Here are a few highlights of a truly exciting season:
Tuesday, January 10, 2017
Announcing the Spring 2017 Series!
Tuesday, December 20, 2016
Writers Institute Mourns the Passing of John Montague
The New York State Writers Institute mourns the passing of our beloved friend and colleague John Montague, major Irish poet of his generation and long-time faculty member of the Institute and the University at Albany. The author of more than 30 books of poetry and a recipient of the Chevalier de la Legion d’honneur, France’s highest award, he died in Nice on December 10, 2016, following surgery.
Born in Brooklyn on February 28, 1929, and raised in County Tyrone, Montague served as Distinguished Writer-in-Residence for the New York State Writers Institute during each spring semester, teaching workshops in fiction and poetry and a class in the English Department, University at Albany. Governor Mario M. Cuomo presented Montague a citation in 1987 “for his outstanding literary achievements and his contributions to the people of New York.”
In 1998, he was named the very first Ireland Professor of Poetry, a new position created to honor the shared literary heritage of the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, with joint appointments at Trinity College Dublin, Queen’s University Belfast and University College Dublin.
Read this account of his funeral in the Irish Times: http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/john-montague-remembered-at-funeral-as-poet-of-wonder-1.2906056 Read More......
Thursday, September 22, 2016
Stephen Burt, Leading American Poetry Critic, to Offer Free Community Poetry Class
Stephen Burt, “one of the most influential poetry critics of
his generation” and “heir to the intellectual mantle long held by giants like
Harold Bloom and Helen Vendler” (The
New York Times),
will
lead a discussion and reading of poems based on his new book, The Poem is You: 60 Contemporary
American Poems and How to Read Them (Sept 2016).Read More......
Joseph LeDoux: Neuroscientist and Expert on Fear and Anxiety, Tues. 9/27
Casey Schwartz reviews Joseph LeDoux's new book, Anxious, in New York magazine. LeDoux visits Albany next week. More about his visit: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/ledoux_joseph16.html#.V-QMe01kDs0
More from Schwartz's review in New York: http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2015/07/everybody-misunderstanding-fear-and-anxiety.html Read More......
Tuesday, September 13, 2016
Joyce Carol Oates Visits Thursday!
WAMC's Joe Donahue will join her on stage in conversation. William Kennedy will introduce!Joyce Carol Oates, fiction writer, essayist, poet, and playwright
September 15 (Thursday)Conversation — 7:30 p.m., Main Theatre, Performing Arts Center
For more details: http://readme.readmedia.com/Major-author-Joyce-Carol-Oates-and-legendary-dancer-Savion-Glover-open-new-arts-conversation-series-at-UAlbany/13976552/print Read More......
The Creative Life!
Thursday, September 1, 2016
Writers Institute Announces Fall 2016 Season!
The New York State Writers Institute at the University at Albany announces
its Fall 2016 schedule of visiting writer appearances and film series
screenings. Events take place on the UAlbany uptown and downtown campuses and
are free and open to the public (unless otherwise noted).
Fall 2016 Visiting Writers Series: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/programpages/vws.html
Fall 2016 Classic Film Series: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/programpages/cfs.html
The
Writers Institute Fall 2016 schedule begins with an exciting new program
collaboration "The Creative Life: A Conversation Series at
UAlbany." Created and produced by the Writers Institute, University
Art Museum, and UAlbany's Performing Arts Center, in collaboration with WAMC
Public Radio, this new series features leading figures from a variety of
artistic disciplines in conversation about their creative inspirations, their
crafts, and their careers. Joyce Carol Oates, prolific author
of more than 160 books, will lead off the series on September 15 followed by Savion
Glover, tap dancing legend and Tony award-winning choreographer on
October 15.
A
second series, "The New Americans: Recent Immigrant Experiences in
Fiction, Nonfiction, and Film" examines the experiences of recent
immigrant groups in the United States. Guests will include Imbolo Mbue,
recipient of a million dollar advance, whose first novel Behold the
Dreamers (2016) is a riveting story about a young Cameroonian couple
making a new life in New York City just as the depression of the 2000s upends
the economy; Anne Fadiman, author of the bestselling nonfiction
book The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down (1997), which explores
the clash between Western medicine and the holistic healing traditions of a
Hmong refugee family from Laos; and director Mary Mazzio,
whose documentary film UNDERWATER DREAMS follows a group of high school
students, sons of undocumented Mexican immigrants, who enter a sophisticated
underwater robotics competition.
In addition to Joyce Carol Oates and Imbolo Mbue, the fall series includes
an exciting lineup of fiction writers: Garth Risk Hallberg,
author of the sweeping debut novel City on Fire, a national bestseller
and recipient of the largest advance for a first novel in U.S. publishing
history; Charles Baxter, who continues to show his mastery of
the short story form with his collection There's Something I Want You to Do;
James Lasdun, whose new novel is the psychological thriller The
Fall Guy; and Howard Frank Mosher, author of 10 acclaimed
novels set in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom.
The genre of poetry is represented by Stephen Burt, the
most influential poetry critic of his generation, who shares the breadth of his
knowledge of American poetry today in his new book The Poem is You: 60
Contemporary American Poems and How to Read Them.
Neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux, the foremost expert on the biology of anxiety and
fear, presents an accessible exploration of the nature of these
emotions in his new book, Anxious: Using the Brain to Understand and Treat
Fear and Anxiety.
Our conflicted relationship with the natural world will be the topic of two
events sponsored in conjunction with the UAlbany Art Museum's exhibition Future
Perfect: Picturing the Anthropocene. Novelist Jennifer Haigh,
whose new novel Heat and Light (2016) explores the allure of fracking
for the residents of a ravaged coal town, and Jeff Goodell,
author of the nonfiction book How to Cool the Planet: Geoengineering and
the Audacious Quest to Fix Earth's Climate will present a joint reading
and discussion. As part of the Classic Film Series, screenwriter Kelly
Masterson will offer film commentary following the screening of the
cult film SNOWPIERCER, a science fiction thriller about the survivors of a
failed climate-change experiment that inadvertently initiates an ice age.
Additional highlights of the Classic Film Series include screenings of ZOOT
SUIT RIOTS, an episode in the PBS American Experience series with commentary by
Joseph Tovares, the film's writer and director; a newly
restored version of CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT (1965), directed by and starring Orson
Welles; the 1924 French silent film L'INHUMAINE (THE INHUMAN WOMAN), with live
piano accompaniment by Mike Schiffer; SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE, based on Kurt
Vonnegut's powerful anti-war novel; and a 30th Anniversary screening of
IRONWEED, adapted for the screen by William Kennedy from his Pulitzer
Prize-winning novel.
For additional information contact the Writers Institute at 518-442-5620 or
online at http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst.