Ann Beattie, who visits this coming Tuesday, shares some of her all-time favorite short stories in a New York Times "By the Book" interview:
Among them: “Twilight of the Superheroes” and “Your Duck Is My Duck,” by Deborah Eisenberg; “Way Down Deep in the Jungle,” by Thom Jones; “Oxygen,” by Ron Carlson; “Nettles” and “The Albanian Virgin,” by Alice Munro; “The Fat Girl,” by Andre Dubus; “We Didn’t,” by Stuart Dybek; “Tits-Up in a Ditch,” by Annie Proulx; “Bruns,” by Norman Rush; “Escapes,” by Joy Williams; “Yours,” by Mary Robison; “The Dog of the Marriage,” by Amy Hempel; “The Fireman’s Wife,” by Richard Bausch; “The Womanizer,” by Richard Ford; “Helping,” by Robert Stone; “No Place for You, My Love,” by Eudora Welty; “Are These Actual Miles,” by Raymond Carver; “People Like That Are The Only People Here,” by Lorrie Moore; “Last Night,” by James Salter; “Sarah Cole: A Type of Love Story,” by Russell Banks; “Hunters in the Snow,” by Tobias Wolff; Rebecca Lee’s collection, “Bobcat.”
More in the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/30/books/review/ann-beattie-by-the-book.html?ref=books&_r=1
More about Ann Beattie's 2 events with Peg Boyers this Tuesday, 9/29: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/beattie_boyers15.html
Friday, September 25, 2015
Her All-Time Favorite Short Stories-- Ann Beattie
Wednesday, July 22, 2015
E. L. Doctorow (1931-2015)
The New York State Writers Institute mourns the loss of E. L. Doctorow, novelist and editor. As an editor at The Dial Press, Doctorow acquired William Kennedy's first novel, The Ink Truck, in 1968.
Doctorow served as New York State Author under the Institute's sponsorship from 1989 to 1991.
Kennedy's 50 year friendship with Doctorow is detailed in a 2014 Times Union article by E. L. Doctorow at the time of his last visit to Albany in March 2014:
http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/A-literary-friendship-spanning-five-decades-5289119.php
The New York Times obituary is here: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/22/books/el-doctorow-author-of-historical-fiction-dies-at-84.html?_r=0
Doctorow's State Author page: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/doctorow.html
YouTube footage from Doctorow's visit here in 2014: https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLSc-ovXhTKHdJMhm8WSYAJ2-0McMME_0v&v=fOvEeCPj4yQ
Thursday, March 26, 2015
Writer Richard Russo on Public Funding for Education
“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
Monday, March 23, 2015
Elisa Albert's "After Birth" in the NY Times
Elisa Albert shares the stage with Yelena Akhtiorskaya on Thursday, March 26.
More about their events: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/albert_akht15.html
Merritt Tierce reviews Elisa Albert's new novel After Birth in the New York Times Book Review:
"Albert has inherited the house Grace Paley built, with its narrow doorways just wide enough for wit and tragedy and blistering, exasperated love. And no one is better suited to manage that estate, to keep it unapologetically going, to keep its rooms of inquiry open. Paley found the seam where the important and the madcap are stitched together on the underside of life, and here is Albert working that same territory. Her Ari is bold enough to put motherhood up on a pedestal because its sanctity is as undeniable as it is dangerous. But she also wants to be sure you know the pedestal is made of excrement and tears and vomit and breast milk and the very selves of a billion unknown women."
"No doubt After Birth will be shunted into one of the lesser subcanons of contemporary literature, like 'women’s fiction,' but it ought to be as essential as The Red Badge of Courage. Just because so much of mothering happens inside a house doesn’t mean it’s not a war: a battle for sovereignty over your heart, your mind, your life — and one you can’t bear for the other side to lose."
More in the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/01/books/review/after-birth-by-elisa-albert.html
Friday, January 2, 2015
Mario Cuomo (1932-2015)
The New York State Writers Institute mourns the passing of Mario Cuomo, former New York Governor and a very dear friend of the Institute, who signed into law the legislation that created our organization in 1984.
Cuomo came to the Institute to celebrate its 25th anniversary in 2009, his first public appearance in Albany since leaving the Governor's mansion in 1994. On that occasion, he shared the stage at Page Hall with historian Doris Kearns Goodwin (pictured here).
More about his visit here: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/cuomo_goodwin09.html
The New York Times obituary: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/02/nyregion/mario-cuomo-new-york-governor-and-liberal-beacon-dies-at-82.html?_r=0http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/02/nyregion/mario-cuomo-new-york-governor-and-liberal-beacon-dies-at-82.html?_r=0
More photos from the 25th Anniversary here: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/celebrate25.pdf
Thursday, December 18, 2014
NY Times Book Critics' Top Ten Lists of 2014
They include Country Girl by Edna O'Brien, The Innovators by Walter Isaacson, Little Failure by Gary Shteyngart, The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert, Lila by Marilynne Robinson, and All Our Names by Dinaw Mengestu.
Picture: Edna O'Brien. Read More......
