Bestselling horror novelist Peter Straub will interact with audiences via Skype this coming Thursday, September 20th.
Straub will share the stage (on a large screen) with two of his friends at the literary magazine Conjunctions -- editor and murder mystery author Bradford Morrow, and MacArthur Fellowship-winning poet Ann Lauterbach (who will appear live).
Elizabeth Floyd Mair of the Times Union profiled Straub this past Sunday:
Q: You have written two novels with Stephen King. How does that work? How do you actually write them together? Write alternating chapters? And how does it compare to writing novels on your own?
A: If you must have a collaborator in writing fiction, Stephen King is pretty much your ideal partner. I recommend him, like, highly. The dude is fast, strong, smart and, you know, sort of powerful and sort of humane at the same time, which cannot be said of many. And besides that, he's really funny. Flat-out funny, also grossout funny, a lot of the time.
More in the Times Union: http://www.timesunion.com/tuplus-features/article/Horror-writing-his-happy-place-6511583.php
More about the upcoming event: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/conjunctions15.html
Monday, September 21, 2015
What is it like to collaborate with Stephen King?
Thursday, October 3, 2013
The Haunting, Friday at Page Hall
The Haunting
Read More......
Friday, July 12, 2013
On Horror: Stephen King reviews Joyce Carol Oates
Stephen King reviewed The Accursed by Joyce Carol Oates (who reads tonight in Saratoga) this past May in the New York Times Book Review:
“Joyce Carol Oates has written what may be the world’s first postmodern Gothic novel: E. L. Doctorow’s ‘Ragtime’ set in Dracula’s castle. It’s dense, challenging, problematic, horrifying, funny, prolix and full of crazy people. You should read it. I wish I could tell you more.”
More: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/17/books/review/the-accursed-by-joyce-carol-oates.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Full schedule of free readings: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/sumread.html
Friday, March 1, 2013
The Accursed coming in March....
Starred review in PW-- http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-06-223170-3
Oates has published more than enough books to take risks, and her newest is exactly that: first drafted in the early 1980s, then set aside, the novel is, in addition to being a thrilling tale in the best gothic tradition, a lesson in master craftsmanship. Distilled, the plot is about a 14-month curse manifesting in Princeton, N.J., from 1905 to 1906, affecting the town's elite, including the prominent Slades of Crosswicks and Woodrow Wilson, the president of Princeton University. After Annabel Slade is strangely drawn out of the church during her wedding, an escalating series of violence and madness based in secrets and hypocrisy is unleashed in the community. This story has vampires, demons, angels, murder, lynching, beatings, rape, sex, parallel worlds,, Antarctic voyages, socialism, sexism, racism, paranoia, gossip, spiritualism, and escalating insanity. Oates uses the Homeric ring structure, and her mysterious narrator takes frequent tangents, offering backstories, side stories, footnotes, and a hilarious, subtly satirical chapter on the different-colored diaries and lacquered boxes providing his "sources." The story sprawls, reaches, demands, tears, and shrieks in homage to the traditional gothic, yet with fresh, surprising twists and turns. Oates weaves historical figures throughout, grounding the narrative in a quasi-familiar reality without losing a "through the looking-glass" surrealism. The cause of the curse is not much of a surprise, but the way it's broken is both traditionally mythic and satisfying. Oates has given us a brilliantly crafted work that refreshes the overworked tradition. The author's rage at social injustices and the horrific "cures" for invalids boil beneath the surface; she's skilled enough to let them fuel the fury without erupting into fire. Take on this 700-page behemoth with an open mind, and hang on for the ride. Agent: Warren Frazier, John Hawkins and Assoc. (Mar.)
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Silent Movie "Faust" on Friday
"The greatest master of horror in the silent era was a cheerful man, much loved by his collaborators, even though they might lose consciousness from time to time [from asphyxiation] while enveloped in clouds of steam or surrounded by tongues of flame. F. W. Murnau (1888-1931) made two of the greatest films of the supernatural, Nosferatu (1922) and Faust (1926), both voted among the best horror films of all time on the Internet Movie Database: Faust surprisingly in fourth place, just ahead of The Shining, Jaws and Alien.
More.
Friday, March 16, 2012
Gothic Novels on Tuesday March 20th
Gothic novels will be the featured subject at multiple events on Tuesday, March 20th.
You are invited to two events with Margot Livesey, whose new novel, The Flight of Gemma Hardy, reimagines Charlotte Bronte's 1847 Gothic romance Jane Eyre in Scotland in the 1950s and 1960s. Livesey will share the stage with Jo Page, 4:15 PM in the Assembly Hall, Campus Center on the UAlbany uptown campus, and 7:30 PM in the Albany Public Library, Main Branch, 161 Washington Ave. in downtown Albany. The events are cosponsored by the Friends of the Albany Public Library.
Earlier that day, the Eighteenth-Century Reading Group and the English Department will sponsor a talk by Princeton University Professor Sophie Gee at 1 PM in HU 354. Professor Gee will be presenting a paper that connects Jane Austen’s satirical Gothic horror and romance novel, Northanger Abbey to questions of faith and belief in eighteenth-century novels. There will be a Q & A session and refreshments after the talk.
In 2007, Sophie Gee published her first novel, The Scandal of the Season, a comedy of manners set in eighteenth-century London and a retelling of Alexander Pope’s "The Rape of the Lock." The novel was named one of the Best Books of 2007 by the Washington Post and the Economist and is published in 13 countries.
For more information on the Gee event contact Michael Amrozowicz of the English Dept. at 518/442-4099 or mamrozowicz@albany.edu .
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
The Allure of the Gothic
The seductive appeal of eerie Gothic Lit is the topic of Cynthia Crossen's "Dear Book Lover" column in the WSJ.
Institute visitors mentioned in the column include Margot Livesey (who visits 3/20), Institute Writing Fellow James Lasdun (who teaches a community workshop this spring), the late Angela Carter (a former workshop instructor), the late Kurt Vonnegut (New York State Author), Joyce Carol Oates (who will visit our upcoming Summer Writers Institute) and Jennifer Egan.
Vonnegut formulates his own unpublished gothic novel as: "A young woman takes a job in an old house and gets the pants scared off her."
More.