Lydia Kulbida will join our pre-film discussion about His Girl Friday (1940) with leading
local journalists this coming Friday at Page Hall (newly added event). Lydia is
a prominent Capital Region broadcast journalist who co-anchors News10ABC at 4pm
with Elisa Streeter and Chief Meteorologist Steve Caporizzo, and also
co-anchors News10ABC at 6pm and FOX23 News at 10pm with John Gray.
Tuesday, February 28, 2017
Lydia Kulbida Joins Film Panel This Friday 3/3!
Monday, February 27, 2017
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.
Monday, February 13, 2017
Nancy Jo Sales on Girls and Social Media
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).
Tuesday, January 19, 2016
NYS Writers Institute Announces Spring 2016 Schedule
The NYS Writers Institute announces a
spectacular calendar of free events for the Spring of 2016.
Headliners will include bestselling author and
mountaineer Jon Krakauer (Into the Wild, Into Thin Air); Pulitzer-winning
playwright and UAlbany alum Stephen Adly Guirgis (Between Riverside
and Crazy); pioneering Black female Hollywood director Darnell Martin
(Their Eyes Were Watching God); Pulitzer-winning New York Times business
reporter Charles Duhigg whose previous book The Power of Habit spent
120 weeks on the Times bestseller list; visionary computer scientist who
foresaw the Internet and who teaches computers to write poetry, David
Gelernter; New York Times health reporter Sheri Fink, author
of the major bestseller about Hurricane Katrina, Five Days at Memorial; 2013
Tony Winner for Best Director, Pam MacKinnon (the revival of Who’s
Afraid of Virginia Woolf?); major Irish fiction writer Colm Toibin,
author of Brooklyn, the basis of the Oscar-nominated film; local son and
Pulitzer winner Richard Russo with the new novel, Everybody’s
Fool, the sequel to his beloved classic Upstate New York novel, Nobody’s
Fool; and much, much more. Visit the links below for more details.
Mark your calendars for the State Author and Poet inauguration
ceremony on February 11th at 8PM at Page Hall. The new State Author
will be Edmund White, one of America’s finest prose writers, and its
leading chronicler of Gay experience. The new State Poet will be Yusef
Komunyakaa, Pulitzer winner and one of America’s most influential and most
anthologized poets.
In honor of the Pulitzer Centennial (1916-2016),
the series will feature seven Pulitzer winners— if you include William
Kennedy who will present a special program on Old Albany in March.
For more on the Visiting Writers Series,
visit: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/programpages/vws.html#.Vp5_S01wXs0
For more on the Classic Film Series,
visit: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/programpages/cfs.html#.Vp5_W01wXs0
We
hope to see you soon!
For more information, visit us online at http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst
or call us at 518-442-5620.
Wednesday, September 9, 2015
A Writer's Path from UAlbany to Acclaim
Tom Junod, who visits on Thursday 9/10 and Friday 9/11, is profiled and interviewed
by Paul Grondahl in today’s Times Union.
Junod recalls his professors at UAlbany, including Fred
LeBrun, Eugene Mirabelli, Warren Roberts and Judith Barlow.
Tom Junod, journalist, UAlbany graduate, winner of two National Magazine Awards, and the record holder for nominations for that award (11 times), will present a seminar on magazine writing on Thursday, September 10, 2015 at 4:15 p.m. in the Standish Room, Science Library, on the UAlbany uptown campus, 1400 Washington Avenue, Albany. The following day, Friday, September 11, 2015 at 7:00 p.m., in observance of 9/11 at the New York State Museum’s Huxley Theatre in downtown Albany, Junod will read from and discuss his famous article, “The Falling Man,” a 2003 meditation on AP photographer Richard Drew’s iconic image of a 9/11 victim plunging to his death. Free and open to the public, the events are cosponsored by the University at Albany, New York State Museum, and New York State Writers Institute.
Friday, September 4, 2015
Tom Junod opens the Visiting Writers Series
More about his events: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/junod_tom15.html
Here are some of Junod's articles in the Longform Archive: http://longform.org/writers/tom-junod Read More......
