Derek Walcott, in memoriam (1930-2017)

The Writers Institute mourns the passing of poet and Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott who visited us in
1998.

See video from his Albany visit here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tlWeaErcVE

See more about his Albany visit here:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/walcott.html

Read the New York Times obituary here: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/17/books/derek-walcott-dead-nobel-prize-literature.html?_r=0

Derek Walcott, whose intricately metaphorical poetry captured the physical beauty of the Caribbean, the harsh legacy of colonialism and the complexities of living and writing in two cultural worlds, bringing him a Nobel Prize in Literature, died early Friday morning at his home near Gros Islet in St. Lucia. He was 87.

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Dael Orlandersmith Rescheduled to May 1st!

Please note that Dael Orlandersmith, Obie-winning playwright and Pulitzer Prize finalist in Drama, has rescheduled her appearances to Monday, May 1st (she was originally scheduled to appear March 20th).

Orlandersmith will deliver the annual Burian Lecture about her life in the theater and her powerful new play, “Until the Flood,” about explosive events and racial tensions in Ferguson, Missouri. Her work frequently explores the struggles of African Americans in urbans settings, and life in the rough East Harlem neighborhood of her childhood. Cosponsored by the Jarka and Grayce Burian Endowment and UAlbany’s Theatre Program

May 1 (Monday):  The 21st Annual Burian Lecture— Dael Orlandersmith, award-winning playwright 

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

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

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New Event! Local Journalists On Stage at His Girl Friday Screening

Rosemary Armao, Marion Roach Smith and Casey Seiler will engage the audience in conversation about women in journalism at our free upcoming screening of His Girl Friday (this coming Friday, March 3rd).
March 3 (Friday): HIS GIRL FRIDAY
Pre-screening talk with Rosemary Armao, Marion Roach Smith and Casey Seiler about the challenges facing women in journalism — 7:30 p.m., Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, Downtown Campus, 1400 Washington Ave.
Film screening to follow— 8:00 p.m.
Directed by Howard Hawks (United States, 1940, 92 minutes, b/w)
Starring Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell, Ralph Bellamy
A newspaper editor uses every trick he can think of to stop his top reporter—and ex-wife—from quitting journalism and hopping a train to Albany to marry another man with the intention of settling into a new life as a housewife. This fast-paced comedy with overlapping dialogue was adapted by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur from their  Broadway hit The Front Page. Chicago Reader reviewer Dave Kehr described Cary Grant’s performance as “…truly virtuoso— stunning technique applied to the most challenging material.” The American Film Institute ranked His Girl Friday at #19 in its list of the best American comedies of all time. Quentin Tarantino credits the film with teaching him to write dialogue.
A new high-definition digital restoration of His Girl Friday will be shown.

Rosemary Armao, a star of WAMC’s “The Roundtable,” is the Director of the Journalism Program at the University at Albany. She is a former Executive Director of Investigative Reporters and Editors and former President of the Journalism and Women Symposium.

Marion Roach Smith is the author of four mass-market books. A former staffer at The New York Times, she has been a commentator on NPR’s All Things Considered and a talk show host on Sirius Satellite Radio. She currently teaches writing online and serves as a working member of the Friends of The New York State Writers Institute.

Casey Seiler is the Times Union state editor and columnist, and previously served as the paper’s entertainment editor.

For more information contact the New York State Writers Institute at 518 442 5620 or visit us online at www.writers.edu/inst.

A newspaper editor uses every trick he can think of to stop his top reporter—and ex-wife—from quitting journalism and hopping a train to Albany to marry another man, with the intention of settling into a new life as a housewife. This fast-paced comedy with overlapping dialogue was adapted by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur from their Broadway hit The Front Page. Chicago Reader reviewer Dave Kehr described Cary Grant’s performance as “…truly virtuoso— stunning technique applied to the most challenging material.” The American Film Institute ranked His Girl Friday at #19 in its list of the best American comedies of all time. Quentin Tarantino credits the film with teaching him to write

A new high-definition digital restoration of His Girl Friday will be shown.

