Hollis Seamon, this year's featured guest author at the New York State Summer Young Writers Institute for high school-aged writers, tied for the 2014 Independent Publisher Book Award ("Ippy") Gold Medal for Short Fiction for her story collection, Corporeality.
More 2014 "Ippy" results here: http://www.independentpublisher.com/article.php?page=1791
Students at the Young Writers Institute will read Seamon's 2013 young adult novel, Somebody Up There Hates You, about a 17-year-old battling cancer.
Booklist said, "Seamon’s first young-adult novel is a tender, insightful, and unsentimental look
at teens in extremis. It brings light to a very dark place, and in so doing,
does its readers a generous service."
More about Hollis Seamon: http://www.skidmore.edu/youngwriters/guest-author.php
More about the New York State Summer Young Writers Institute: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/programpages/nyssywi.html
Monday, June 2, 2014
Hollis Seamon wins "Ippy" Gold Medal
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, April 7, 2014
Francesca Marciano in the New York Times
Michiko Kakutani reviews the new story collection, The Other Language (2014), by acclaimed Italian author and Oscar-nominated screenwriter Francesca Marciano, who visits the Writers Institute this coming Friday.
"Francesca Marciano’s magical, fleet-footed stories leap around the globe, from Rome to New York to Mombasa, from a small Greek village to a remote island off the coast of Tanzania to a fortress on the banks of the Narmada River in India. She has an uncanny ability to conjure specific places...."
More in the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/31/books/no-safe-harbor-for-travelers-in-the-other-language.html
More about Marciano's visit: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/marciano_francesca14.html
Tuesday, February 18, 2014
Lorrie Moore has a new book
Charles McGrath profiles major American writer Lorrie Moore and her new book of short stories (her first in 15 years) in yesterday's New York Times.
From the article: Lorrie Moore doesn’t much resemble a Lorrie Moore character. She’s shy and self-deprecating but not melancholy, witty but not jokey. Her conversation doesn’t bristle with wordplay or throwaway one-liners; there are no zingers. Two of her favorite expressions are “I don’t know” and, added to the end of a sentence, “Or maybe not.”
More: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/18/books/lorrie-moores-new-book-is-a-reminder-and-a-departure.html?ref=arts&_r=0
A Glens Falls native, Moore visited the Writers Institute in 2009 and shared the stage with fellow upstater Richard Russo (of Gloversville) to celebrate the New York State Writers Institute's 25th Anniversary.
More on their visit: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/moore_russo09.html
James Redwood's tales of Vietnam to be presented today
James Redwood, prizewinning author of short stories based on his experiences in Vietnam, visits the Writers Institute today: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/redwood_james14.html
Jack Rightmyer offers a portrait of Redwood in the Schenectady Sunday Gazette:
If James D. Redwood had not gotten such a high draft number in 1970, his view of
the Vietnamese people would most likely be very different today, and his
award-winning short story collection “Love Beneath the Napalm” (University of
Notre Dame Press, $24, 183 pages) might have never been written. “With
such a high number I knew I would never be drafted,” said Redwood in a recent
phone interview from his office at the Albany Law School, where he has been a
professor since 1989. Most undergraduates would be relieved to get such a
number, but Redwood, who graduated from Oberlin College in 1971 with a
bachelor’s degree in English, wanted to do some type of service to help the
war-torn nation.
More in the Schenectady Gazette: http://www.dailygazette.net/standard/ShowStoryTemplate.asp?Path=SCH/2014/02/16&ID=Ar03800&Section=Life_and_Arts
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
Vietnam-themed events at the Writers Institute
The New York State Writers Institute will feature film, fiction and nonfiction in three events exploring recent history in Vietnam:
Film screening — 7:30 p.m., Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, Downtown Campus
Starring Le Van Loc, Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Tran Nu Yên-Khê
February 18 (Tuesday)
Reading — 4:15 p.m., Standish Room, Science Library, Uptown Campus
James D. Redwood, Professor of Law at Albany Law School, is the author of a first collection of stories, Love Beneath the Napalm (2014), inaugural winner of the Notre Dame Review Book Prize. Based on Redwood’s experiences as an English teacher and social worker in 1970s Vietnam, the stories have been published previously in leading literary magazines, including the Virginia Quarterly Review, Kenyon Review, and TriQuarterly.
February 19 (Wednesday)
Reading and discussion — 4:15 p.m., Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center
Tuesday, September 3, 2013
Stories About Women in Science
Janet Maslin reviews Andrea Barrett's Archangel, a new collection of short pieces of historical fiction about the struggles of women scientists.
"This is a book full of strong women..... [Barrett's] stories work as both fiction and as philosophy of science. And she need do no grandstanding to advance her belief in unstoppable progress. But this book does offer a powerfully human sense of the struggle it takes for new ideas to dislodge old ones.
