction writer

Seminar - 4:15 p.m., Assembly Hall, Campus Center

Reading - 8:00 p.m., Assembly Hall, Campus Center

Akhil Sharma, "a supernova in the galaxy of young, talented Indian writers" (Publishers Weekly), received the PEN/Hemingway Award and the Whiting Writers' Award for his first novel, An Obedient Father (2000). His much-anticipated second novel is Family Life (2014), the story of Indian-American immigrants who are forced to cope after one of the family's two sons suffers a dreadful accident.

April 29 (Tuesday): Robert H. Patton, novelist and historian

Seminar - 4:15 p.m., Standish Room, Science Library

Reading - 8:00 p.m., Assembly Hall, Campus Center

Robert H. Patton, novelist, historian, and grandson of legendary World War II General George S. Patton (1885-1945), is the author most recently of Hell Before Breakfast (2014), a history of American war journalism between 1860 and 1910, from the Civil War and Spanish American War to conflicts in Europe and Asia. He is also the author of the bestselling memoir, The Pattons: A Personal History of an American Family (1994), which Jonathan Yardley of the Washington Post named one of the best books of the year.

CLASSIC FILM SERIES

January 31 (Friday): CYCLO [XICH LO]

Film screening - 7:30 p.m., Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, Downtown Campus

Directed by Tran Anh Hung (Vietnam, 1995, 123 minutes, color, in Vietnamese with English subtitles)

The first Vietnamese film to be nominated for an Oscar, and the winner of two top prizes at the Venice Film Festival, CYCLO tells the tale of a bicycle-taxi driver in Ho Chi Minh City who becomes entangled in a world of drugs and crime.

February 7 (Friday): RAGTIME

Film screening - 7:30 p.m., Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, Downtown Campus

Directed by Milos Forman (United States, 1981, 155 minutes, color)

RAGTIME is based on E. L. Doctorow's best-selling novel of sprawling plot lines, and fictional characters and historical figures whose lives intersect in New York City during the early 1900s. The film version focuses on the story of Coalhouse Walker, Jr., a black piano player who seeks justice for an incident involving a group of racists. The film was nominated for eight Oscars and seven Golden Globe awards. (see Visiting Writers Series February 27 listing for an appearance by E. L. Doctorow)

February 14 (Friday): LOVELY TO LOOK AT

Film screening - 7:30 p.m., Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, Downtown Campus

Directed by Mervyn LeRoy and Vincente Minnelli; choreographer Hermes Pan (United States, 1952, 103 minutes, color)

A lush 1950s Technicolor remake of the 1935 Astaire and Rogers musical ROBERTA, this romantic comedy is among the most visually dazzling films of its era.

February 28 (Friday): THE GRAPES OF WRATH

Film screening - 7:00 p.m. [note early start time], Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, Downtown Campus

Directed by John Ford; cinematographer Gregg Toland (United States, 1940, 129 minutes, b/w)

Based on John Steinbeck's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about an Oklahoma family forced off their land during the Dust Bowl, THE GRAPES OF WRATH was widely considered the greatest American movie of its time. Nominated for seven Oscars, it won for Best Director. UAlbany history professor Kendra Smith-Howard will moderate a discussion immediately following the screening.

Sponsored in conjunction with UAlbany's School of Criminal Justice's Food, Crime, and Justice Film Series

March 7 (Friday): UP IN THE AIR

Film screening - 7:30 p.m., Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, Downtown Campus

Directed by Jason Reitman (United States, 2009, 109 minutes, color)

George Clooney portrays a corporate downsizing expert who travels around the globe restructuring companies and firing people in this acclaimed adaptation of the 2001 novel by Walter Kirn. The film received over 70 award nominations, winning Golden Globe awards for Best Screenplay and Best Actor for George Clooney, and the American Film Institute's Movie of the Year. (see Visiting Writers Series March 25 listing for an appearance by Walter Kirn).

