Here are a few highlights of a truly exciting season:
Tuesday, January 10, 2017
Announcing the Spring 2017 Series!
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......
Thursday, August 20, 2015
New Fall Series!
The Writers Institute Fall 2015 schedule of events offers
a rich variety of genres, from poetry to science writing to fiction to history
to memoir to filmmaking and theatre. The upcoming series will even include a
food writer—New York Times columnist and bestselling cookbook author
Mark Bittman, whose work has been described by PBS as a “bible of basic cooking
for millions of Americans.”
The series will showcase two extraordinary former
students at UAlbany—journalist Tom Junod, who holds the all-time record for
National Magazine Award nominations (eleven!), and Edward Burns, director,
actor, and one of the most prolific and influential independent filmmakers
currently at work. Burns will present his new memoir, Independent Ed (2015),
about which Matt Lauer of Today said, “Every young, hungry, creative
person should view this as a textbook.... It’s a how-to.”
Other guests will include Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker Rachel Grady; young adult novelist Jason Reynolds, winner of the American Library Association's Coretta Scott King Award; major American short story writer Ann Beattie; Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Adam Johnson; bestselling horror novelist Peter Straub; National Book Award finalist Mary Gaitskill; "Best New Documentary Filmmaker" at the Tribeca Film Festival, Sean Dunne; trail-blazing neuroscience writer Casey Schwartz; Vonnegut biographer Ginger Strand; and major American dramatist Tina Howe.
For more on the Visiting Writers Series, visit: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/programpages/vws.html#.VdXvw1_D_s1
For more on the Classic Film Series, visit: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/programpages/cfs.html#.VdXwQF_D_s0
We hope to see you soon!
Tuesday, June 2, 2015
2015 NYS Summer Writers Institute Reading Series
The Summer Writers Institute at Skidmore in Saratoga will run from July 29 through July 24.
All readings are at 8PM in Davis Auditorium, Palamountain Hall, Skidmore College, 815 N. Broadway, Saratoga Springs, NY 12866.
For more information: 518-580-5000, info@skidmore.edu
Monday, April 20, 2015
Joan Murray in the Times Union
Poet Joan Murray discusses her friendship with poet Alicia Ostriker in the Times Union. The two poets will visit together on Thursday, April 23rd:
"I've known Alicia since we were both young poets in the second wave feminist movement in the '70s. We were attracted to each other's work, because we were both young moms writing about motherhood and war. We've kept up a literary friendship since then, staying in touch and seeing each other now and then. Alicia is fun, but she's also famous and brilliant in a down-to-earth way."
"While our poems are different, we're both dramatic, and we can riff like the old masters when we want to. We both deal with serious social and political issues. We also write about God, though we're not believers. (Alicia has a whole book talking with him.) And we're both risk-takers: I have that book in the voice of the Niagara woman, and Alicia's new book is in the voices of an old woman, a tulip and a dog."
More in the Times Union interview with Elizabeth Floyd Mair: http://www.timesunion.com/tuplus-features/article/Writing-from-experiences-6204800.php
More about the upcoming visit: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/ostriker_murray15.html
Monday, March 9, 2015
"Gorgeously crafted and emotionally shattering."
Here is the Kirkus Reviews capsule review of The Lost Child (2015) by Caryl Phillips, who visits the Writers Institute tomorrow, Tuesday, March 10:
"Award-winning novelist, essayist and playwright Phillips (Color Me English, 2011, etc.) responds to Wuthering Heights. A difficult daughter and an unhappy wife, Monica Johnson is contrary, self-destructive and—finally—mad. That Monica, in her broad outlines, resembles Cathy Earnshaw is no accident. Her story—as well as that of her husband and their sons—is interwoven with scenes inspired by Wuthering Heights and the life of its author. This is not to say that Monica is Cathy, transplanted from the moors to Oxford in the late 1950s. This is not a retelling. The interplay between this novel and Emily Brontë’s masterpiece is much more interesting than that. For example, Phillips imagines Heathcliff before Mr. Earnshaw takes him to the Heights. This boy is the son of a slave, a woman who worked a sugar plantation before being transported to England. Phillips isn’t the first to read Brontë’s “dark-skinned” antihero as black, but he also connects the boy to Monica’s husband, Julius—a man who gives up academic life in order to take up the cause of anti-colonialism in his West Indian home country—and to their neglected, dispossessed sons. The thematic links between the modern story and Wuthering Heights only become clear over time, and—even then—they’re too rich and subtle to work as simple allegory. Empire and race are among Phillips’ concerns, but he also offers heartbreaking depictions of alienation and the fragility of human relationships. While it would be easy to identify Heathcliff as the lost child of the title, it could also refer to Monica’s younger son—or her older boy. But Monica is lost, too. And then there’s Brontë, drifting further and further into her invented world as she dies. What Phillips seems to be saying, in the end, is that the lost child could be any of us—perhaps even that the lost child is all of us. Gorgeously crafted and emotionally shattering."