Rosemary Armao, a star of WAMC’s “The Roundtable,” is the Director of the Journalism Program at the University at Albany. She is a former Executive Director of Investigative Reporters and Editors and former President of the Journalism and Women Symposium.

Marion Roach Smith is the author of four mass-market books. A former staffer at The New York Times, she has been a commentator on NPR’s All Things Considered and a talk show host on Sirius Satellite Radio. She currently teaches writing online and serves as a working member of the Friends of The New York State Writers Institute.

Casey Seiler is the Times Union state editor and columnist, and previously served as the paper’s entertainment editor.

For more information contact the New York State Writers Institute at 518 442 5620 or visit us online at www.writers.edu/inst.

 

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Nancy Jo Sales on Girls and Social Media

February 16 (Thursday):  Nancy Jo Sales, journalist and nonfiction writer
Reading/discussion — 8:00 p.m., Campus Center Room 375

Nancy Jo Sales is known for work that focuses on youth culture and crime, and pop-culture icons. Her book American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers (2016) is an investigation into how social media has presented girls with unprecedented challenges. USA Today said Sales, “… offer[s] a harrowing glimpse into a world where self-esteem, friendships and sexuality…are defined by the parameters of social media.” Newsday recommended “If you have a teenage daughter, read American Girls. Have her read it, too.” Sales is also the author of The Bling Ring: How a Gang of Fame-Obsessed Teens Ripped Off Hollywood and Shocked the World (2013, see February 10 Classic Film Series listing).

Read more about Nancy Jo Sales:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/sales_nancy_jo17.html

Sponsored in association with UAlbany’s Sexuality Month, a program of the Middle Earth Peer Assistance Program of Counseling and Psychological Services

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Book Trailer for Storm in A Teacup

Watch Helen Czerski's book trailer for Storm in a Teacup on YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMsv9E_QtZQ

You can also make a lava lamp with lemonade and raisins.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qm3oOEbwgyQ

Czerski visits Albany this Thursday: http://www.albany.edu/…/webp…/archives/czerski_helen17.html…

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Regina Carter on Saturday, MacArthur Genius & Jazz Violinist

Sat. Afternoon 2/11: WAMC's Joe Donahue live in conversation with MacArthur Genius, Jazz

Violinist Regina Carter, FREE EVENT
February 11 (Saturday):
Regina Carter, jazz violinist
Conversation — 4:30 p.m., Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center, UAlbany Uptown Campus, 1400 Washington Ave., Free Parking.
...

Classically trained, Regina Carter is considered the foremost jazz violinist of her generation. She studied at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston and Oakland University. She lived and played in Germany and Detroit before moving to New York City to play with the New York String Trio for six years. She then launched her career as a band leader, releasing several albums of contemporary jazz, and drew attention for her work on the recording of Wynton Marsalis’s composition “Blood on the Fields” which won a Pulitzer Prize. She toured with Marsalis in 1997 and went on the road with jazz vocalist Cassandra Wilson in 1998. In 2001, Regina became the first jazz musician and the first African-American to play the 250-year-old Guarneri violin once owned by Niccolo Paganini when she performed in a special benefit concert and recorded her CD, Paganini: After a Dream, a mix of classical music and jazz. In 2006, she was selected as a recipient of the MacArthur “Genius Award.” Her current project is “Simply Ella,” celebrating the centennial of Ella Fitzgerald’s birth, which she will perform at The Egg at 8 p.m. on February 11.
For more about the conversation contact the Writers Institute at 518-442-5620.
(For ticket information contact The Egg Box Office at 518-473-1845.)

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Paul Grondahl to Lead NYS Writers Institute

Paul Grondahl Tapped to Lead Writers Institute

The New York State Writers Institute and the University at Albany are very pleased to announce the appointment of award-winning writer and reporter Paul Grondahl as the new director of the New York State Writers Institute.

