Paul Auster and Siri Hustvedt today in Saratoga

The New York State Summer Writers Institute today, July 2, features a free reading with literary couple Paul Auster and Siri Hustvedt.

All Readings are at 8:00 p.m. in Davis Audiorium, Palamountain Hall
Free and open to the public

Paul Auster recently visited the Institute with South African Nobel Prize winner J. M. Coetzee to present their collected correspondence.

More on their visit here: 
http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/coetzee_auster12.html

A recent review of the book of letters here: http://www.theskinny.co.uk/latest/304732-here_now_selected_letters_20082011_paul_auster_jm_coetzee
Siri Hustvedt's most recent book is the essay collection, Living, Thinking, Looking (2012):
http://sirihustvedt.net/works/

For the full schedule of readings in July:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/sumread.html

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Coetzee Event: UAlbany Photo of the Day

Nobel Visit

NYS Writers Institute Director, Donald Faulkner moderates a panel discussion with Nobel Prize-winning novelist J.M. Coetzee from South Africa, along with novelist Paul Auster, and a select group of UAlbany students participating in a seminar discussing the work of American author Herman Melville in the Performing Arts Center.

 

Photo credit: Mark Schmidt

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Animal Rights Activist and Nobel Laureate to Speak

J. M. Coetzee is an animal rights activist and ethical vegetarian, in addition to being a Nobel Prize winning novelist.

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

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Paul Auster and Siri Hustvedt tonight in Saratoga

Noted literary couple Paul Auster and Siri Hustvedt [pictured here] will share the stage tonight at a reading for the New York State Summer Writers Institute, Skidmore College, 8PM, free and open to the public, Davis Audiorium, Palamountain Hall, 815 North Broadway, Saratoga Springs.

All events in the series are free and open to the general public.

Auster's new memoir, Winter Journal, was just named by Huffington Post Books as one of the 11 Best Summer Books of 2012:

"Paul Auster's second memoir is surprisingly uncomplicated, except for the fact that it jumps around chronologically, and is written in the second person - which gives the book a sense of being spoken out loud, while staring into the mirror. Moments in Auster's life are arranged in interesting ways, such as an annotated list of all the houses he's ever lived in, and it's never less than readable." More.

Hustvedt's new essay collection Living Thinking Looking receives a rave in today's London Independent:

"Seeing is creating, for Hustvedt, and the meditations collected here amount to a lucid, absorbing and vigorous exploration of how we engage with the physical world, with art and with memory."  More.

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