Howard Frank Mosher, In Memoriam

The New York State Writers Institute mourns the passing of novelist Howard Frank Mosher who delighted Albany audiences on November 1st, 2016. Mosher was widely celebrated as "the voice of Vermont." Born in the Catskills, he spent much of his childhood in Altamont, New York.

From yesterday's Vermont Public Radio obituary:  "Acclaimed Vermont author Howard Frank Mosher has died. Mosher, 74, succumbed to cancer Sunday morning at his home in Irasburg.

His stories celebrated the Northeast Kingdom as the last bastion of a people and a way of life that has all but disappeared from Vermont."  More.


Listen to Joe Donahue's Nov. 1st WAMC interview.


More about Mosher's visit to the Writers Institute.


From the Oct. 2016 Times Union profile of Mosher by Joe Stalvey and Jack Rightmyer:  "I was actually born in the Catskill Mountains, and I lived there till I was 11 or 12," he says, "and then we moved to Altamont, where I attended grade six through nine. Many of my stories also reach back to that time in my boyhood."He fondly recalls fishing in the Helderberg Mountains and going to the Altamont Fair every summer. "The description of the county fair in my newest book 'God's Kingdom' is how I remember the Altamont Fair," he says. "("God's Kingdom") is pretty autobiographical," Mosher says. "Jim is based on me, and like him, I always wanted to be a writer. Most of the characters are based on my friends and relatives, including my wife. The newspaper editor is based on my dad, who was a teacher and once the principal of Altamont High School. He was the principal the first two years of Guilderland High School." More.

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Colin Powell recalls Joe Persico in today's Gazette

Gloversville native Persico's work, friendship recalled

Author died Saturday at 84

Bill Buell, Schenectady Gazette

GUILDERLAND — Colin Powell didn’t need a second meeting. As soon as he and Joseph Persico shook hands for the first time, something told the general he had found his man.“We had gone through numerous candidates and no one had clicked,” said the former U.S. secretary of state and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who was looking for a collaborator to write his autobiography in 1993. “I was actually getting a bit desperate. Then my agent said, ‘We have one more guy, this Persico guy,’ so I said, ‘OK, let’s meet him.’ Well, we hit it off pretty well. He became my collaborator, and it was one of the best choices I ever made in my life.”

More in the Gazette:   http://www.dailygazette.com/news/2014/sep/04/gloversville-native-persicos-work-friendship-fondl/

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Joe Persico on YouTube at the NYS Writers Institute

Watch an interview with Joe Persico at the Writers Institute in 2004 on our YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5gbTLDeLEo&feature=youtu.be

Best-selling nonfiction writer Joseph Persico authored 11th Month, 11th Day, 11th Hour: Armistice Day, 1918 (2004, Random House), which recounts the final bloody days and hours of the First World War. The book details how Allied commanders, in pursuit of military glory, sacrificed the lives of thousands of soldiers in senseless attacks on German positions, though fully aware that nation had already surrendered. Persico's books, some of them bestsellers, have included My Enemy, My Brother: Men and Days of Gettysburg (1977), Piercing the Reich: The Penetration of Nazi Germany by American Secret Agents during World War II (1979), The Imperial Rockefeller: A Biography of Nelson A. Rockefeller (1982), Murrow: An American Original (1988), Casey: The Lives and Secrets of William J. Casey from OSS to CIA (1990); Nuremberg: Infamy on Trial (1994), and Roosevelt's Secret War: FDR and World War II Espionage (2001). Persico collaborated with General Colin Powell on My American Journey (1996), which follows Powell's life from his birth in Harlem through his distinguished career in the U.S. Military, including his rise to influence at the Pentagon, as well as his role in the Vietnamese, Panamanian and Iraqi conflicts. A graduate of UAlbany and Guilderland resident, Persico served on the commission that oversaw the design of the new National World War II Memorial in Washington, DC, and penned the words that appear on the monument, "Here we mark the price of freedom."

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More on Joe Persico in the Times Union

Two community treasures lost: An appreciation

Paul Grondahl, Wednesday, September 3, 2014

Joe was an acclaimed historian and the author of 12 books. You may have seen him as a "talking head" expert in History Channel documentaries or as a guest on "Face the Nation" and "Morning Joe." His books had reached the best-seller list and "Nuremberg: Infamy on Trial" was made into a TV movie. The Gloversville native was among a troika of the region's most famous authors alongside Albany natives Andy Rooney and Bill Kennedy.

Yet he was always willing to write a blurb, celebrate literary successes of friends and offer pragmatic advice to writers like myself. He called me "young fella" even after I turned 55 this summer. He said there were no shortcuts to success. He had a small sign in a book-lined study at his Guilderland apartment that was a kind of mantra: "The harder I work, the luckier I get."

He worked hard to the end.

More:  http://www.timesunion.com/default/article/Two-community-treasures-lost-An-appreciation-5729437.php

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Mourning Joe Persico, One of the Finest Writers in the Region

Joseph E. Persico, acclaimed historian and biographer, dies at 84

Ex-Rockefeller aide's work noted for its humanity

Paul Grondah, Times Union

By Paul Grondahl

Joseph E. Persico of Guilderland, an acclaimed historian and biographer and former chief speechwriter for Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller, who published 12 books, including the autobiography of Gen. Colin Powell for which he was the ghost writer, died Saturday at St. Peter's Hospital after a long illness. He was 84.

