Dinaw Mengestu, who visited us on March 13 to present his new novel All Our Names, landed on the front page of the New York Times Book Review this past Sunday.
Malcolm Jones writes: "The victories in this beautiful novel are hard fought and hard won, but won they are, and they are durable."
More in the NY Times Book Review: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/23/books/review/all-our-names-by-dinaw-mengestu.html?_r=0
More about Mengestu's visit: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/mengestu_dinaw14.html
Walter Kirn, who visits Albany next week (!), talks with Charlie Rose and Norah O'Donnell about his friendship with con artist and murderer Clark Rockefeller, today on CBS This Morning:
http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/novelist-on-real-life-friendship-with-conman-clark-rockefeller/
Kirn will be featured again on 48 Hours this Saturday at 10 p.m. ET/PT
https://www.facebook.com/48hours
See Walter Kirn LIVE this coming Tuesday at UAlbany:
Walter Kirn, journalist, and fiction and nonfiction writer
March 25 (Tuesday)
Seminar — 4:15 p.m., Assembly Hall, Campus Center, Uptown Campus
Reading — 8:00 p.m., Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center, Uptown Campus
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. Currently serving a life sentence, Rockefeller was convicted of a 1985 killing in 2009. Kirn is the National Correspondent for the New Republic, where he covers “politics and culture and their convergence.” His books include the memoirs, My Mother’s Bible (2013) and Lost in the Meritocracy (2009), and the novels, Up in the Air (2001), and Thumbsucker (1999) that were made into major films. (See Classic Film Series schedule March 7 listing for screening of UP IN THE AIR)
More about Kirn: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/kirn_walter14.html
David Sloan Wilson, evolutionary biologist who participated in our "God vs. Science" debate in April 2007 with Pulitzer winning science journalist Natalie Angier, will speak at the Capital Region Theological Center, April 25 and 26, 2014.
More about the upcoming event: http://crtc.org/civicrm/event/info?id=478&reset=1
More about God vs. Science in 2007: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/angier_n_wilson.html
George Saunders, bestselling short story writer who visited us in February 2013, has won the prestigious Folio Prize in England.
Full press release here: http://www.thefolioprize.com/2014/03/george-saunders-wins-the-folio-prize/
More about his visit here: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/saunders_george13.html
National Book Award winner Julia Glass, who visits us on Thursday, April 3rd, picks her favorite underrated children's books in Entertainment Weekly.
Here are two out of ten:
Life Story by Virginia Lee Burton: “For the precocious science nerd, page past the can-do life lesson of Burton’s Mike Mulligan to Life Story, a proscenium-stage drama that travels through time from the birth of the sun to human existence the way it looked about fifty years ago.”
Uncle Elephant by Arnold Lobel: (Pictured) “Frog and Toad can laugh at the Caldecotts; they’ve been on Broadway. Equally enchanting among Arnold Lobel’s characters, however, is Uncle Elephant, a perfect novel in miniature.”
More in EW: http://shelf-life.ew.com/2014/03/17/julia-glass-criminally-underrated-books/
More about Julia's upcoming visit: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/glass_julia14.html
Here are some reviews for the rising bestseller Blood Will Out by Walter Kirn, who visits us this coming Tuesday, March 25th:
"A Top Ten Book of
Winter 2014" --USA Today
"In this smart,
real-life psychological thriller, the fake Rockefeller is a zombie Gatsby and
Kirn the post-apocalyptic Fitzgerald." --Nina Burleigh, The New
York Times Book Review
"One of the most
honest, compelling and strangest books about the relationship between a writer
and his subject ever penned by an American scribe…Each new revelation comes
subtly, and each adds to the pathetic and creepy portrait of Clark Rockefeller
as a vacuous manipulator…The ending of 'Blood Will Out' is at once deeply
ambiguous and deeply satisfying. By then, Kirn has looked into the eyes of a
cruel, empty man - and learned a lot about himself in the process." --Hector Tobar, Los Angeles
Times
"Engrossing… A
haunting, pained and terrifically engaging self-interrogation… That's what makes
great memoirs - which this one is - so interesting...." --Charles Finch, Chicago
Tribune
"Riveting and
disturbing, Blood Will Out is a mélange of memoir, stranger-than-fiction crime
reporting and cultural critique. The literary markers run the gamut from James
Ellroy's My Dark Places, and Fyodor Doestoevsky's Crime and Punishment to
Patricia Highsmith's Ripley trilogy and Strangers on a Train. Kirn's
self-lacerating meditations on class, art, vanity, ambition, betrayal and
delusion elevate the material beyond its pulpy core." --Larry Lebowitz, Miami
Herald
"Fascinating…The story
of Blood Will Out is one of cosmic ironies and jaw-dropping reversals….What
makes Blood Will Out so absorbing is its teller more than its subject. Kirn's
persona is captivating-funny, pissed off, highly literate, and self-searching.
He's also an elegant, classic writer….Add the highly readable, intricately told
Blood Will Out to the list of great books about the dizzying tensions of the
writing life and the maddening difficulty of getting at the truth." --Amity Gaige, Slate
More about the upcoming events: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/kirn_walter14.html
You are invited to attend the following free event:
You are invited to enter the first New York State “Poetry
Unites” short essay contest.