Grondahl, who earned a master’s degree in English at UAlbany in 1984, was selected after a national search for a successor to Donald Faulkner, who retired last year.

“Paul is one of the best-known and most-loved writers in our community. I am confident that under Paul’s leadership, the New York State Writers Institute will reach new heights,” UAlbany’s Interim Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Darrell P. Wheeler said. “I look forward to collaborating with him and the Institute’s many friends and supporters.”

William Kennedy, Founder and Executive Director of the Writers Institute said “Paul is a great choice for director of the Writers Institute for a lot of reasons. Above all, he’s a serious writer. He’s very savvy about literature and writers, and as a journalist, he’s nonpareil – maybe the best we’ve had in this town in 30 years or more.  He’s written two well-received biographies of major political figures on our local stage – Teddy Roosevelt, and Erastus Corning, the singular mayor of Albany for 42 years.  Paul also got his masters in English at UAlbany and he’s covered many of the major writers who have visited the Institute.” 

Grondahl, an award-winning journalist and biographer, has been a staff writer at the Albany Times Union since 1984, where his projects on domestic violence, death and dying, mental illness in state prisons and the problems facing sub-Saharan Africa have won local, state and national journalism awards.
The author of four books, Grondahl also leads writing workshops for students ranging from elementary school to college. He has taught as writer-in-residence at the Albany Academy and Albany Academy for Girls since 2005, and is an adjunct professor in the Africana Studies Department at UAlbany.

“I feel like I’m coming home,” Grondahl said about the appointment, and indeed in some ways he is.

Paul himself appeared twice as an author in the Institute’s Visiting Writer Series—in 1997 with his book Mayor Corning: Albany Icon, Albany Enigma, and in 2004 to discuss his biography of Theodore Roosevelt, I Rose Like a Rocket. Beginning with Saul Bellow’s inaugural reading in 1984, Paul has attended hundreds of Institute programs, not only as journalist, but also as a reader and a passionate supporter of the art of the written word.

Paul Grondahl Biography
Paul Grondahl is an award-winning journalist and author. Grondahl has been a staff writer at the Albany Times Union since 1984, where his assignments have taken him from the Arctic to Antarctica; from Northern Ireland to Africa; from New Orleans immediately after Hurricane Katrina and Haiti after its catastrophic earthquake in 2010; and across New York State, from Ground Zero on 9/​11 to the Adirondack wilderness.

His in-depth newspaper projects on domestic violence, death and dying, mental illness in state prisons and the problems facing sub-Saharan Africa have won a number of local, state and national journalism awards.

Grondahl’s writing prizes include the Society of Professional Journalists’ Sigma Delta Chi Award for Feature Reporting; Scripps Howard National Journalism Award; New York Newspaper Publishers Association; two first place national feature writing prizes from The Society for Features Journalists; more than a dozen New York State Associated Press writing contest awards; and the Hearst Eagle Award, the highest recognition for a reporter in the Hearst Corp.

The author of four books, Grondahl also was named Albany Author of the Year in 1997 by the Albany Public Library and Notable Author of the Year by the Guilderland Public Library and East Greenbush Public Library, both in 2004. He has been featured on C-SPAN's "About Books" and "Book TV."

Grondahl also has been selected several times in recent years as Best Local Journalist and Best Local Author in Metroland and Times Union readers’ polls.

In addition, he received the 2006 Dr. James M. Bell Humanitarian Award from Parsons Child and Family Center.

His work has appeared in a number of publications, including Smithsonian magazine, Newsday, The New York Times Book Review, the Houston Chronicle and other newspapers.

His second book, That Place Called Home, was excerpted in Reader’s Digest and optioned to CBS, where it went into development as a made-for-TV movie but was never produced.