Source: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/caryl-phillips/the-lost-child-phillipa/
More about the visit: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/programpages/vws.html#caryl
Tuesday, January 27, 2015
Women Should Be 52% of Everything-- Katha Pollitt
Katha Pollitt, who opens our Visiting Writers Series on January 29th is a regular visitor to the NYS Summer Writers Institute in Saratoga.
Her last visit to UAlbany, however, was in 1992. Here are some quotes from her interview on that occasion with the late Tom Smith:
"I would be in favor of equal representation of women in Congress even if women voted identically with men on every issue, because it's a fairness issue. I would be in favor of women being 52% of everything as well, from police officers, to doctors, to college professors and in government too. That's an equality and justice issue."
"I think people are shaped by economic, social and cultural forces. I don't believe in the essentials of virtue, but it is interesting that there is the [widespread] notion that women are more virtuous. This belief that women are more virtuous than men never leads to the obvious question-- why aren't they in charge then?"
More about Pollitt's upcoming visit: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/pollitt_katha15.html
Tuesday, January 20, 2015
Katha Pollitt in the Times Union
Katha Pollitt, one of the most influential feminist writers and thinkers of the present generation, opens our Visiting Writers Series on Thursday, January 29.
Pollitt is interviewed in the Times Union by Elizabeth Floyd Mair, about her new book, Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights [2014].
Q: Tell me about how you want to reframe the discussion [of abortion]?
A: I want to put women, in their full humanity, back at the center. Right now, the discussion is all about the fertilized egg/embryo/fetus. I want us to see the abortion decision as part of normal life in a female body — one in three women will have had at least one by menopause. I want us to see abortion rights and access as a good thing for society. What is the point of forcing women to bear children against their will? Children should be born when their parents are in a good position to raise them, and our whole society benefits when women and men can realize their dreams.
More in the TU: http://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Katha-Pollitt-pro-abortion-author-to-speak-at-6018435.php
More about Pollitt's upcoming visit: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/pollitt_katha15.html
Monday, January 12, 2015
New Spring Series!
You are invited to attend our Spring 2015 series of free
events.
The Classic Film Series will feature young prize-winning director Tanya Hamilton (Night Catches Us), theater and film producer Ron Simons (winner of Tony Awards for for A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder; Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike; and the 2012 Porgy & Bess), prize-winning documentary filmmaker Jason Osder (Let the Fire Burn), and William Wellman, Jr., son and biographer of legendary Hollywood director William A. Wellman, whose career spanned four decades, from the Silent Era to the 1950s.
Best regards and Happy New Year,
The New York State Writers Institute
Tuesday, November 18, 2014
50 Writers You Need to See Read Live
The hip and influential webzine Flavorwire posted a list yesterday of "50 Writers You Need to See Read Live." Not to sound smug or anything, but 20 of them have appeared at the New York State Writers Institute (although we have a very unfair advantage in that 2 of them are part of our "family").
One them of course is our own Bill Kennedy, NYSWI Founder and Executive Director. Another is Elisa Albert, who lives in Albany, and is married to NYSWI Writing Fellow Ed Schwarzschild.
The rest are regular NYS Summer Writers Institute visitor Paul Harding, as well as Gay Talese, Claire Messud, Colson Whitehead, Gary Shteyngart, Mary Gaitskill, Denis Johnson, Shalom Auslander, J. M. Coetzee, Marilynne Robinson, Sigrid Nunez, Sherman Alexie, Isabel Wilkerson, Charles Simic, Karen Russell, Chang-Rae Lee, James Salter, and Jonathan Ames.
Picture: Mary Gaitskill.
Full list here: http://flavorwire.com/487668/50-writers-you-need-to-see-read-live/view-all Read More......
Friday, September 5, 2014
Visiting Writers: Kirsten Gillibrand! William Gibson! Richard Norton Smith!