Monday, March 9, 2015
Ill-Tempered White Dudes & Their Loss of Power
Journalist Kent Russell, who visits us on Thursday 3/12, talks to the Times Union's Elizabeth Floyd Mair about his new book, I Am Sorry to Think I Have Raised a Timid Son (2015).
Q: Did the essays in this book start out as separate essays, or was the idea to write a book-length exploration of masculinity?
A: [S]ubconsciously, I was always chasing the same subject matter: ill-tempered white dudes and their strategies for coping with the loss of power. Subconsciously, I was always writing the book.
More in the Times Union: http://www.timesunion.com/tuplus-features/article/Man-cave-dwellers-6118822.php
More about Russell's upcoming visit: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/russell_kent15.html
Tuesday, April 29, 2014
Hell Before Breakfast in Publishers Weekly
"Acclaimed historian Patton (The Pattons) focuses on the war correspondent persona and the band of bold adventurers who earned their keep on the frontlines in this detailed salute. A first correspondent whose actions provided the template for all who followed, The Times of London's William H. Russell, respected battle, an appreciation that found him in the thick of the bloodiest clashes including the Battle of Bull Run, the Austro-Prussian War, the Franco-Prussian war, and the Russo-Turkish war. In a no-frills, straightforward narrative, Patton describes the backgrounds of the early pioneers, John Russell Young, George Smalley, Holt White, and Henry Villard, who embraced armed conflict and its horrors, while feeding their dramatic observations to The New York Herald and The New York Tribune. The American publications dueled with each other, such as when Smalley opposed sending untried reporters into the battlefield, instead preferring two experienced correspondents dispatched to each army's headquarters. Some excitement is generated with the sections of the wild and brilliant career of American painter-war correspondent Frank Millet, who bravely covered the 1877 war in the Ottoman Empire. Patton's tribute to these battlefield scribes revives an understanding of why these men mattered." --Publishers Weekly
Patton visits today: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/patton_Robert14.html
Wednesday, March 19, 2014
Newly Added Event-- Journalist Stephen Kinzer 4/7
You are invited to attend the following free event:
Stephen Kinzer, bestselling nonfiction author
April 7 (Monday)
Discussion — 7:30 p.m., [Note early start time] Standish Room, Science Library, Uptown Campus
Stephen Kinzer is an award-winning foreign correspondent, formerly with the New York Times, and a bestselling author of books on American foreign policy in Central America, Rwanda, Turkey, and Iran. His newest book is The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War (2013), which recounts how the two powerful men helped to shape America’s zealously anti-Communist foreign policy in the 1950s.
The Washington Post reviewer called The Brothers, “a bracing, disturbing and serious study of the exercise of American global power.” The book was named a “Best Book of the Year” by the Atlantic and Kirkus Reviews.
Cosponsored by the New York State Writers Institute; Women Against War; UAlbany’s History, Political Science, and Judaic Studies Departments, and Journalism Program; and UAlbany Peace Action.
For more about Stephen Kinzer: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/kinzer_stephen14.html
For more information, contact the NYS Writers Institute at
442-5620 or by email at writers@albany.edu. You can also visit
our blog at http://nyswiblog.blogspot.com/
or like us on Facebook.
Read More......
Tuesday, February 18, 2014
On Writing and Erasing History-- Nick Turse
Nick Turse, who visits the NYS Writers Institute tomorrow, calls out the Pentagon for its selective rewriting of Vietnam War history, and makes some dark predictions about the future of propaganda:
"It’s 2053 -- 20 years since you needed a computer, tablet, or smartphone to go online. At least, that’s true in the developed world: you know, China, India, Brazil, and even some parts of the United States. Cybernetic eye implants allow you to see everything with a digital overlay. And once facial recognition software was linked to high-speed records searches, you had the lowdown on every person standing around you. Of course, in polite society you still introduce yourself as if you don’t instantly know another person’s net worth, arrest record, and Amazooglebook search history. (Yes, the fading old-tech firms Amazon, Google, and Facebook merged in 2033.) You also get a tax break these days if you log into one of the government’s immersive propaganda portals. (Nope, “propaganda” doesn’t have negative connotations anymore.) So you choose the Iraq War 50th Anniversary Commemoration Experience and take a stroll through the virtual interactive timeline."