In addition to his own books, Grondahl has contributed introductions to A Collection of Poems by Lewis A. Swyer (The Swyer Foundation/​Mount Ida Press, 2004) and Stepping Stones by Marty Silverman (Whitston Publishing Co., 2003).

Grondahl is a veteran teacher who leads highly regarded writing workshops with students ranging from elementary school to college. For the past decade, he has worked with high school students through the Minds-On workshop program at the Rensselaerville Institute and with high school seniors in the New Visions Public Communications program at the Times Union. He has taught as writer-in-residence at the Albany Academy and Albany Academy for Girls since 2005. He also has been an adjunct professor in the Africana Studies Department at the University at Albany.

Grondahl received his bachelor's degree in English literature from the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington in 1981 and a Master’s degree in English literature from the University at Albany in 1984. He was honored in 2005 as a distinguished alumni in arts and letters from UAlbany.

Publications:

I Rose Like a Rocket:  The Political Education of Theodore Roosevelt

University of Nebraska Press. (Paperback edition) May, 2007.

"A well-told new biography...Albany is Mr. Grondahl's turf, and here he gives free rein to his expertise."
-- The New York Sun
"What Mr. Grondahl makes clearer is how Roosevelt's principled stands on civil service reform and social responsibility periodically sidetracked his phenomenal career."
-- Washington Times
"An outstanding job of documenting Theodore Roosevelt's evolution from brash young political reformer to shrewd and pragmatic political operator...painted quite deftly by Grondahl."
-- Publishers Weekly

Mayor Corning: Albany Icon, Albany Enigma

Washington Park Press. Albany, N.Y., 1997.

(With an introduction by Pulitzer Prize-winning author William Kennedy.)

A rich and compelling political biography of Mayor Erastus Corning 2nd, the nation's longest-tenured mayor of an American city and head of Albany's vaunted Democratic machine. First elected in 1941, Corning served until he died in office in 1983 after winning 11 consecutive elections.

"A minor classic — a highly readable, meticulously researched and illuminating history of some fascinating and shadowy byways in the politics of the Empire State."
-- The New York Times Book Review
"Detailed, accurate and eminently readable."
-- Mario M. Cuomo, former Governor of New York

"Here journalism at its finest merges with the art of the novelist. The book indeed resembles a series of fascinating interlocking novellas."
-- R.W.B. Lewis, Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer

That Place Called Home

Servant Publications. Ann Arbor, Mich., 2000.

(With a foreword by Eunice Kennedy Shriver)
This heartwarming story describes how Sr. Mary Ann LoGiudice, a Sister of Mercy in Albany, N.Y., gained approval from her religious order to adopt and raise a young girl named Barbara, both of whose parents died of AIDS. The nun and the young, HIV-positive girl formed an unlikely family and enjoyed many delightful, challenging and inspiring years together as mother and daughter.

"Her story is immensely moving and life-affirming."
-- Bob Keeler, Newsday religious writer
"One of the most moving testimonies to the power of love that I have ever read."
-- Sister Mary Rose McGeady, D.C. President of Covenant House, New York City

Now Is The Time:  A History of Parsons Child and Family Center 1829-2004

Whitston Publishing Company Inc. Albany, N.Y., 2006.

A narrative history of one of the oldest orphanages in the United States that draws on archival research and oral histories. Founded in 1829 and formerly known as the Albany Orphan Asylum and the Albany Home for Children, this is a powerful and emotionally charged chronicle of often forgotten children left in institutional care.

"Grondahl uses his storytelling skills to make readers curious about the institution, to draw them into the lives of children and staff -- and to inspire them to care about those lives.

-- The Sunday Gazette, Schenectady, NY

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

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Howard Frank Mosher, In Memoriam

The New York State Writers Institute mourns the passing of novelist Howard Frank Mosher who delighted Albany audiences on November 1st, 2016. Mosher was widely celebrated as "the voice of Vermont." Born in the Catskills, he spent much of his childhood in Altamont, New York.