Tuesday, May 27, 2014
Free Events in Saratoga This Summer
 |
| Jamaica Kincaid |
Jamaica Kincaid! Joyce Carol Oates! William Kennedy! Robert Pinsky! Marilynne Robinson! Russell Banks! And many more….
You are invited to attend the NYS Summer Writers Institute’s
free public readings at Skidmore in Saratoga this summer, every weekday from
June 30th to July 25th, cosponsored by Skidmore College and the New York State Writers
Institute.
SUMMER PUBLIC READING LIST 2014
All Readings are at 8:00 p.m. in Davis Auditorium, Palamountain Hall
815 North Broadway, Saratoga Springs, NY 12866
Free and open to the public
JUNE 30
Fiction reading by Elizabeth Benedict and poetry reading by Campbell McGrath.
JULY 1
Fiction reading by Francine Prose and non-fiction reading by Nicholas Delbanco.
JULY 2
Poetry reading by Frank Bidart and fiction reading by Jim Shepard.
JULY 3
Fiction reading by Russell Banks and poetry reading by Chase Twichell.
JULY 4
Fiction reading by Howard Norman and poetry reading by Jane Shore.
JULY 7
Poetry reading by Rosanna Warren and fiction reading by Cristina Garcia.
JULY 8
Non-Fiction reading by Phillip Lopate and fiction reading by Victoria Redel.
JULY 9
Poetry reading by James Longenbach and fiction reading by Joanna Scott.
JULY 10
Poetry reading by Louise Gluck and fiction reading by Caryl Phillips.
JULY 11
Fiction reading by Joyce Carol Oates.
JULY 14
Poetry reading by Carolyn Forche and fiction reading by Amy Hempel.
JULY 15
Fiction reading by Marilynne Robinson and poetry reading by Peg Boyers.
JULY 16
Fiction reading by Danzy Senna and nonfiction reading by Honor Moore.
JULY 17
Fiction reading by William Kennedy.
JULY 18
Poetry reading by Robert Pinsky.
JULY 21
Poetry reading by Mark Strand and fiction reading by Binnie Kirshenbaum.
JULY 22
Poetry reading by Charles Simic and fiction reading by Adam Braver.
JULY 23
Fiction reading by Rick Moody and poetry reading by Tom Healy.
JULY 24
Fiction reading by Jamaica Kincaid and poetry reading by Henri Cole.
JULY 25
Fiction reading by Paul Harding and poetry reading by Carl Dennis.
Office of the Dean of Special Programs
518-580-5593
NYS Summer Writers Institute
Office of the Dean of Special Programs
Skidmore College
815 North Broadway
Saratoga Springs, NY 12866
Thursday, April 10, 2014
The Other Language in Oprah's O. magazine
Amy Fine Collins of O. magazine reviews the new story collection by Francesca Marciano who visits Albany tomorrow:
“Seductive, cosmopolitan . . . In The Other Language, romance is the cure for ennui. Marciano’s heroines take the kind of risks most of us have been conditioned to avoid: they reconnect with lost lovers, migrate to faraway lands, and forge liaisons beyond the bounds of their race, culture, and class. Marciano is an apt guide to these exotic lives, [and] she engages us intimately with them . . . Frustrated communication is a recurrent theme, as is the quest for the elusive person or place that allows one to feel at home. In Marciano’s nuanced emotional universe, a foreigner is likely to consider herself an outsider, no matter how long she’s lived elsewhere—especially if she still dreams in her mother tongue.”
More about Marciano's visit: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/programpages/vws.html#marciano
Monday, October 28, 2013
Douglas Bauer on Marriage, Aging, Life, Death
Douglas Bauer, who visits the Writers Institute tomorrow, 10/29, to present his new book, What Happens Next, Matters of Life and Death, is interviewed by Elizabeth Floyd Mair in the Times Union.
Q: What was the most surprising thing that you learned in the course of writing this book?
A: That I could write it. Until now, all my nonfiction has been about other people. Or it's concerned itself with literary matters. And I struggled in this book to find a balance between what seemed necessary to reveal about myself and my great reluctance to reveal anything, however important to the narrative.
