Paul Grondahl to host Diane Ackerman, Tuesday 3/7

Paul Grondahl, the newly-named director of the Writers Institute, will host his first events on Tuesday, March 7th. Please join us in giving him a warm welcome.

Grondahl earned a master’s degree in English at UAlbany in 1984. An award-winning journalist and biographer, he has been a staff writer at the Albany Times Union for more than 30 years.  His projects on domestic violence, death and dying, mental illness in state prisons and the problems facing sub-Saharan Africa have won local, state and national journalism prizes.

DIANE ACKERMAN

BESTSELLING AUTHOR, POET, AND NATURALIST TO READ FROM AND DISCUSS HER BOOK THE ZOOKEEPER’S WIFE

NYS Writers Institute, Tuesday, March 7, 2017

4:15 p.m. Seminar  University Hall Room 110, Collins Circle, Uptown Campus

8:00 p.m. Reading  Clark Auditorium, NYS Museum, Cultural Education Center, Downtown Albany

Diane Ackerman, renowned for her explorations of the natural world in nonfiction and poetry, received the National Outdoor Book Award and PEN’s Henry Thoreau Prize for her 2015 book The Human Age, about new efforts to save the planet. Her other works include A Natural History of the Senses (1990); the memoir and Pulitzer finalist One Hundred Names for Love (2011), and The Zookeeper’s Wife (2007), the true story of a Warsaw zookeeper’s family that saved 300 Jews during the Holocaust, which will be released as a film starring Oscar-nominated actress Jessica Chastain on March 31st. A trailer for the new film will be screened at the 8PM event.

For more about Diane Ackerman:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/ackerman_diane17.html    

For more about the Visiting Writers Series:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/programpages/vws.html  

For more information, contact the NYS Writers Institute at 518-442-5620 or visit us online at www.albany.edu/writers-inst.

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Judaic Studies Annual Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) Lecture
Anne Frank: From Diary to Book
Monday, April 28, 7PM, Page Hall, UAlbany Downtown Campus

http://www.albany.edu/judaic_studies/yom-ha-shoah-2014.shtml?WT.source=home





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Eric Kandel, Writer and Scientist, Leads Breakthrough Study on Memory

Eric Kandel, Nobel Prize winner in Medicine who visited the Writers Institute in 2006, is the lead researcher of a new study on memory in the brain (with new implications for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease). The study is receiving widespread media coverage, and widespread attention in the neuroscience community.

The 84-year-old laureate came to the New York State Writers Institute to present his memoir, In Search of Memory, about his boyhood as a member of a Jewish family in Nazi Germany and his remarkable career at the leading edge of neuroscience.

More on the new study:  http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-204_162-57600507/scientists-find-clue-to-reasons-for-age-related-memory-loss/

More on Kandel's visit to Albany:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/kandel_eric.html

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Shalom Auslander Rescheduled!

The Auslander events have been rescheduled for Tuesday, April 24.

4:15PM Seminar in the Assembly Hall, Campus Center, Uptown Campus

8PM Reading in the Assembly Hall, Campus Center, Uptown Campus

For a not yet updated page on Auslander, click here.

Auslander's events on 3/1 were cancelled because of snow.

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Films About the Holocaust at UAlbany

The Center for Jewish Studies and the Documentary Studies Center are collaborating on a film series about life during the Nazi Holocaust.

Films include A Film Unfinished (Yael Harsonski, 2010, b/w, 90 mins) on Tuesday, March 20; Respite (Harun Farocki, 2007, b/w, 40 mins) on Tuesday, March 27; and About a Village (John C. Swanson, 2010, color, 69 mins) on Tuesday, April 3.

Screenings are at 7:00pm
UAlbany Standish RoomScience Library 3rd Floor
Free & open to the public

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Two Soviet Jewish Grandmothers

Katha Pollitt reviews Ester and Ruzya, a dual biography of two Soviet Jewish women and their harrowing stories, told by their granddaughter, Masha Gessen (who visits Thursday) in 2005 in the New York Times:

"Reviewers sometimes call a work of nonfiction ''as exciting as a novel,'' but that would be an understatement applied to this extraordinary family memoir. Masha Gessen, a gifted Russian-American journalist, narrates the intertwined lives of her two Soviet Jewish grandmothers, best friends for over 50 years, as they confront some of the 20th century's worst ordeals: Stalin's terror, Hitler's mass murder of the Jews, World War II, the bewildering twists and turns of the post-Stalin era. If your idea of a memoir runs to family dysfunction and authorial disgruntlement, or to people going on about their houses and travels, ''Ester and Ruzya'' will remind you how much life, history and emotional and moral complexity the genre can convey in the hands of a wonderful writer. " More.

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Auslander: Touching the Touchiest Subjects

"I knew from reading the jacket copy that Shalom Auslander's debut novel, Hope: A Tragedy, would touch on all sorts of taboos. Indeed, it contains many a joke on topics that are usually way off-limits, including Anne Frank, the Holocaust, and Jesus' last words on the cross. But I had no idea just how intelligent and beautifully written it was also going to be."

So writes Elizabeth Floyd Mair in the Times Union. Read more.

Auslander visits this coming Thursday, March 1st.

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John Hodgman: I Don't Really Have an Attic

Shalom Auslander, who visits Thursday, March 1st, asks fellow humorist John Hodgman to hide him in the event of a second Holocaust in a book trailer for his new novel, Hope: A Tragedy.

Hodgman explains that he doesn't have an attic in his New York City apartment but that he does have three small storage units. Regarding the logistics, he wonders whether Auslander is fond of both his children. See the YouTube video.

Hodgman, who played the uncool PC in Apple's long-running "Get a Mac" advertising campaign, visited the Institute in 2005.

Picture: Hodgman and Justin Long in a "Get a Mac" ad.

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Will You Hide Me?

Anticipating a second Holocaust, Shalom Auslander, who visits on March 1st, asks fellow humorist Sarah Vowell whether she will shelter him and his family in her New York City apartment.

The video is part of a series of book trailers for Auslander's novel, Hope: A Tragedy (2012). The trailers feature a number of Auslander's co-contributors to NPR's This American Life.

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Two Jews Lost in a Holocaust Museum

Alexander Nazaryan of the Daily News gets a first-hand experience of the dark, angry humor of Shalom Auslander (who visits 3/1):

"We were somewhere near the Warsaw Ghetto when Shalom Auslander’s anger started to kick in. He was angry because he had wanted to see pictures of female Israeli soldiers, but there were none on display that day at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in lower Manhattan. He was angry because he had not been able to find cigarettes in Battery Park City before coming to meet me there on a cold Wednesday afternoon. He was angry because I kept waving my voice recorder in his face. I pointed out the dangers of misquotation. His small eyes glowed." More.

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