From yesterday's Vermont Public Radio obituary:  "Acclaimed Vermont author Howard Frank Mosher has died. Mosher, 74, succumbed to cancer Sunday morning at his home in Irasburg.

His stories celebrated the Northeast Kingdom as the last bastion of a people and a way of life that has all but disappeared from Vermont."  More.


Listen to Joe Donahue's Nov. 1st WAMC interview.


More about Mosher's visit to the Writers Institute.


From the Oct. 2016 Times Union profile of Mosher by Joe Stalvey and Jack Rightmyer:  "I was actually born in the Catskill Mountains, and I lived there till I was 11 or 12," he says, "and then we moved to Altamont, where I attended grade six through nine. Many of my stories also reach back to that time in my boyhood."He fondly recalls fishing in the Helderberg Mountains and going to the Altamont Fair every summer. "The description of the county fair in my newest book 'God's Kingdom' is how I remember the Altamont Fair," he says. "("God's Kingdom") is pretty autobiographical," Mosher says. "Jim is based on me, and like him, I always wanted to be a writer. Most of the characters are based on my friends and relatives, including my wife. The newspaper editor is based on my dad, who was a teacher and once the principal of Altamont High School. He was the principal the first two years of Guilderland High School." More.

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Announcing the Spring 2017 Series!

Here are a few highlights of a truly exciting season:

Robert Coover, beloved American fiction writer, with Huck Out West, a rollicking sequel to Huckleberry Finn.

Convicted murderer Shaka Senghor, with his memoir of redemption, Writing My Wrongs.

Jazz violinist and MacArthur Genius Regina Carter on stage with Joe Donahue.

Diane Ackerman, with the new film tie-in edition of Zookeeper’s Wife which will star Jessica Chastain.  

Preeminent Postmodernist painter David Salle with his book How to See, on stage with Joe Donahue.

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor presenting her memoir, My Beloved World.

MacArthur Genius and filmmaker Stanley Nelson with his acclaimed new documentary, The Black Panthers.

Young Irish novelist Ruth Gilligan, the youngest author to reach #1 on Ireland’s Bestseller List, with a novel about Ireland’s Jews.

Iraq war interrogator and torturer Eric Fair with a memoir about his crisis of conscience.

Douglas Brinkley, CNN’s official Presidential Historian, with a new book on FDR’s crusade for public lands.

David Ebershoff, author of The Danish Girl, the basis of the Oscar-winning film.

AND MANY, MANY MORE!

All events are free and open to the public!

For a complete schedule, see the Visiting Writers Series here:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/programpages/vws.html

See the Classic Film Series here:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/programpages/cfs.html#.WHUQKE3FDs0

For more information, contact the Writers Institute visit our website at www.albany.edu/writers-inst.

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Writers Institute Mourns the Passing of John Montague

The New York State Writers Institute mourns the passing of our beloved friend and colleague John Montague, major Irish poet of his generation and long-time faculty member of the Institute and the University at Albany.

The author of more than 30 books of poetry and a recipient of the Chevalier de la Legion d’honneur, France’s highest award, he died in Nice on December 10, 2016, following surgery.


Born in Brooklyn on February 28, 1929, and raised in County Tyrone, Montague served as Distinguished Writer-in-Residence for the New York State Writers Institute during each spring semester, teaching workshops in fiction and poetry and a class in the English Department, University at Albany. Governor Mario M. Cuomo presented Montague a citation in 1987 “for his outstanding literary achievements and his contributions to the people of New York.”


In 1998, he was named the very first Ireland Professor of Poetry, a new position created to honor the shared literary heritage of the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, with joint appointments at Trinity College Dublin, Queen’s University Belfast and University College Dublin.


