A Poem by Sydney Lea, Who Visits Tuesday, Sept. 17

Bestselling food writer Michael Pollan (The Omnivore's Dilemma), calls Sydney Lea “as fine a companion on the page as American writing about nature has to offer.” Indeed,  Lea is widely regarded as the Robert Frost of his generation.

Lea visits this Tuesday to share the lectern with poet Marie Howe.

More about their visit here:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/howe_lea13.html

Much of Lea's poetry is inspired by the natural world and rural Vermont settings. Here's an example, "Cooking by Waters:  An Non-Elegy," which appears on his website. The poem was first published in the Hudson Review, Autumn 2008.

The birch’s skin curls up like an ancient letter.

The sweet smoke makes my breathing harder.

On a streamside fir three goldfinches teeter.

Late sun makes a tumult along their feathers.

In an hour the hermit thrush will have begun.

I accept the bittersweet gift of the weather in fall.

The air’s so clear the only haze is inward.

How did I learn these names and calls?

I can’t be sure. They simply gathered.

 

Read more of the poem here: http://sydneylea.net (click on "Sampler").

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Ehrlich visit marks 2 year anniversary of Tohoku tsunami

Gretel Ehrlich, notable poet and nature writer who visits the Writers Institute tomorrow, is the author most recently of Facing the Wave (2013), an account of her travels in Japan in the aftermath of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, and the subsequent meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

Today's anniversary of the Fukushima catastrophe is being marked in the press throughout the world.

Here are a few links:

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pacific/2013/0311/Two-years-after-Japan-s-nuclear-meltdown-what-happened-to-Fukushima-s-orphans

http://au.news.yahoo.com/latest/a/-/article/16337622/japan-to-mark-tsunami-anniversary/

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/03/11/fukushima-nuclear-cleanup-bogged-down-in-bureaucracy-could-take-decades.html

Winner of the 2010 Thoreau Prize for excellence in nature writing, Ehrlich is the author of numerous works about her explorations of diverse environments, including western China, Wyoming and—in particular—the “high Arctic.”

More on Ehrlich's visit: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/ehrlich_gretel13.html

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Gretel Ehrlich on PBS NewsHour at UAlbany Tuesday

Nature writer Gretel Ehrlich, who visits UAlbany tomorrow 3/12, speaks on the PBS NewsHour about her new book Facing the Wave (2013), an account of her travels in Japan after the Tohoku earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown.

"There were moments when the grief aspect of emptiness just seemed so heavy that it was falling like rain, that it was just a deluge of sorry," she said. "I met a fireman who lost his wife, his two children, his mother and his father and was just wondering why he was alive and how he was going to begin again." Her poem "Emptiness Fall" reflects on that grief:

Emptiness Falls
Beginning. Again. But how?
Tonight's perfect moon-slice means
we are half here half gone.
Down deep sea urchins fatten on corpses
and the Missing roll on amnesia's tides.
All summer the body rains sweat and
emptiness falls from the standing dead.
Cedar. Rice field. Pine.

More on the NewsHour blog:  http://www.pbs.org/newshour/art/blog/2013/03/friday-on-the-newshour-poet-gretel-ehrlich-revisits-japans-tsunami.html

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An Embarrassment for the Pulitzer Jury

"Mr. Quammen... is not just among our best science writers but among our best writers, period.... That he hasn’t won a nonfiction National Book Award or Pulitzer Prize is an embarrassment."

So writes Dwight Garner this month in the New York Times.

Read the article here:  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/03/books/spillover-by-david-quammen-on-how-animals-infect-humans.html?_r=0

Quammen visits us tomorrow:

David Quammen, nature writer and author
October 18 (Thursday)
Seminar — 4:15 p.m., Assembly Hall, Campus Center, Uptown Campus
Reading — 8:00 p.m., Assembly Hall, Campus Center, Uptown Campus

David Quammenis one of America’s leading nature writers. His new book is Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic (2012), about his travels in the remote corners of the globe with field researchers investigating disease outbreaks in rats, monkeys, bats, pigs, and other species, with the potential to “spillover” to humans. Walter Isaacson described the book as “a frightening and fascinating masterpiece of science reporting that reads like a detective story.” A widely-travelled contributing writer for National Geographic, and the author of the column, “Natural Acts,” for Outside magazine for 15 years, Quammen has written several nonfiction bestsellers, including The Reluctant Mr. Darwin (2006), Monster of God (2003), The Boilerplate Rhino (2001), and The Song of the Dodo (1996).

Cosponsored by UAlbany’s School of Public Health

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Adirondack 46er Book in Plattsburgh Press Republican

Jerry McGovern reviews Heaven Up-h’isted-ness (2012) cowritten and edited by Writers Institute Assistant Director Suzanne Lance:

"This is an important book because the history of the 46ers is important to the Adirondacks and New York state. By gathering that history in one place, and including archival and modern photos, Lance and the Adirondack 46ers have provided a service to us all."

More in the Plattsburgh Press Republican, July 27, 2012.

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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.

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John Sayles: Filmmaker for the Environment

John Sayles, who visits UAlbany this coming Monday, Feb. 27, is this year's recipient of Duke University's LEAF Award for Lifetime Environmental Achievement.

"Nicholas School Dean Bill Chameides said the LEAF Award does not necessarily go to artists whose work is explicitly environmental, but goes to those who explore environmental themes on a profound level."

"'[Sayles examines] the theme of our connection to land, to the earth and to the difficulties we have in trying to balance the various needs and desires for the resources of that land,' Chameides said." More.

Picture: Water buffalo in Amigo, to be screened Friday, Feb. 24 in the Performing Arts Center uptown.

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Mother Nature Has a Ph.D. in Nanotechnology

Michio Kaku, who visits Tuesday, 2/21, explains the nanotechnological feats already accomplished by nature that are currently being attempted by scientists in the field of nanotech.

See the nine and a half minute BBC clip on on Facebook here.

Kaku also explains nanotech in greater detail on the Big Think website here.

Kaku's visit is cosponsored by UAlbany's College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering.

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Alan Lightman in Nature

"When a physics heavyweight is mentioned in the same breath as Salman Rushdie and Italo Calvino, it is tough for a reviewer. Few venture into air that rarefied and make it out alive. But when the book is Mr g, a creation myth by physicist Alan Lightman, it is worth the risk."

Read the review by Pedro Ferreira in the science journal, Nature.

Lightman visits the Institute Thursday, February 2nd.

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