Lydia Davis to Teach Fall Workshop at UAlbany

Lydia Davis, New York State Writers Institute Fellow and recent winner of the 2013 Man Booker International Prize, will conduct a fiction master class workshop for community writers during the fall 2013 semester. The focus will be on detailed discussion of students' work, but there may also be assigned exercises and/or readings from published novels or short stories to broaden the discussion of topics such as character, plot, style, and form. The workshop is intended for advanced writers - writers who have significant publications in literary journals. It will be an intensive five-session workshop held in the month of October.

The workshop is not-for-credit and will be held at the University at Albany's uptown campus. Admission to the workshop is based on the submission of writing samples. Complete information on the workshop and submission guidelines may be obtained by calling the Institute at 518-442-5620 or by visiting the Institute's website at:

http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/programpages/workshop.html

Lydia Davis, fiction writer, translator, and UAlbany professor, has received wide acclaim for her extremely brief and brilliantly inventive short stories. She has been called "one of the quiet giants . . . of American fiction" (Los Angeles Times Book Review), "an American virtuoso of the short story form" (Salon), and "one of the best writers in America" (O Magazine). In the spring of 2013 Davis received the Man Booker International Prize, one of the most prestigious prizes in the world of literature. The award is given every two years to authors of any nationality in order to recognize an outstanding body of work in English or available in English translation.

Her newest book, which earned rave reviews, is The Collected Stories (2009), a compilation of stories from four previously published volumes including Varieties of Disturbance (2007), Samuel Johnson is Indignant (2001), Almost No Memory (1997) and Break it Down (1986). Davis received a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 2003. A Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters in France, Davis is also one of the most respected translators into English of French literary fiction by Proust and Flaubert, among others.

Davis first received serious critical attention for her collection of stories, "Break It Down," which was selected as a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award. The book's positive critical reception helped Davis win a Whiting Writer's Award in 1988

For additional information contact the Writers Institute at 518-442-5620, or online at http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst.

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Phillip Lopate on the Art of the Essay

Major American essayist Phillip Lopate, who presents a free reading in Saratoga on Monday 7/8, has published two new books in 2013-- the collection, Portrait Inside My Head: Essays, and the writer's guide, To Show and to Tell: The Craft of Literary Nonfiction.

Morris Dickstein reviewed both in the New York Times in March:

"His gods are Montaigne, the father of the essay, whose field of research was his own mind, and William Hazlitt, who, besides being an incomparable literary critic, sketched vehement novelistic impressions of what no one else thought worth noticing, from boxing matches and Indian jugglers to 'the pleasure of hating.'"

More:  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/03/books/review/essays-and-a-writers-guide-by-phillip-lopate.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Complete schedule of free readings:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/sumread.html

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The Short, Short Stories of Lydia Davis

The New York Times blog discusses the shortness of Lydia Davis's short stories following the announcement of the 2013 Man Booker International Prize:

http://6thfloor.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/23/the-short-story-of-lydia-daviss-man-booker-prize/

Lydia will teach another multiple-week Community Writers Workshop in Fall 2013 (free and open to the public on a competitive basis).

More about her here:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/davis_lydia13.html

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Writer Mary Gaitskill tomorrow

"Mary Gaitskill used to be the downtown princess of darkness. Now she’s happily married and lives on a country lane. But she still writes with an icy insight into life’s little cruelties...."

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.

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"Almost Every Other Book You Ever Read Will Suck"

Chuck Palahniuk, author of Fight Club, writes about his experience studying short fiction by Amy Hempel (who reads tonight 7/20 at the Summer Writers Institute in Saratoga) in a writing workshop early on in his career:

"WHEN YOU STUDY MINIMALISM IN THE NOVELIST Tom Spanbauer's workshop, the first story you read is Amy Hempel's The Harvest. After that, you're ruined. I'm not kidding. You go there, and almost every other book you ever read will suck. All those thick, third-person, plot-driven books torn from the pages of today's news -- after Amy Hempel, you'll save yourself a lot of time and money."

Read more in L.A. Weekly.

Amy Hempel shares the stage with Pulitzer-winning poet Richard Howard on Friday, July 20th, 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.

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Former US Poet Laureate Mark Strand in Saratoga

Poet Mark Strand, whose poetry was praised for its "transparent verbal perfection" by Octavio Paz, the late Mexican writer and Nobel Laureate, will share the stage with poet and memoirist Honor Moore this coming Monday, July 16th,  8PM, Davis Audiorium, Palamountain Hall, 815 North Broadway, Saratoga Springs.

Honor Moore, author of poetry, fiction and nonfiction is perhaps best known for her bestselling memoir, The Bishop's Daughter, about her relationship with her secretly gay father, leading Episcopal bishop Paul Moore, Jr.
All events in the series are free and open to the general public.

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Science Writing Workshop Open to Applicants

Dear Readers, Writers, Teachers, Students and All Members of the General Public,

We encourage you to apply for the following FREE workshop. Writing samples need not be science writing (nonfiction in any category is acceptable).

Writing About Science and Technology

Nonfiction Workshop Offered by Writers Institute Fellow James Lasdun

New York State Writers Institute Fellow James Lasdun will conduct a nonfiction workshop during the spring 2012 semester that will focus on writing about science and technology. Advances in science and technology have enormous impacts on our lives. The need to understand them is more urgent than ever and yet how can these often highly esoteric matters be made comprehensible to the general public?

The workshop is scheduled for eight Monday nights (March 19, 26, April 9, 16, 23, 30, May 7, 14) from 6 to 9 p.m. The class will take place on the University at Albany’s uptown campus. This workshop is offered for non-credit, free of charge for non-University students.

Manuscripts delivered in person will be accepted up until 1:00 p.m. on Wednesday, February 22, 2012. Mailed manuscripts must be postmarked no later than Friday, February 17, 2012. No faxes or e-mails.

For more information, click here.

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Young Writers Institute, July 1-7, 2012

A student writes about her experiences at the Summer Young Writers Institute:

“Assuming that I would be my usual apathetic, antisocial self, my mother’s one rule for when I would be at the New York State Summer Young Writers Institute was, 'Be outgoing.'"

"I suppose that if I were anywhere else but a writing camp filled with 35 other students who were more or less just like me, I would have had a painfully hard time. Every minute that I
have spent here was precious. I have never been surrounded by like-minded people who were just as enthusiastic and passionate about writing as I was, and it was a beautiful and heartwarming sensation learning that everybody around you — faculty and peers alike — felt the same way you did...." — SABRINA HUA, July, 2010.

Read the 2010 student anthology.

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