March 14 (Friday): THE QUIET MAN

Film screening - 7:30 p.m., Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, Downtown Campus

Directed by John Ford (United States, 1952, 129 minutes, color)

Director John Ford called upon his friend and favorite actor, John Wayne, to play a former prizefighter who retires to the Irish village of his birth. Unexpectedly, he falls in love with a fiery red-head (Maureen O'Hara), but must negotiate his way around her disapproving brother (Victor McLaglen).

March 28 (Friday): MAHANAGAR [THE BIG CITY]

Film screening - 7:30 p.m., Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, Downtown Campus

Directed by Satyajit Ray (India, 1963, 122 minutes, b/w, in Bengali with English subtitles, and English)

In Calcutta during the 1960s, a young housewife takes a job as a salesperson to help support her family. That decision puts her in conflict with her children, her in-laws, and eventually her husband. Famed Indian director Satyajit Ray won the Best Director Award at the 1964 Berlin International Film Festival for this celebrated landmark of world cinema.

April 4 (Friday): THE DOCKS OF NEW YORK

Film screening - 7:30 p.m., Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, Downtown Campus

Directed by Josef von Sternberg (United States, 1928, 76 minutes, b/w, silent with live musical accompaniment by Mike Schiffer)

In this 1928 silent masterpiece directed by Josef von Sternberg, a steamboat stoker working on the New York City waterfront saves a woman who has jumped off a pier into the briny water below attempting to commit suicide. The selfless act changes his life forever.

April 11 (Friday): MIELE [HONEY]

Film screening of MIELE [HONEY] and discussion with screenwriter Francesca Marciano - 7:00 p.m. [note early start time], Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, Downtown Campus

Directed by Valeria Golino (Italy, 2013, 96 minutes, color, in Italian with English subtitles)

An official selection at Cannes, HONEY is the story of Irene, an "assisted suicide activist" who performs illegal services to assist the terminally ill. She faces a painful dilemma when a healthy man requests her help in ending his life. The film's screenwriter, Francesca Marciano, will provide film commentary and answer questions immediately following the screening. Marciano's recent films as a co-screenwriter include A FIVE STAR LIFE (2013), Bernardo Bertolucci's ME AND YOU (2012), and the Oscar-nominated DON'T TELL (2005). (see Visiting Writers Series April 11 listing for an afternoon reading by Francesca Marciano)

April 25 (Friday): SWEET DREAMS

Film screening with commentary by producer/director Rob Fruchtman - 7:00 p.m. [note early start time], Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, Downtown Campus

Directed by Rob and Lisa Fruchtman (Rwanda and United States, 2012, 84 minutes, color, in Kinyarwanda with English subtitles)

SWEET DREAMS is a documentary that follows the remarkable story of a group of Rwandan women who, in the aftermath of the 1994 genocide, form the country's first all-female drumming troupe, and open the country's first ice cream parlor, with the help of the Brooklyn-based Blue Marble Ice Cream Company. Rob Fruchtman, the film's producer/director will provide commentary and answer questions immediately following the screening.

Sponsored in conjunction with UAlbany's School of Criminal Justice's Food, Crime, and Justice Film Series

Seminar: Rob Fruchtman will hold an informal seminar on documentary filmmaking at 4:15 p.m. on Friday in the Standish Room, Science Library, on the UAlbany uptown campus. Fruchtman won the Documentary Director award at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival for his HBO feature film SISTER HELEN. He has also won three Emmys for his work with PBS.

May 2 (Friday): KILL YOUR DARLINGS

Film screening and discussion with screenwriter Austin Bunn - 7:00 p.m. [note early start time], Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, Downtown Campus

Directed by John Krokidas (United States, 2013, 104 minutes, color)

Austin Bunn co-wrote the screenplay for the hit film KILL YOUR DARLINGS (2013) with his college roommate John Krokidas, the film's director. Nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, the film stars Daniel Radcliffe as poet Allen Ginsberg and Dane DeHaan as Lucien Carr in a story of murder and gay awakening set in New York City amid the nascent Beat poetry scene.

Seminar: Austin Bunn will hold an informal seminar on screenwriting at 4:15 p.m. in the Science Library, Room 340, on the UAlbany uptown campus.

For additional information contact the Writers Institute at 518-442-5620 or online at http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst.

 

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