Major American novelist Barbara Kingsolver visited the Writers Institute in the spring of 1992, and was also interviewed by the late Tom Smith, Institute Director, for the WAMC Book Show, April 16, 1992.
Sleet, a collection of stories by major Swedish author Stig Dagerman (1923-1954), translated into English by former NYS Writers Institute graduate assistant Steve Hartman, has been longlisted for the 2014 Best Translated Book Award.
Elizabeth Floyd Mair profiles Dinaw Mengestu (who visits us on Thursday) in the Times Union.
Q: How did the idea for this book come to you? Did you need to do any mapping out in advance of what would happen?
A: I began this novel while finishing my second book. It started off with a simple image/idea — a group of young friends on a college campus somewhere in Africa just after independence. I thought the story would remain there, and since I had no plan, or map for it, I had to work out the rest of the narrative slowly over the several years.
More in the Times Union: http://www.timesunion.com/default/article/From-Africa-to-America-5294425.php
More about Mengestu's visit: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/mengestu_dinaw14.html
Bill Buell of the Schenectady Gazette profiles Christopher Durang who visits UAlbany today:
As a young boy, Christopher Durang had no interest in short stories or novels. His passion was to write for the stage.
“When I was 8 I announced to my mother that I was going to write a play,” said Durang, whose latest work, “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike,” won the 2013 Tony Award for Best Play.
“Well, I kept on writing them and they kept on getting made. I always wrote plays, and I don’t quite know why. I think it might have been because my mother loved the theater and was always talking about it.”
More in the Gazette: http://www.dailygazette.com/news/2014/mar/08/durang-wrote-stage-early-age-talk-ualbany-tonight/
More about Durang's visit: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/durang_chris14.html
Steve Barnes profiles playwright and humorist Christopher Durang in Sunday's Times Union. Durang visits the Writers Institute today!
Christopher Durang, who visits us on Monday 3/10, is crowned "Poet Laureate of the Absurd" in a New York Observer review of his 2009 play, Why Torture Is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them.
"It’s very good news that Christopher Durang, our Poet Laureate of the Absurd, has written a smashing new play. Why Torture Is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them at the Public Theater is a black farce that’s essentially about, well, torture, and a peculiar brand of American paranoia and bigotry—and I haven’t had such fun at the theater since the recent revival of Mr. Durang’s fable about his own dysfunctional childhood, The Marriage of Bette and Boo."
More in the Observer: http://observer.com/2009/04/im-tickled-by-torture-durang-deals-serious-comedy/
More about Durang's visit: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/durang_chris14.html
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We'll be screening Up in the Air starring George Clooney, Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick, on Friday night 3/7, 7:30 pm at Page Hall. The film received more than 70 award nominations, including a Golden Globe for "Best Screenplay."
The screening is intended to whet your appetite for a 3/25 visit with author Walter Kirn, who wrote the novel on which it is based.
More about our film series: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/programpages/cfs.html#up
A rave review of the film from Pete Travers of Rolling Stone: http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/reviews/up-in-the-air-20091214
More about Walter Kirn's upcoming visit: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/kirn_walter14.html
Bill Kennedy's long friendship with E. L. Doctorow (who visited 2/27) is the subject of an article by Paul Grondahl in the Times Union:
"They are both in their 80s now, William Kennedy and E.L. Doctorow, two acclaimed American novelists whose literary friendship spans 50 years, three dozen books, a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Award, four National Book Critics Circle awards and a shelf of other prestigious fiction prizes between them."
"The two met in 1968 when Doctorow, an editor at The Dial Press, acquired Kennedy's first novel, The Ink Truck, a metaphysical tale loosely based on a 1964 newspaper strike at the Times Union, where Kennedy worked as a reporter...."
More in the TU: http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/A-literary-friendship-spanning-five-decades-5289119.php
More about Doctorow's visit: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/doctorow_el14.html
In yesterday's NY Times, Michiko Kakutani reviews All Our Names by Dinaw Mengestu, who visits us on Thursday, March 13:
Gil King, graduate of Niskayuna High School, returned to his hometown on Monday to talk with high school students. King, who visited the Writers Institute in September 2013, received the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in nonfiction for Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, The Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America, an elegantly written account of the future Supreme Court Justice’s role in defending four black men falsely accused of raping a white woman in Florida in 1949.
Bill Buell of the Schenectady Gazette reports:
[King] was thrilled that so many students seemed interested and excited by their interaction with a Pulitzer Prize winner.He conceded a similar situation probably wouldn’t have interested him when he was in high school.
“Yeah, I would have checked out mentally of something like this back then,” he said. “But everybody seemed to be paying attention and that was nice. They asked a lot of questions, and some were very passionate and I love that. I was shocked. I can’t believe how much time I let pass in high school without paying attention to anything.”
More in the Gazette: http://www.dailygazette.com/news/2014/mar/04/0304_king/
More about King's visit: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/king_gilbert13.html
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
