Hollis Seamon, this year's featured guest author at the New York State Summer Young Writers Institute for high school-aged writers, tied for the 2014 Independent Publisher Book Award ("Ippy") Gold Medal for Short Fiction for her story collection, Corporeality.
More 2014 "Ippy" results here: http://www.independentpublisher.com/article.php?page=1791
Students at the Young Writers Institute will read Seamon's 2013 young adult novel, Somebody Up There Hates You, about a 17-year-old battling cancer.
Booklist said, "Seamon’s first young-adult novel is a tender, insightful, and unsentimental look
at teens in extremis. It brings light to a very dark place, and in so doing,
does its readers a generous service."
More about Hollis Seamon: http://www.skidmore.edu/youngwriters/guest-author.php
More about the New York State Summer Young Writers Institute: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/programpages/nyssywi.html
Monday, June 2, 2014
Hollis Seamon wins "Ippy" Gold Medal
Thursday, March 27, 2014
Reading others’ works energizes Julia Glass
"I love it when I start a book that is so good that all I want to do is get back to my own writing, in a competitive way. Really good reading accelerates and feeds the writing for me...."
Julia Glass, National Book Award Winner who visits us on Thursday April 3 is profiled this month in the Boston Globe: http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/books/2014/03/22/new-england-writers-work-julia-glass/3Al0XhLxpMM4ggBfXNtoIN/story.html
More about her upcoming visit: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/glass_julia14.html Read More......
Wednesday, September 18, 2013
National Book Award Longlist for Nonfiction Announced
Gretel Ehrlich, who visited the Writers Institute this past March, and Jill Lepore, who came in 2005, are among the finalists for the National Book Award in nonfiction.
Full list here: http://www.nationalbook.org/nba2013.html
Ehrlich received the nomination for Facing the Wave (2013), a book that she presented here at the Institute. The book is an account of Ehlich's travels in Japan in the aftermath of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, and the subsequent meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. A student of Japanese poetry for much of her life, Ehrlich felt compelled to return to Japan to bear witness and record the stories of survivors.
More about Ehrlich (with video of her Albany visit): http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/ehrlich_gretel13.html
Jill Lepore visited in September 2005 to discuss her book about a slave uprising in colonial Manhattan, New York Burning. Her new book is Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin, about the personal ordeals of Benjamin Franklin's unschooled sister.
More about Lepore's visit: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/lepore_jill.html
Wednesday, August 14, 2013
PEN America Announces 2013 Literary Awards
Among this year's winners of the 2013 PEN American Literary Awards are some past visitors to the New York State Writers Institute, including Kevin Young (PEN Open Book Award for The Grey Album), and Marilyn Hacker (PEN/Heim Translation Award for The Bridges of Budapest by Jean-Paul de Dadelson). Jill Lepore was runner-up for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay for The Story of America: Essays on Origins.
Complete list of winners: http://www.pen.org/blog/announcing-2013-pen-literary-award-winners
Tuesday, July 23, 2013
Booker Prize Long List Announced
Three of the thirteen people on the 2013 Booker Prize Long List, which was announced today, are past visitors of the New York State Writers Institute.
Ruth Ozeki (pictured here) who visited in 2004: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/ozeki_ruth.html
Colm Toibin, who visited in 2001: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/toibincolm.html
And Collum McCann, who visited in 2003: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/mccann_colum.html
Full list here: http://www.themanbookerprize.com/news/longlist-2013-announced
Monday, June 3, 2013
Gene Mirabelli Wins Top Indie Fiction Prize
82-year-old Eugene Mirabelli, Professor Emeritus at UAlbany who presented his newest novel at the Writers Institute on February 26, 2013, has won the Literary Fiction Gold Medal in the 2013 Independent Publisher (IPPY) Book awards.
This year the number one spot in the literary fiction category was a tie, and Eugene Mirabelli’s novel, Renato the Painter, shares top honors with Ned Bachus’s City of Brotherly Love.
The Awards program was created to highlight the year’s most distinguished books from independent publishers. Award winners are chosen by librarians and booksellers who are on the front lines, working everyday with patrons and customers. Some 125 books competed for the literary fiction Gold Medal. These books are examples of independent publishing at its finest.
More about Delmar resident Gene Mirabelli: http://mirabelli.net/
More about last February's event: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/mirabelli_hood13.html
Friday, May 24, 2013
Short Is Big for Local Writer
Paul Grondahl writes about Lydia Davis in the Times Union, with statements from Writers Institute
director Don Faulkner, and fellow UAlbany faculty member Lynne Tillman:
"She is a unique fiction writer who writes very short stories that are highly reflective, kind of ironic and sometimes comical. They play with the very concept of what storytelling is," said Donald Faulkner, director of the New York State Writers Institute at UAlbany.
"She is an excellent editor, great teacher and sympathetic reader who has helped a lot of young writers," Faulkner said. "She's not a prima donna on any level."
Read more: http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Short-is-big-for-local-writer-4544778.php#ixzz2UDyIRcwD
Thursday, May 23, 2013
Lydia Davis Will Teach Here Again in the Fall of 2013!
Lydia Davis, winner of the 2013 Man Booker International Prize, will teach a free Community
Writers Workshop at the NYS Writers Institute in the fall of 2013! The workshop is open to the general public on a competitive basis.