Persico, son of glove makers, rose from a blue-collar upbringing in Gloversville. He graduated with a bachelor's degree and a double major in English and political science from the New York State College for Teachers in 1952 (now the University at Albany).

More in the Times Union:  http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Joseph-Persico-acclaimed-historian-biographer-5724215.php

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WWII Historian Joe Persico Publishes New Book

Leading World War II historian and Guilderland resident Joseph Persico has a new book, Roosevelt's Centurions (2013), about the war-time President's relationships with his various commanders and generals.

Persico is also the author of the words that are engraved for posterity on the World War II Memorial on the National Mall in Washington D. C.:  "Here we mark the price of freedom."

Paul Grondahl of the Times Union has an interview with Persico about the new book: http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Revelations-about-Roosevelt-4585140.php

Persico, who ghost-wrote Colin Powell's My American Journey, last visited the Institute in 2004: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/persicojoseph.html

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Christa Parravani's Photography

Acclaimed first-time author Christa Parravani (who visits UAlbany tomorrow to present her new memoir, Her, about the life and death of her identical twin, Cara) is also an accomplished photographer.

View her internationally exhibited series, "Kindred," featuring dual portraits of herself and Cara in surreal settings, on her website at http://www.christaparravani.com/kindred.htm.

Represented by the Michael Foley Gallery in New York City and the Kopeikin Gallery in Los Angeles, Parravani’s photography has been exhibited throughout the U.S. and Europe. Her widely-exhibited 2006 photography series, “Kindred,” shot prior to Cara’s death, featured both twins posing and interacting in a variety of dreamlike settings. The Center for Photography at Woodstock said of “Kindred,” “The landscapes become the medium for the telling of [the twins’] fractured relationship…. Here, identity is malleable and the past and the present merge to create an all encompassing reality. The photographs explore underlying themes of childhood, narcissism, sexual confusion, and family romance that identify a singular path, individuality, and separate lives…. Parravani is the author of the images and the subject at the same. She is both the viewer, the viewed, and inserts a large amount of control over the image while also losing control by making herself vulnerable.”

Parravani has taught photography at Dartmouth College, Columbia University, and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, the writer Anthony Swofford (author of Jarhead and Hotels, Hospitals and Jails: A Memoir), and their daughter.

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"Very Traumatizing to Write This Book"

"It was emotionally draining and sometimes very traumatizing to write this book. Particularly since I didn't know how to write a book — this is my first book — I had to write things over and over again to get them right. And some of those things were the ones that were the hardest emotionally."

Read more of Ellizabeth Floyd Mair's interview with Christa Parravani (who visits on Thursday) in the Times Union:

http://www.timesunion.com/living/article/Double-vision-4317715.php#ixzz2MhNYuEdP

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Christa Parravani in the Schenectady Gazette

"Her. That’s what Christa Parravani’s identical twin sister, Cara, used to call her. The two shared almost everything: looks, fears, interests, hopes. And when Cara died of a heroin overdose in 2006, at the age of 28, Christa’s world was ripped apart. Grief-stricken, she spiraled into a self-destructive depression. Like Cara, she abused drugs and attempted suicide. Unlike Cara, she survived. Parravani tells her harrowing story in her new memoir, “Her,” which goes on sale Tuesday and was named Amazon’s 'Featured Debut' for March."

"In Her, Parravani credits Guilderland High School and the guidance of caring teachers with helping her and Cara succeed and cultivating their interest in the arts."
For more highlights of Sara Foss's profile of Christa Parravani (who visits UAlbany on Thursday), visit http://www.dailygazette.net/standard/ShowStoryTemplate.asp?Path=SCH/2013/03/03&ID=Ar00901&Section=Local_News

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On loving and losing a twin...

Christa Parravani's new memoir of her deceased twin Cara was just named Amazon's "Featured Debut" for March 2013, as well as a "Best Book of the Month."

Also a noted photographer, the Guilderland High School graduate posed in a series of photos with Cara shortly before her death. One of them (featured here) graces the cover of the book.

Parravani visits the Institute this coming Thursday:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/programpages/vws.html#christa

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Christa Parravani of Guilderland, Acclaimed Memoir

New author Christa Parravani, who graduated from Guilderland High School and spent parts of her childhood in Albany and Schenectady will present her first book, Her, a highly acclaimed memoir about the life and death of her twin sister, Cara Parravani, at UAlbany, Thursday, March 7.

Novelist Jayne Anne Phillips said, “Christa Parravani’s lyrical, no-nonsense Her ranks with the best American memoirs of the decade… an uncompromising love poem to the joys and dangers of shared identity, and an unforgettable treatise on addiction, trauma, survival, and triumph.” Author Nick Flynn called it, “reckless yet delicate, familiar yet otherworldly, precise yet with the soul of a fairytale, and deeply moving in surprising ways.” Novelist Julie Orringer said, “With a photographer’s sharp eye and a gifted writer’s penetrating insight, Parravani writes about being torn apart and then about piecing her life back together, brilliantly illuminating along the way what it means to be a sister, a daughter, a wife, an artist, and— ultimately, and triumphantly— herself.”

More about her visit:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/parravani_christa13.html

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