More on Huffington Post via TomDispatch.com: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nick-turse/misremembering-americas-wars_b_4808201.html
More about Turse's visit: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/turse_nick14.html
Wednesday, December 4, 2013
Always an Ink-Stained Wretch
Bill Kennedy talks about his career in journalism and the history of the UAlbany Journalism Program in the current issue of Columbia Journalism Review:
"I was not privy to the arrival of the Journalism Program at the University at Albany, and I heard it had a somewhat uncertain birth. The program as Bill Rowley conceived it was pragmatic, professional, idealistic, literary, and peppered with journalists from the real world of news reporting. This opposed another idea that was on the table in the English Department: to present journalism as a textbook course, with excursions into municipal history, the history of journalism and who knows what else? Bill’s idea prevailed, I don’t know why, but he was a persuasive and insistent fellow. He wanted his students to step lively into their journalistic careers after graduation, but also to be educated in history, politics, literature, and, above all, to know how to write when they did so."
More: http://www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/william_kennedy_albany_journal.php?page=all
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
Looking back, and ahead, at journalism
Paul Grondahl talks about Bill Kennedy's appearance at the 40th anniversary celebration of UAlbany Journalism Program founder Bill Rowley last week:
Bill Kennedy was talking last week about his late, great friend Bill Rowley founding the University at Albany journalism program in 1973 — he was Rowley's first hire — and as the newspaperman-turned-novelist assessed the current state of journalism, his mood turned dark.
"Newsweek is gone. Time magazine is just a tattered print unit of Time Warner Cable," he said. "All the TV networks seem to have slid into the swamp of celebrity. The Times seems to be surviving, but I don't know how small papers can survive."
His talk was the centerpiece of what was billed as a 40th anniversary celebration, but as a truth-teller addressing an auditorium of professional skeptics and aspiring cynics, his forecast was stormy with a chance of extinction.
Kennedy quoted the prophecy of Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, new owner of the Washington Post, who once said that newspapers as we know them will be gone in 20 years. "That does not seem unreasonable to me," Kennedy added.
More in the Times Union: http://www.timesunion.com/default/article/Looking-back-and-ahead-at-journalism-4898618.php
Picture: UAlbany undergraduate intern Michelle Checchi, a junior journalism major at UAlbany.
Monday, October 7, 2013
William Kennedy Celebrates the UAlbany Journalism Program
October 9 (Wednesday)
Lecture/Discussion by William Kennedy — 4:00 p.m., Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center, Uptown Campus
Picture: Bill as a young reporter.
More about the Journalism Program: http://www.albany.edu/journalism/about.shtml Read More......
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Bring Your Questions for Gail Collins Tonight
Don't miss influential New York Times political columnist Gail Collins tonight at Page Hall, 8PM,
University at Albany downtown campus.
April 30 (Tuesday)
Reading — 8:00 p.m., Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, Downtown Campus
One of the most recognizable names in American journalism, Gail Collins served as the first female editor of the New York Times Editorial Page (2001-2007), and has contributed an influential biweekly column to the Times Op-Ed page for most of the past decade. Her column is distinguished by its fondness for humor and storytelling, its attention to political absurdity, and its championing of women’s rights. Her newest book is As Texas Goes... How the Lone Star State Hijacked the American Agenda (2012). MSNBC host Rachel Maddow said, “Gail Collins is the funniest serious political commentator in America. Reading As Texas Goes... is pure pleasure from page one.” Publishers Weekly said, “Collins revels in the state’s 10-gallon self-regard, Alamo-inspired cult of suicidal last stands, and eccentric right-wing pols... she slathers plenty of wry humor onto a critique that stings like a red-hot brand.” Her previous books include When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present (2009), and Scorpion Tongues: Gossip, Celebrity, and American Politics (1998).