Previous winners of the prize have included Philip Roth, Alice Munro, Chinua Achebe and Ismail Kadare.
Here's some video of Lydia from a 2010 talk at the Institute: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7rPWVS8MT0
More on Lydia and her prize: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/davis_lydia13.html
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
Zaqtan and Joudah Make Shortlist for the Griffin Prize
Ghassan Zaqtan and Fady Joudah, who visited the Institute in October 2012, have been shortlisted
for Canada's Griffin Prize ("the world’s largest prize for a first edition single collection of poetry
written in, or translated into English, from any country in the world"). Zaqtan's book, translated by Joudah, is Like a Straw Bird it Follows Me (English, 2012).
More about their visit: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/zaqtan_joudah12.html
More from the Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry:
http://www.griffinpoetryprize.com/awards-and-poets/shortlists/2013-shortlist/fady-joudah/
Friday, March 29, 2013
James Salter Wins New Literary Award
Yale University.
"Yale University rained glory and gold on nine writers today (March 4), as it announced the winners of the Windham Campbell Prize, a new literary award worth $150,000 for each recipient.
The most prominent winner, James Salter, is best known for "A Sport and a Pastime," an erotic novel which has attained literary cult status in the half-century since its publication. Among his peers, Salter, 87, is widely regarded as the dean of American fiction writers. Knopf will publish Salter’s sixth novel, “All That Is,” in April.
The awards honor "outstanding achievement" for emerging and established writers of fiction, nonfiction and drama."
More in the New Orleans Times-Picayune: http://www.nola.com/books/index.ssf/2013/03/windham_campbell_prize_rains_1.html
More about Salter's visit: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/programpages/vws.html#james Read More......
Friday, March 1, 2013
National Book Critics Circle Awards Announced
http://bookcritics.org/awards/
Picture: Robert Caro Read More......
Friday, July 20, 2012
Andy Rooney Named a "Giant of Broadcasting"
From the official announcement: "No one should be asked to sum up ANDY ROONEY in a paragraph. He was foremost a writer, and at least a marginal iconoclast, and became most famous for his generally irreverent closings on 60 Minutes on CBS (“A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney”) featuring his observations on daily life and the passing parade...." More.
For Paul Grondahl's 2001 Times Union interview of Rooney at his summer house in Rensselaerville, click here.
Thursday, July 19, 2012
The Carnegie Medal and Us
Anne Enright, who visited on April 18 has received the first-ever Andrew Carnegie Medal for Fiction.
Both of the remaining two finalists for the medal were also recent Institute guests: Karen Russell, who came in February 2011, and Russell Banks, who visits often.
Robert K. Massie (who, oddly, has never been here though he lives in Irvington, NY) received the Carnegie Medal for Nonfiction.
Among the remaining two nonfiction contenders was James Gleick, who came in March 2011. The reamining finalist was the late Manning Marable.
For more on the award, visit American Libraries, the magazine of the American Library Association. Read More......
Tuesday, July 3, 2012
Suzanne Lance Wins Adirondack Literary Award
NYS Writers Institute Assistant Director Suzanne Lance received the Adirondack Literary Award for Best Edited Collection for Heaven Up-h'isted-ness! The History of the Adirondack Forty-Sixers and the High Peaks of the Adirondacks.Other awardees included Pulitzer Prize winner Steven Millhauser for the short story collection We Others, and Bloated Toe Press for its singular service to regional authors.
For the official press release about the awards click here and scroll down. For Paul Grondahl's article on the book in the Times Union click here. Read More......
Saturday, March 10, 2012
Hemingway/PEN Award Goes to Teju Cole
Friday, March 9, 2012
Reading vs. Gazing Out the Window
Geoff Dyer, former UAlbany Writer-in-Residence who just received the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism, writes his difficulties finding the motivation to read in his award-winning new book, Otherwise Known as the Human Condition: Selected Essays and Reviews. The excerpt is from the FSG website.
"....I find it increasingly difficult to read. This year I read fewer books than last year; last year I read fewer than the year before; the year before I read fewer than the year before that. The phenomenon of writer’s block is well known, but what I am suffering from is reader’s block. The condition is creeping rather than chronic, manifesting itself in different ways in different circumstances. On a trip to the Bahamas recently I regularly stopped myself reading because, whereas I could read a book anywhere, this was the only time I was likely to see sea so turquoise, sand so pink. Somewhat grandly, I call this the Mir syndrome, after the cosmonaut who said that he didn’t read a page of the book he’d taken to the space station because his spare moments were better spent gazing out of the window."
Monday, January 23, 2012
Mary C. Henderson (1928-2012)
Mary C. Henderson, who delivered the Burian Lecture at UAlbany in 2004, receives an obituary in yesterday's New York Times:
Mary C. Henderson, a scholar of the theater whose interests as a historian and curator spanned centuries and as a Tony nominator and critic were up to the minute, died on Jan. 3 at her home in Congers, N.Y. She was 83.
Read more.
National Book Critics Circle Award Nominees
Teju Cole, who comes Friday 2/10, is among the nominees for the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award.
Also featured is James Gleick, who visited this past March. Other past participants in the Visiting Writers Series who make the list are Diane Ackerman and Yusef Komunyakaa.