Showing posts with label national. Show all posts
Showing posts with label national. Show all posts

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

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Tuesday, September 17, 2013

National Book Award Poetry Longlist Announced

Three past visitors to the NYS Writers Institute appear on the National Book Award's longlist for the award in poetry.

They include Lucie Brock-Broido, for Stay, Illusion; Andrei Codrescu for So Recently Rent a World, New and Selected Poems: 1968-2012; and Frank Bidart for Metaphysical Dog.

See Frank Bidart speak at the Institute on Youtube in 2008:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReSgPXq2W_8

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