Christa Parravani of Guilderland, Acclaimed Memoir

New author Christa Parravani, who graduated from Guilderland High School and spent parts of her childhood in Albany and Schenectady will present her first book, Her, a highly acclaimed memoir about the life and death of her twin sister, Cara Parravani, at UAlbany, Thursday, March 7.

Novelist Jayne Anne Phillips said, “Christa Parravani’s lyrical, no-nonsense Her ranks with the best American memoirs of the decade… an uncompromising love poem to the joys and dangers of shared identity, and an unforgettable treatise on addiction, trauma, survival, and triumph.” Author Nick Flynn called it, “reckless yet delicate, familiar yet otherworldly, precise yet with the soul of a fairytale, and deeply moving in surprising ways.” Novelist Julie Orringer said, “With a photographer’s sharp eye and a gifted writer’s penetrating insight, Parravani writes about being torn apart and then about piecing her life back together, brilliantly illuminating along the way what it means to be a sister, a daughter, a wife, an artist, and— ultimately, and triumphantly— herself.”

More about her visit:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/parravani_christa13.html

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Darin Strauss, Who Writes of Accidentally Killing a Classmate

"Half my life ago, I killed a girl."

So writes memoirist Darin Strauss (who reads tonight, Monday, 7/23, in Saratoga).

In his 2010 memoir, Half a Life, writer Darin Strauss recounts a tragedy and its aftermath. In his last month of high school, just after turning eighteen, Strauss is behind the wheel of his father's Oldsmobile, driving with friends—having "thoughts of mini-golf, another thought of maybe just going to the beach." Then out of the blue: a collision that results in the death of a bicycling classmate that shadows the rest of his life. In spare and piercing prose, Darin Strauss explores loss and guilt, maturity and accountability, hope and acceptance....

"staggering and unforgettable." --Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love

Strauss, who received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography, will share the stage with award-winning novelist Binnie Kirshenbaum, tonight, Monday, July 23rd, 8PM, Davis Audiorium, Palamountain Hall, 815 North Broadway, Saratoga. Free.

 

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John Sayles School of Fine Arts

In case you didn't know, Schenectady High School has a School of Fine Arts named (since 1998) for its most famous filmmaking alum (who visits the Writers Institute on Monday 2/27).

The John Sayles School of Fine Arts

Awarded the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts National Schools of Distinction in Arts Education

The John Sayles School of Fine Arts (SSFA) is a smaller learning community of approximately 650 students at Schenectady High School. We carry the name of one of our famous district graduates internationally known filmmaker, John Sayles. The school provides an integrated Regents high school curriculum with an interdisciplinary focus in visual art, music, theatre, and dance. Schenectady High School, with an enrollment of approximately 2900 students, is divided into five communities, including the Sayles School. The Sayles School of Fine Arts provides unique arts opportunities in the region. The John Sayles School of Fine Arts was recently awarded the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts National Schools of Distinction in Arts Education and its students performed on the Millennium Stage at the Kennedy Center.

More.

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Young Writers Institute, July 1-7, 2012

A student writes about her experiences at the Summer Young Writers Institute:

“Assuming that I would be my usual apathetic, antisocial self, my mother’s one rule for when I would be at the New York State Summer Young Writers Institute was, 'Be outgoing.'"

"I suppose that if I were anywhere else but a writing camp filled with 35 other students who were more or less just like me, I would have had a painfully hard time. Every minute that I
have spent here was precious. I have never been surrounded by like-minded people who were just as enthusiastic and passionate about writing as I was, and it was a beautiful and heartwarming sensation learning that everybody around you — faculty and peers alike — felt the same way you did...." — SABRINA HUA, July, 2010.

Read the 2010 student anthology.

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