More in the TU: http://www.timesunion.com/default/article/Focus-on-marriage-aging-4923207.php
More about Bauer's visit: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/bauer_douglas13.html
Friday, October 25, 2013
Stig Dagerman Celebration Tonight
Impressive praise blurbs grace the cover of Sleet, a new collection of stories in English translation by Swedish author Stig Dagerman, translated by former Writers Institute grad assistant Steven Hartman. The book also features an introduction by National Book Award winner Alice McDermott. The collection will be available for sale tonight at Page Hall at a celebration of Stig Dagerman's life and works, featuring films and readings, and a discussion with Steve Hartman and Lo Dagerman, Stig's daughter.
Picture: Steve Hartman
More about tonight's event: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/dagerman_hartman13.html
Dagerman wrote with beautiful objectivity. Instead of emotive phrases, he uses a choice of facts, like bricks, to construct an emotion. --Graham Greene
An imagination that appeals to an unreasonable degree of sympathy is precisely what makes Dagerman s fiction so evocative. Evocative not, as one might expect, of despair, or bleakness, or existential angst, but of compassion, fellow-feeling, even love. --from the preface by Alice McDermott
Stig Dagerman writes with the tension that belongs to emergency—deliberately,
precisely, breathlessly. To read Dagerman is to read with your whole body—lungs,
heart, viscera, as well as mind. At once remote and intimate in tone, these
works by one of the great twentieth-century writers come fully to life in a
remarkable translation by Steven Hartman.
—Siri Hustvedt, author of The
Summer Without Men
Stig Dagerman s fearless, moving stories should be placed alongside the short fiction of such luminaries as James Joyce, Anton Chekhov, and Raymond Carver. You ll find yourself holding your breath in wonder as you read, grateful to Dagerman (and Steven Hartman) for the gift of these stories. --Edward Schwarzschild, author of The Family Diamond
Monday, October 7, 2013
T. C. Boyle Visits Tomorrow
Q: A lot of your stories in this volume present characters, usually men, who are so self-absorbed that they necessarily veer toward disaster. Is your view of human nature more dark than light?
A: I have lived one of the most fortunate of human lives, surrounded by light and love. I have known my closest friend since I was 3 1/2 years old, my children are slim and tall and beautiful and smarter than all the computers in the world combined, and I remain the only writer in history only to have one wife, the legendary Karen Kvashay, my college sweetheart at SUNY Potsdam.
Still, I do suspect that the universe doesn't care much about any of this or any of us and that accident rules the world. Fiction is a place for examining the darker scenarios, the ones we hope to avoid.
Read more of Elizabeth Floyd Mair's interview in Sunday's Times Union:
http://www.timesunion.com/living/article/Tales-to-tell-4866512.php
October 8 (Tuesday)
Seminar — 4:15 p.m., Standish Room, Science Library, Uptown Campus
Reading — 8:00 p.m., Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center, Uptown Campus
Monday, September 16, 2013
Sydney Lea on Poetry
"Poetry can achieve something that's far less available to
other modes of human discourse: it can present several thoughts, emotions,
impulses, some in apparent flat contradiction of one another, in a single
vessel, without seeming merely muddled." --Sydney LeaMore: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/howe_lea13.html Read More......
Marie Howe on Poetry
"Poetry knows that we are living and dying at the same
time. It resurrects us. It brings us to our senses. " --Marie Howe
Friday, September 13, 2013
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.
Tuesday, September 10, 2013
The Joys of Plagiarism
Jonathan Lethem, who visits tomorrow, is the author of a widely circulated essay, published originally in Harper's, and subsequently in The Best American Essays 2008, edited by the New Yorker's Adam Gopnik, that justifies the act of plagiarism:
"Consider this tale: a cultivated man of middle age looks back on the story of an amour fou, one beginning when, traveling abroad, he takes a room as a lodger. The moment he sees the daughter of the house, he is lost. She is a preteen, whose charms instantly enslave him. Heedless of her age, he becomes intimate with her. In the end she dies, and the narrator — marked by her forever — remains alone. The name of the girl supplies the title of the story: Lolita."
"The author of the story I’ve described, Heinz von Lichberg, published his tale of Lolita in 1916, forty years before Vladimir Nabokov’s novel. Lichberg later became a prominent journalist in the Nazi era, and his youthful works faded from view. Did Nabokov, who remained in Berlin until 1937, adopt Lichberg’s tale consciously? Or did the earlier tale exist for Nabokov as a hidden, unacknowledged memory?"
More: http://harpers.org/archive/2007/02/the-ecstasy-of-influence/