WAMC's Joe Donahue will join her on stage in conversation. William Kennedy will introduce!
The New York State Writers Institute at the University at Albany announces
its Fall 2016 schedule of visiting writer appearances and film series
screenings. Events take place on the UAlbany uptown and downtown campuses and
are free and open to the public (unless otherwise noted).
Fall 2016 Visiting Writers Series: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/programpages/vws.html
Fall 2016 Classic Film Series: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/programpages/cfs.html
The
Writers Institute Fall 2016 schedule begins with an exciting new program
collaboration "The Creative Life: A Conversation Series at
UAlbany." Created and produced by the Writers Institute, University
Art Museum, and UAlbany's Performing Arts Center, in collaboration with WAMC
Public Radio, this new series features leading figures from a variety of
artistic disciplines in conversation about their creative inspirations, their
crafts, and their careers. Joyce Carol Oates, prolific author
of more than 160 books, will lead off the series on September 15 followed by Savion
Glover, tap dancing legend and Tony award-winning choreographer on
October 15.
A
second series, "The New Americans: Recent Immigrant Experiences in
Fiction, Nonfiction, and Film" examines the experiences of recent
immigrant groups in the United States. Guests will include Imbolo Mbue,
recipient of a million dollar advance, whose first novel Behold the
Dreamers (2016) is a riveting story about a young Cameroonian couple
making a new life in New York City just as the depression of the 2000s upends
the economy; Anne Fadiman, author of the bestselling nonfiction
book The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down (1997), which explores
the clash between Western medicine and the holistic healing traditions of a
Hmong refugee family from Laos; and director Mary Mazzio,
whose documentary film UNDERWATER DREAMS follows a group of high school
students, sons of undocumented Mexican immigrants, who enter a sophisticated
underwater robotics competition.
In addition to Joyce Carol Oates and Imbolo Mbue, the fall series includes
an exciting lineup of fiction writers: Garth Risk Hallberg,
author of the sweeping debut novel City on Fire, a national bestseller
and recipient of the largest advance for a first novel in U.S. publishing
history; Charles Baxter, who continues to show his mastery of
the short story form with his collection There's Something I Want You to Do;
James Lasdun, whose new novel is the psychological thriller The
Fall Guy; and Howard Frank Mosher, author of 10 acclaimed
novels set in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom.
The genre of poetry is represented by Stephen Burt, the
most influential poetry critic of his generation, who shares the breadth of his
knowledge of American poetry today in his new book The Poem is You: 60
Contemporary American Poems and How to Read Them.
Neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux, the foremost expert on the biology of anxiety and
fear, presents an accessible exploration of the nature of these
emotions in his new book, Anxious: Using the Brain to Understand and Treat
Fear and Anxiety.
Our conflicted relationship with the natural world will be the topic of two
events sponsored in conjunction with the UAlbany Art Museum's exhibition Future
Perfect: Picturing the Anthropocene. Novelist Jennifer Haigh,
whose new novel Heat and Light (2016) explores the allure of fracking
for the residents of a ravaged coal town, and Jeff Goodell,
author of the nonfiction book How to Cool the Planet: Geoengineering and
the Audacious Quest to Fix Earth's Climate will present a joint reading
and discussion. As part of the Classic Film Series, screenwriter Kelly
Masterson will offer film commentary following the screening of the
cult film SNOWPIERCER, a science fiction thriller about the survivors of a
failed climate-change experiment that inadvertently initiates an ice age.
Additional highlights of the Classic Film Series include screenings of ZOOT
SUIT RIOTS, an episode in the PBS American Experience series with commentary by
Joseph Tovares, the film's writer and director; a newly
restored version of CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT (1965), directed by and starring Orson
Welles; the 1924 French silent film L'INHUMAINE (THE INHUMAN WOMAN), with live
piano accompaniment by Mike Schiffer; SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE, based on Kurt
Vonnegut's powerful anti-war novel; and a 30th Anniversary screening of
IRONWEED, adapted for the screen by William Kennedy from his Pulitzer
Prize-winning novel.
For additional information contact the Writers Institute at 518-442-5620 or
online at http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst.
New book of gothic horror forthcoming next week from NYS Summer Writers Institute stalwart Joyce Carol Oates:
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.)
Joyce Carol Oates, who appears annually at the New York State Summer Writers Institute, reviews Margaret Atwood's essay collection, In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination (2012) in the latest issue of The New York Review of Books.
Atwood spoke to a stand-room-only Page Hall crowd in November 2005.
In her admiring essay on Le Guin—“The Queen of Quinkdom”—Atwood notes that Le Guin speaks of science fiction as a genre that “should not be merely extrapolative” and should not attempt “prophetic truth”: “Science fiction cannot predict, nor can any fiction, the variables being too many.” Atwood concurs with Le Guin that “the moral complexity proper to the modern novel need not be sacrificed” in what is called “science fiction.” “Thought and intuition can move freely within bounds set only by the terms of the experiment, which may be very large indeed.” More.