Joan Murray in the Times Union

Poet Joan Murray discusses her friendship with poet Alicia Ostriker in the Times Union. The two poets will visit together on Thursday, April 23rd:

"I've known Alicia since we were both young poets in the second wave feminist movement in the '70s. We were attracted to each other's work, because we were both young moms writing about motherhood and war. We've kept up a literary friendship since then, staying in touch and seeing each other now and then. Alicia is fun, but she's also famous and brilliant in a down-to-earth way."

"While our poems are different, we're both dramatic, and we can riff like the old masters when we want to. We both deal with serious social and political issues. We also write about God, though we're not believers. (Alicia has a whole book talking with him.) And we're both risk-takers: I have that book in the voice of the Niagara woman, and Alicia's new book is in the voices of an old woman, a tulip and a dog."

More in the Times Union interview with Elizabeth Floyd Mair:  http://www.timesunion.com/tuplus-features/article/Writing-from-experiences-6204800.php

More about the upcoming visit:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/ostriker_murray15.html

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Bill Remembers Mario on Time Warner Cable News

William Kennedy sat for a interview on Friday 1/9 about the legacy of former Governor with the New York State of Politics program of Time Warner Cable News.

"It was Mario Cuomo’s second week in office when he sent a handwritten letter to an English professor at the University at Albany. That letter kicked off what would become a life-long friendship between William Kennedy and the former governor. So, when Kennedy pitched his idea for the New York State Writer’s Institite a year later, Mario Cuomo pushed the idea into state law. We talked to Kennedy at the University at Albany about the former governor."

Here's the link:  http://www.nystateofpolitics.com/2015/01/william-kennedy-remembers-mario/

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A Literary Friendship Spanning 5 Decades

Bill Kennedy's long friendship with E. L. Doctorow (who visited 2/27) is the subject of an article by Paul Grondahl in the  Times Union:

"They are both in their 80s now, William Kennedy and E.L. Doctorow, two acclaimed American novelists whose literary friendship spans 50 years, three dozen books, a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Award, four National Book Critics Circle awards and a shelf of other prestigious fiction prizes between them."

"The two met in 1968 when Doctorow, an editor at The Dial Press, acquired Kennedy's first novel, The Ink Truck, a metaphysical tale loosely based on a 1964 newspaper strike at the Times Union, where Kennedy worked as a reporter...."

More in the TU:  http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/A-literary-friendship-spanning-five-decades-5289119.php

More about Doctorow's visit:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/doctorow_el14.html

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New Event: Poets Harry Staley & George Drew

Harry Staley, poet, beloved UAlbany Professor Emeritus, and noted scholar of the works of James Joyce, along with one of  his former students, award-winning poet George Drew, will read from their new poetry collections on Wednesday, May 2, 2012  at 4:15 p.m. in the Science Library Room 340  on the University at Albany uptown campus. The event is sponsored by the New York State Writers Institute and SUNY Press and is free and open to the public.

Stayed tuned for more updates.....

Staley's new collection is Truant Pastures: The Complete Poems of Harry C. Staley (2011), published by Excelsior Editions, SUNY Press. In advance praise, literature scholar Todd F. Davis said, “The portrait of the speaker in the majority of these poems is one of a man conflicted in his religious faith, in his faith in his fellow human community, in the wars that religion has persuaded his fellow humans to take part in…. Staley demonstrates an understanding that is deeply spiritual, yet does not yield to easy, forgiving answers.

Drew is the author most recently of The View from Jackass Hill (2010), a collection that mourns, eulogizes, and celebrates deceased friends, family members, and favorite poets. The book received the 2010 X.J. Kennedy Poetry Prize, from Texas Review Press. In bestowing the prize, series judge and poet Robert Phillips said, “Here is a poet with a real voice, brave and original…. This is a collection of friendship and vodka, and I can only say, Enjoy!”

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