New Poetry Bestseller!

We are pleased that Poetry of Witness (2014) edited by Carolyn Forche (who visited us yesterday), has flown to the to the top of poetry bestseller lists nationwide. Among other things, it is the #1 best selling poetry anthology on Amazon.com and the #4 best selling poetry volume overall (trailing slightly behind Poe, Shakespeare and Homer).

http://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Books-Poetry-Anthologies/zgbs/books/10250

http://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Books-Poetry/zgbs/books/10248

Her appearance Wednesday on the PBS NewsHour may have helped in this regard:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/poet-carolyn-forche-gathers-500-years-of-suffering-in-new-anthology/

Forche reads poems from the collection here:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/poetry/carolyn-forche-explores-writing-as-an-outcry-of-the-soul-in-poetry-of-witness/

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PW Picks of the Week

Publishers Weekly "Picks of the Week" for August 19 include new books by two past visitors to the Institute-- James McBride (pictured here) and Thomas Keneally.

The Good Lord Bird by James McBride (Riverhead) - McBride offers a fresh perspective on abolitionist firebrand John Brown in this novel disguised as the memoir of a slave boy who pretends to be a girl in order to escape pre–Civil War turmoil, only to find himself riding with John Brown’s retinue of rabble-rousers from Bloody Kansas to Harpers Ferry. “I was born a colored man and don’t you forget it,” reminisces Henry Shackleford in a manuscript discovered after a church fire in the 1960s.

The Daughters of Mars by Thomas Keneally (Atria) - The horrific butcher’s bill of WWI trench fighting, which took a toll not only on the wounded soldiers but on the doctors and nurses who tended to them, is at the heart of this moving epic novel from the author of Schindler’s List. The story is told through the experiences of two sisters, Sally and Naomi Durance, both nurses, who enter the morally complex area of treating the devastatingly injured with peacetime experience.

McBride's visit to the Institute: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/mcbride.html

Keneally's visit to the Institute: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/keneally.html

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Praise for Ann Hood, Who Visits Tuesday

Bestselling author Ann Hood's soon-to-be-released novel, The Obituary Writer (Feb. 25, 2013) has earned high praise from some recent visitors to the NYS Writers Institute:

Andre Dubus III: “It is a rare novelist who can summon the creative nerve to plumb the depths of grief, but that's just what Ann Hood does here with such compassion and grace. The Obituary Writer is an unflinching exploration of loss and the love that somehow remains, one that both wounds and heals. This is a deeply engaging and moving book.”

Tom Perrotta:  “In this poignant and incisive novel, Ann Hood brings history back to life in the most intimate way, chronicling the love affairs and heartbreaks of two very different women in two very different times. Moving gracefully and persuasively between post-earthquake San Francisco and the early 1960s, The Obituary Writer makes unexpected connections between these two bygone eras, and in the process, manages to illuminate the present as well as the past.”

More on Ann Hood's upcoming visit with Gene Mirabelli, Tuesday, Feb. 26: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/mirabelli_hood13.html

More on Dubus' 2008 visit:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/dubus_andre08.html

More on Perrotta's 2011 visit:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/perrotta_tom11.html

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That Paradoxical Thing: A Bestselling Poet

Marie Howe's interview with NPR's Terry Gross on Fresh Air in October 2011 briefly elevated her to the paradoxical status of "bestselling poet." For at least a month afterward, her books sold like hot cakes, according to W. W. Norton, her publisher. The program was rebroadcast in April 2012.

"Poetry holds the knowledge that we are alive and that we know we're going to die," Howe told Terry Gross. "The most mysterious aspect of being alive might be that — and poetry knows that."

More.

Marie Howe is New York's new Poet Laureate (2012-14), named by Governor Andrew Cuomo under the sponsorship of the New York State Writers Institute. She will be inaugurated along with State Author Alison Lurie on Thursday, Sept 20 at 8PM at Page Hall on the UAlbany downtown campus.

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Orphan Master Cracks PW Bestseller List

The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson, who visited last Tuesday, has made it to the Publishers Weeekly hardcover bestseller list.

PW says: "Following lots of bookseller and sales rep love early on, Random House built a 13-city tour for Johnson's second novel, which was selected for eight signed first edition clubs. A September 21 media lunch for the author spurred several extravagant notices...."

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#7 on the Bestseller List

The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson, who visits today, Tuesday, Feb. 14th, is #7 on the Washington Post's hardcover fiction bestseller list.

Here's an excerpt from the Washington Post review by David Ignatius:

"A great novel can take implausible fact and turn it into entirely believable fiction. That’s the genius of The Orphan Master's Son. Adam Johnson has taken the papier-mache creation that is North Korea and turned it into a real and riveting place that readers will find unforgettable."

More.

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