“I’m a product of public education, government-backed student loans, and publicly funded institutions like the Gloversville Free Library. If you’ve lost faith in them, you’ve lost faith in basic democratic principles.”
--Richard Russo, Gloversville novelist, quoted in the New York Times in an article by Steven Greenhouse about a campaign to renovate the Gloversville Library, March 24, 2105
More about Richard Russo: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/moore_russo09.html
Showing posts with label library. Show all posts
Showing posts with label library. Show all posts
Thursday, March 26, 2015
Writer Richard Russo on Public Funding for Education
Wednesday, November 6, 2013
The Literary Life Where You Find
An article in the TU in association with tomorrow's event:
THE
LITERARY LIFE WHERE YOU FIND IT: an evening with WILLIAM KENNEDY and ELISA
ALBERT
Thursday, November 7th, at 6 pm, at the Stair Gallery, 549
Warren Street, Hudson. For more information,
contact the Hudson Library
at 518.828.1792.
The TU's Amy Griffin writes:
In 2010, Patti Smith gave some advice to young artists: "New York has closed itself off to the young and the struggling. But there are other cities. Detroit. Poughkeepsie. New York has been taken away from you. So my advice is: Find a new city."
These sentiments were echoed more recently when David Byrne, former frontman of Talking Heads, wrote for Creative Time Reports that New York City is becoming increasingly inhospitable to creativity and that "the cultural part of the city — the mind — has been usurped by the top 1 percent."
Friday, August 16, 2013
Supreme Court Justice David Souter in Albany
David Souter, former U. S. Supreme Court Justice, will speak about the critical importance of funding humanities education and scholarship at the NY State Library in downtown Albany on September 12, 2013 on behalf of the New York Council on the Humanities.
Souter served on a special commission of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences which recently issued a report entitled, "The Heart of the Matter: The
Humanities and Social Sciences for a vibrant, competitive and secure
nation."
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
The Big Read in Albany
You may have missed the kick-off event yesterday at The Palace, but there are also two panel discussions, a documentary screening and a musical performance.
You may also be interested in this:
American Place Theatre performance of The Things They Carried
November 7 (Wednesday)
Pre-Performance discussion at 7 p.m.
Performance — 7:30 p.m., Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center, Uptown Campus
$15 general public / $12 seniors & faculty-staff / $10 students Box Office: (518) 442-3997
Tim O’Brien’s masterwork of contemporary literature about the Vietnam War is taken from book to stage by American Place Theatre, the award-winning New York City based company. The verbatim adaptation of this compassionate tale of the American soldier includes five of the short stories from the book including “The Rainy River” and “The Man I Killed.” With original cello music as underscoring, the audience plays witness to the complex issues of war and the universal struggle of the soldier.
For more about the Big Read, visit the website of the Albany Public Library:
http://www.albanypubliclibrary.org/documents/thebigread_2012.pdf Read More......
Monday, March 19, 2012
On Fact and Fiction
"One of my own writing teachers, Richard Price, used to caution us students not to be too attached to facts. 'God’s a second-rate fiction writuh,' he’d say dismissively in thick Bronx-ese."
"I think he’s right. Some things are too perfect to be believable:
When I lived in New York I was dating a guy whose brother was a resident at Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens. One night we smuggled him out—apparently he didn’t have off-site privileges—and took him for Chinese food. When the fortune cookies came, Robbie and I read ours. But when Brian broke open his own fortune cookie, there was nothing for him to read; the paper inside it was blank. I remember wanting to cry and not crying. I also remembered knowing that a scene like that, occurring in a novel or a short story, would seem heavy-handed, lugubriously symbolic. "
Jo Page, who speaks tomorrow at UAlbany and the Albany Public Library, published a meditation on what stories are and how they are told in her "Reckonings" column in last week's issue of Metroland.
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 .
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Saved by Jane Eyre
When Margot Livesey was 9 years old, growing up motherless and lonely in Scotland, a book on her father’s shelf caught her eye: Jane Eyre. Livesey’s discovery of Charlotte Brontë’s masterpiece was transformative. The promised friend between the covers, a character whose indomitable spirit has consoled and inspired readers for over a century and a half, allowed Livesey to understand that “life is change.” “Like Jane’s, my life had changed for the worse,” Livesey wrote in an essay a few years ago, “and like hers, it could also change for the better. Time would, irrevocably, carry me to a new place.”
Read more in the New York Times.
Margot Livesey reads at the Albany Public Library on Tuesday, March 20.
Cosponsored by the Friends of the Albany Public Library.
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Vaclav Havel (1936-2011)
Grayce Burian, friend of the Writers Institute, reminisced about her friend Vaclav Havel, Nobel Prize-winning playwright and the first President of the Czech Republic (1993-2003), who passed away this past Sunday, December 18th.
Grayce's husband, the late Jarka Burian-- longtime Professor in the the Department of Theatre at UAlbany and America's foremost authority on Czech theatre-- spent a great deal of time with Havel during two extended visits to Czechoslovakia in the 1960s when Havel was a young playwright and Jarka was a visiting scholar.
At SUNY Albany's Arena Summer Theatre, Jarka directed the first American performance of a play by Vaclav Havel, "The Memorandum," in 1966. The play was later performed at the Public Theater in New York City in 1968, where it received widespread international attention.
Grayce and Jarka were invited to meetings of the Czech underground during the Prague Spring prior to the Soviet invasion in 1968. Grayce recalled one meeting in Havel's apartment. In a hushed voice Havel asked Jarka not to speak and had him climb up a ladder to a chandelier where Havel showed him wires and a bugging device. Grayce said he wanted Jarka to know about the device not only for their safety, but also so that Jarka could write about the experience after his return to the United States.
Over the years, the Burians continued to receive letters from Havel thanking Jarka for his scholarly work on the history of the Czech theater. This correspondence is preserved in the Archives of the University at Albany Libraries.
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Hudson Valley Writers Guild Newsletter
The November edition of the HVWG Newsletter is out.
Events include a celebration of poet, publisher and peace activist Dan Wilcox on Saturday, Dec. 3 at 1:30PM at the Main Branch of the Albany Public Library, 161 Washington Ave., downtown Albany, sponsored by the Friends of Albany Public Library. Free and open to the public.
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