Barrett visited the Writers Institute in 2007: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/barrett.html
Thursday, May 23, 2013
Sweet Picture of Lydia Davis in the Los Angeles Times
The LA Times has a nice picture of the NYS Writers Institute's Lydia Davis at the moment she
learned she had won the Man Booker International Prize.
http://www.latimes.com/features/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-lydia-davis-wins-man-booker-international-prize-20130522,0,2279746.story
Read More......
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
A Theory of Humor
Here is a piece on humor from June 2008:
"Let's attempt to derive a theory of humour. Enabled by our theory, everyone could be funny, not just people who are actually funny. And since being funny is an asset - in business, in romance, when one has broken the law - it's hardly fair that "funny people" enjoy a monopoly.
"Let's begin with animals. Which animals are funny? Not an eagle. Unless the eagle is wearing a top hat. And walking stiffly through a supermarket, muttering grumpily to itself about how the world used to be a better place. The addition of a top hat makes any animal funnier. Put a top hat on an already funny animal (a pig, say), and the effect is hilarious, especially if the pig topples over for no reason and can't get up. And the eagle in the top hat stiffly steps over the fallen pig, muttering further reactionary platitudes. Then the pig puts out one of its stumpy pink legs, and down goes the eagle.
More in the Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/jun/21/healthandwellbeing.americanpsyche
Saunders visits UAlbany today: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/saunders_george13.html Read More......
Friday, February 15, 2013
George Saunders, An Old Friend As It Turns Out
"When we had our first daughter, Paula was on a fellowship, studying with Toni Morrison at SUNY Albany, and I had just started working for a pharmaceutical company as a tech writer. But then her fellowship ended and that job played out, and, at the same time, it started to dawn on us that this writing thing might take longer to pay off than we’d expected."
More in the New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2013/01/on-tenth-of-december-an-interview-with-george-saunders.html
More on Saunders' upcoming visit: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/saunders_george13.html Read More......
Thursday, February 14, 2013
Valentine's Day Cocktails from Women Authors
“A lime mint Rickey: I recently returned from Cartagena Colombia and fell hard for their local concoction of fresh lime juice, mint and simple syrup over crushed ice. Also very tasty with dark rum in it!”
Cowboys Are My Weakness author Pam Houston, who visited in 2005, offers this: “Pretty in Pink: San Pellegrino (2 parts), pomegranate-cherry juice (1 part), slice of Meyer lemon, and lots of ice in a tall tumbler. It’s pretty, pink, and comforting (in case Valentine’s Day sucks).”
For more cocktails, go to http://www.prweb.com/releases/DrinkingDiaries/02/prweb10426112.htm
More on Hood's upcoming visit: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/mirabelli_hood13.html
More on Houston's 2005 visit: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/houston_pam.html Read More......
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
Ah Bartleby! Ah humanity! on Friday afternoon 10/12
You can prepare for the event by reading the story here: http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=1479870
J. M. Coetzee, Nobel Prize winner from South Africa, and Paul Auster, bestselling author, will present a rare opportunity to discuss one of the classic and most influential short stories of modern times:
Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-street by Herman Melville
"I AM a rather elderly man. The nature of my avocations for the last thirty years has brought me into more than ordinary contact with what would seem an interesting and somewhat singular set of men, of whom as yet nothing that I know of has ever been written:—I mean the law-copyists or scriveners." More. Read More......
Monday, October 1, 2012
Junot Diaz Hates Writing Short Stories
Read Sam Anderson's interview with Junot Diaz in the New York Times magazine.
Diaz visits us for two events this coming Thursday, 10/4, 4:15 and 8PM in the Campus Center. Read More......
Monday, September 24, 2012
Anatomy of a Short Story
We posted a link last week to "Another Life," a story of marital infidelity that appeared in the New Yorker in July. Link here.
La Farge: I knew roughly what was going to happen in “Another Life” before I began, but I didn’t know that it would be divided into two parts, and I didn’t see it until I had written the sentence, “I want another life,” which is what the husband thinks just before he goes off on his adventure.
Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/06/this-week-in-fiction-paul-la-farge.html#ixzz27OYZ1ZpC Read More......
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Writer Mary Gaitskill tomorrow
So begins a 2005 New York Magazine profile here.
Gaitskill will share the stage with poet Tom Healy, tomorrow, Wednesday, July 25th, 8PM, Davis Audiorium, Palamountain Hall, 815 North Broadway, Saratoga. Free.
Click here for more events in the series. All are free and open to the general public. Read More......
Thursday, July 12, 2012
The Dark Lady of American Letters, This Friday
All events in the series are free and open to the general public
Her most recent book is The Corn Maiden and Other Nightmares: Novellas and Stories of Unspeakable Dread (2011).
Publishers Weekly said, "The seven stories in this stellar collection from the prolific Oates (Give Me Your Heart) may prompt the reader to turn on all the lights or jump at imagined noises.... This volume burnishes Oates’s reputation as a master of psychological dread."
Read More......