Elizabeth Floyd Mair of the Times Union interviews Alice McDermott who will appear at RPI to discuss her new book Someone on April 15, cosponsored by the NYS Writers Institute's Visiting Writers Series, and who will be the first author featured in the new Times Union Book Club.
Q: How much revision and crafting of the sentences goes into your writing?
A: A great deal. For me, story arises out of the sentences: rhythm, word choice, detail. I don't begin with story and then try to find the words — I begin with words and try to find the story. Strange, right?
More in the Times Union: http://www.timesunion.com/tuplus-features/article/Giving-voice-to-those-who-went-unheard-6145666.php
More about the Times Union Book Club: http://www.eventbrite.com/e/timesunionplus-book-club-registration-16145732320?aff=TimesUnionNewspaper
Monday, March 23, 2015
Alice McDermott: Giving Voice to the Unheard
Monday, March 16, 2015
Times Union Book Club with NYS Writers Institute!
The Times Union is launching a new book club in partnership with the New York State Writers Institute.
Alice McDermott's novel Someone (2014) will be the first featured book. Someone tells the story of one woman's "ordinary" life across the decades of the 20th century in an Irish-American enclave in Brooklyn. McDermott received the 1998 National Book Award for her novel, Charming Billy.
To register for the Book Club go to timesunion.com/tubookclub.
The following events will take place in association with the Book Club:
Book Club discussion hosted by Times Union staff
• When: 7 p.m. April 8
• Where: Times Union, 645 Albany Shaker Road, Colonie
• Note: Copies of "Someone" can be purchased at the Book House in Stuyvesant Plaza in Guilderland or at Market Block Books in Troy.
Reading, Q&A , book- signing and McKinney Writing Contest award ceremony
• When: 8 p.m. April 15
• Where: Biotech Auditorium, Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies Building at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy.
• Note: The event is free and open to the public, and cosponsored by the New York State Writers Institute in conjunction with Rensselaer's 74th Annual McKinney Writing Contest and Reading.
Q&A and meet-and-greet with McDermott
• What: In conjunction with the institute, McDermott will answer questions and sign books at an event for Times Union Plus members (those with print or digital subscriptions). Light refreshments will be served.
• When: 11 a.m. April 16
• Where: Times Union, 645 Albany Shaker Road, Colonie
• Note: The event is free. Register at timesunion.com/tubookclub to attend.
More about the Book Club: http://www.timesunion.com/tuplus-features/article/Times-Union-Book-Club-Alice-McDermott-6130671.php
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