Read this account of his funeral in the Irish Times:  http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/john-montague-remembered-at-funeral-as-poet-of-wonder-1.2906056

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Stephen Burt, Leading American Poetry Critic, to Offer Free Community Poetry Class

Stephen Burt, “one of the most influential poetry critics of his generation” and “heir to the intellectual mantle long held by giants like Harold Bloom and Helen Vendler” (The New York Times), will lead a discussion and reading of poems based on his new book, The Poem is You: 60 Contemporary American Poems and How to Read Them (Sept 2016).

Sponsored by the New York State Writers Institute, and cosponsored by Friends of the New York State Library, the event is free and open to the public. No RSVP is necessary to attend.

For online access to the poems that will be discussed, please see links below.

Stephen Burt, poet, literary critic, and Harvard Professor

September 29 (Thursday)

Community Poetry Discussion and Reading-- 8PM, Huxley Theatre, NYS Museum, Empire State Plaza, Downtown Albany.

Poems to be discussed include the following:

"Paradoxes and Oxymorons" by John Ashbery: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/resources/learning/core-poems/detail/50986

“Facing It" by Yusef Komunyakaa: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/resources/learning/core-poems/detail/47867

"Our Nature" by Rae Armantrout: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/resources/learning/core-poems/detail/54881

"Oversized T-shirts" by Gabby Gabby: http://vol1.illuminatigirlgang.com/gabbygabby

John Ashbery served as State Poet of New York under the auspices of the Writers Institute (2001-3). Yusef Komunyakaa is our current State Poet (2016-18). Rae Armatrout visited us in 2005. Gabby Gabby is the newest poet among them—a Target employee born in 1992.

Stephen Burt will also present a reading of his own poetry earlier that same day:  4:15 p.m., Standish Room, Science Library, University at Albany uptown campus.

For more information contact the New York State Writers Institute at 518 442 5620, writers@albany.edu, or visit our website at www.albany.edu/writers-inst.

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Joseph LeDoux: Neuroscientist and Expert on Fear and Anxiety, Tues. 9/27

Casey Schwartz reviews Joseph LeDoux's new book, Anxious, in New York magazine.

"If this is the age of anxiety, LeDoux is our Lewis and our Clark: It was LeDoux who laid down the first map of what is called the brain’s 'fear circuit,' the regions — centered on the amygdala and its adjacent structures — that together give rise to our ability to respond to threats and danger. But with his new book, he wants to redraw that map...."

LeDoux visits Albany next week. More about his visit:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/ledoux_joseph16.html#.V-QMe01kDs0


More from Schwartz's review in New York:  http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2015/07/everybody-misunderstanding-fear-and-anxiety.html

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Joyce Carol Oates Visits Thursday!

WAMC's Joe Donahue will join her on stage in conversation. William Kennedy will introduce!

Joyce Carol Oates, fiction writer, essayist, poet, and playwright
September 15 (Thursday)Conversation — 7:30 p.m., Main Theatre, Performing Arts Center


For more details:  http://readme.readmedia.com/Major-author-Joyce-Carol-Oates-and-legendary-dancer-Savion-Glover-open-new-arts-conversation-series-at-UAlbany/13976552/print

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The Creative Life!

The Writers Institute Fall 2016 schedule begins with an exciting new program collaboration "The Creative Life: A Conversation Series at UAlbany." Created and produced by the Writers Institute, University Art Museum, and UAlbany's Performing Arts Center, in collaboration with WAMC Public Radio, this new series features leading figures from a variety of artistic disciplines in conversation about their creative inspiration, their craft, and their careers. Joyce Carol Oates, prolific author of more than 160 books, will lead off the series on September 15 followed by Savion Glover, tap dancing legend and Tony award-winning choreographer on October 15.

For more information: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/programpages/vws.html#joyce

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Bill Remembers Mario on Time Warner Cable News

William Kennedy sat for a interview on Friday 1/9 about the legacy of former Governor with the New York State of Politics program of Time Warner Cable News.