Monday, April 29, 2013
Gail Collins in the Times Union
Gail Collins, who visits UAlbany tomorrow, is interviewed and profiled by Leigh Hornbeck in the Times Union:
Early in her newspaper career, Collins founded the Connecticut State News Bureau, in 1972. It was around then she made a choice to write about her subject "in a way that wouldn't make readers want to shoot themselves." The result was a mix of insightful, wry commentary that might zing, but never crushes, its subjects. She seems fully aware of the absurdity of political scandal at the same time she observes how what happens among our elected representatives will ultimately affect ordinary folk. She frequently calls out to the reader directly with a "people," the literary equivalent of a lapel grab.
Read more: http://www.timesunion.com/living/article/Political-observer-4463679.php#ixzz2RsuHySXz
More on Gail's visit: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/collins_gail13.html
Thursday, October 4, 2012
Insight into How We Pick Our Visiting Writers
Since that time, we have been trying to work out a suitable date with Mann, who was born and raised in Albany, and who attended the Albany Academy.
Mann visits this coming Tuesday. His mother plans to attend both events.
James Mann, journalist and nonfiction writer
October 9 (Tuesday)
Seminar — 4:15 p.m., Assembly Hall, Campus Center, Uptown Campus
Reading — 8:00 p.m., Assembly Hall, Campus Center, Uptown Campus
Born and raised in Albany, NY, journalist James Mann is a sought-after authority on the behind-the-scenes deliberations over foreign policy within recent American presidential administrations. His newest book is The Obamians: The Struggle Inside the White House to Redefine American Power (2012), an insider’s guide to the events, ideas, personalities, and conflicts that have defined Barack Obama’s foreign policy. In a New York Times review Michiko Kakutani said, “Drawing upon some 125 interviews…Mr. Mann writes with shrewdness and insight about the evolution of the president’s thinking, tensions among his staff…and contrasts and continuities between his conduct of foreign policy and that of the previous two presidents.” Mann achieved international renown with Rise of the Vulcans (2004), a revelatory and much-cited study of George W. Bush’s war cabinet. A former Beijing Bureau Chief for the L. A. Times, Mann is also the author of three award-winning books on America’s evolving relationship with China. Read More......
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Upcoming Events
All Readings are at 8:00 p.m. in Davis Audiorium, Palamountain Hall.
Free and open to the public. Read More......
Monday, July 23, 2012
The Obamians Reviewed in NY Times
Leslie Gelb reviews it in the New York Times: "Like the best reporters, Mann lets his subjects speak for themselves, then checks their fancies against the facts. He has given us a very good first cut at history."
Read more. Read More......
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
The Vindication of Joseph Lelyveld
Son of Duanesburg, NY, Stephen Dubner (of Freakonomics fame) writes a long article in New York magazine about Joseph Lelyveld (who visits today) and his long career at the New York Times. Lelyveld met with a variety of criticisms from both within and outside the newspaper organization for his long term of leadership of the Times after his retirement as executive editor in 2001.
"Long before he became executive editor of the New York Times, Joe Lelyveld was a writer, a very fine writer, who as a scrawny, overeducated 23-year-old traveled through Southeast Asia on a Fulbright and, along with his young bride, became enamored of the writer’s expat life, concluding that he would like to become the Times’ man in New Delhi. It wasn’t long before he did exactly that. Starting out as a copy boy, he rose and rose and rose at the Times, a quite unlikely ascension given Lelyveld’s reluctance to do what was expected of him and a writerly arrogance that could be extreme. He also had a manner so awkward that it bordered on antisocial. He was given to painfully long pauses; his intended drolleries fell flat, or were too sharp...." More.
Thursday, March 8, 2012
Masha Gessen on Charlie Rose, See the Video
Masha Gessen, Moscow-based journalist who visits the Writers Institute today 3/8, appeared on Charlie Rose yesterday. The 23-minute video has been posted online.
Her schedule today is as follows:
Seminar — 4:15 p.m., Standish Room, Science Library, Uptown Campus
Reading — 8:00 p.m., Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center, Uptown Campus.
The events are free and open to the general public.
The show with Charlie Rose will be rebroadcast today at 1 p.m. on Albany's PBS affiliate WMHT.