"It was Mario Cuomo’s second week in office when he sent a handwritten letter to an English professor at the University at Albany. That letter kicked off what would become a life-long friendship between William Kennedy and the former governor. So, when Kennedy pitched his idea for the New York State Writer’s Institite a year later, Mario Cuomo pushed the idea into state law. We talked to Kennedy at the University at Albany about the former governor."

Here's the link:  http://www.nystateofpolitics.com/2015/01/william-kennedy-remembers-mario/

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Mario Cuomo (1932-2015)

The New York State Writers Institute mourns the passing of Mario Cuomo, former New York Governor and a very dear friend of the Institute, who signed into law the legislation that created our organization in 1984.

Cuomo came to the Institute to celebrate its 25th anniversary in 2009, his first public appearance in Albany since leaving the Governor's mansion in 1994. On that occasion, he shared the stage at Page Hall with historian Doris Kearns Goodwin (pictured here).

More about his visit here:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/cuomo_goodwin09.html 

The New York Times obituary:  http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/02/nyregion/mario-cuomo-new-york-governor-and-liberal-beacon-dies-at-82.html?_r=0http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/02/nyregion/mario-cuomo-new-york-governor-and-liberal-beacon-dies-at-82.html?_r=0

More photos from the 25th Anniversary here:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/celebrate25.pdf

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Adirondack 46er Book in Plattsburgh Press Republican

Jerry McGovern reviews Heaven Up-h’isted-ness (2012) cowritten and edited by Writers Institute Assistant Director Suzanne Lance:

"This is an important book because the history of the 46ers is important to the Adirondacks and New York state. By gathering that history in one place, and including archival and modern photos, Lance and the Adirondack 46ers have provided a service to us all."

More in the Plattsburgh Press Republican, July 27, 2012.

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History Repeats Itself, Isabel Wilkerson

During the spring floods of 2011, the New York Times reprinted some of Isabel Wilkerson's Pulitzer-winning 1993 coverage of Midwestern floods. In winning the award, Wilkerson (who visits Tuesday 11/15) became the first African American woman to receive the Pulitzer in journalism.

"The floods have made the broad, S-curved Mississippi and its otherwise perfectly ordered valley look more like the Florida Keys . ... The river, ecologists and farmers say, was never supposed to follow the tight course humans have expected it to, indeed ordered it to, with their walls of dirt and concrete levees." More.

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Election Fraud, Intimidation, Ballot Theft

Election Day may put you in the mood for Election, Tom Perrotta's 1998 novel about a hotly contested election for student body president at a suburban high school. The novel was made into an Oscar-nominated 1999 film starring Reese Witherspoon and Matthew Broderick.

Perrotta visits the Writers Institute, Tuesday, November 29. He will be speaking about his new novel The Leftovers.

Here's Perrotta in a recent NPR interview:

"I don't feel like I'm a satirist. I don't even think I ever was, but that label has stuck to me because the movie Election was a brilliant satire, and it amped up some elements that were muted in the book to do that. And that's the first way people became familiar with my work. Labels tend to stick and first impressions tend to stick, but I will say that what happens for me is that I do start in a place that feels like it might lead to a satire, and then the process of spending time with characters — getting inside their heads, trying to see the world the way they see it — pulls me away from satire. And I think a lot of times you can't see where you're going to end up."

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Colson Whitehead and the World Series of Poker

"I have a good poker face because I am half-dead inside. My particular combo of slack features, negligible affect, and soulless gaze had helped my game ever since I started playing 20 years ago, when I was ignorant of pot odds and M-theory and three-betting, and it gave me a boost as I collected my trove of lore, game by game, hand by hand. It had not helped me human relationships-wise over the years, but surely I am not alone here — anyone whose peculiar mix of genetic material and formative experiences had resulted in a near-expressionless mask could relate. Nature giveth, taketh, etc. You make the best of the hand you're dealt."

As the World Series of Poker comes to a climax tonight on ESPN, it is both amusing and instructive to visit Colson Whitehead's July 2011 article in Grantland about training for the event. Whitehead visited the Writers Institute November 1st.

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