Tuesday, December 2, 2014
NY Times "100 Notable Books of 2014"
Visitors to the New York State Writers Institute whose books appear among the newly released "100 Notable Books of 2014" of the New York Times include:
Dinaw Mengestu, Rivka Galchen (who is in the office as we speak, but as a spouse), Lorrie Moore, Siri Hustvedt, Institute Fellow Lydia Davis, Joseph O'Neill (also here in the office at the moment), Louise Gluck, Akhil Sharma, Denis Johnson, Richard Ford, Marilynne Robinson, Francine Prose, Colm Toibin, Susan Minot, James McPherson, Diane Ackerman, Gary Shteyngart and Elizabeth Kolbert.
Complete list here: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/07/books/review/100-notable-books-of-2014.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
Picture: Rivka Galchen.
Friday, October 24, 2014
Tiphanie Yanique on the NY Times Op Ed Page
Virgin Islands author Tiphanie Yanique, who visited us last week, explores the unknowns of her grandmother's Puerto Rican childhood on the Op Ed page of Wednesday's New York Times:
My grandmother was raised in Vega Baja, Puerto Rico. She said the name, Vega Baja, meaning the “low plains,” with such romance that it was clear she longed for the place. In her stories she described a big house, and a farm where the children could eat the fruit from the trees and learned to milk a cow. Every Sunday after church they went to the beach. She taught herself to swim because the other children always played in the deep water and she hated being left behind.
More in the NY Times: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/10/22/the-other-side-of-the-living-sea/
More about her visit with fellow first-time novelist Jacinda Townsend: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/townsend_yanique14.html
Friday, June 13, 2014
Ruby Dee (1922-2014)
The Writers Institute mourns the passing of Ruby Dee, pioneering stage and screen actress, and civil rights activist.
Ruby Dee visited the Writers Institute in March 2005 where she delivered the 9th Annual Burian Lecture, funded by the Jarka and Grayce Susan Burian Endowment, and cosponsored by the Department of Theatre.
From the New York Times:
"Ruby Dee, one of the most enduring actresses of theater and film, whose public profile and activist passions made her, along with her husband, Ossie Davis, a leading advocate for civil rights both in show business and in the wider world, died on Wednesday at her home in New Rochelle, N.Y. She was 91."
More about her visit: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/dee_ruby.html
Some obituaries: http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/12/showbiz/obit-ruby-dee/
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/13/arts/ruby-dee-actress-dies-at-91.html?_r=0
http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/people/2014/06/12/daughter-actress-ruby-dee-dead-at-91/10373935/
Thursday, May 1, 2014
Kill Your Darlings in the New York Times
A. O. Scott reviews the 2013 film Kill Your Darlings, co-written by Austin Bunn, who visits Albany
tomorrow.
More about the visit: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/bunn_austin14.html
From the NY Times: Long before Allen Ginsberg became the benevolent, bearded Buddha of the counterculture — and one of the most beloved American poets — he was a skinny, anxious Columbia freshman who fell in with a group of literary rebels. John Krokidas’s debut feature, “Kill Your Darlings,” is intent on studying these not-yet-Beats in their fledgling state, as they write the first drafts of their own legends.
More in the Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/16/movies/kill-your-darlings-stars-daniel-radcliffe.html?_r=0 Read More......
Monday, April 28, 2014
NYC Haikus in the NY Times
Marie Howe, NY State Poet under the auspices of the NYS Writers Institute, selected haikus about New York City in a National Poetry Month contest in the New York Times.
Here are two entries:
On the 6 to Spring
two cops help a tourist whose
map is upside down
Beware the puddle
of indeterminate depth
that swallows boots whole
More about Marie: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/howe_marie12.html Read More......
Bilingual Authors in the New York Times
Francesca Marciano, who visited us on April 11 is prominently featured in a New York Times article
on authors who choose to write in English instead of their native languages:
Some bilingual writers find it liberating to escape from their native language. “I think that I have fewer tools than if I were writing in Italian, but my voice is freer,” Ms. Marciano said.
More: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/26/books/writing-in-english-novelists-find-inventive-new-voices.html?_r=0
More on Francesca's visit: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/marciano_francesca14.html
Friday, April 18, 2014
Akhil Sharma in the NY Times Book Review
Here's a review of Akhil Sharma's new novel, Family Life from the front page of the New York Times Book Review.
“Where is Ajay? What was the point of having raised him?” an elderly woman grumbles to her husband about their adult son in the opening pages of Akhil Sharma’s semi-autobiographical new novel, “Family Life.” This book, deeply unnerving and gorgeously tender at its core, charts the young life of Ajay Mishra as he struggles to grow within a family shattered by loss and disoriented by a recent move from India to America. “Family Life” is equally the story of Ajay’s parents, whose response to grief renders them unable to find the space in which to cherish and raise him.
More in the Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/06/books/review/akhil-sharmas-family-life.html?_r=0
Sharma visits the Writers Institute this coming Tuesday, April 22nd:
http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/sharma_akhil14.html Read More......
Gabriel GarcÃa Márquez (1927 – 2014)
The New York Times obituary:
Gabriel GarcÃa Márquez, the Colombian novelist whose “One Hundred Years of Solitude” established him as a giant of 20th-century literature, died on Thursday at his home in Mexico City. He was 87.
“One Hundred Years of Solitude” would sell tens of millions of copies. The Chilean poet Pablo Neruda called it “the greatest revelation in the Spanish language since ‘Don Quixote.’ ” The novelist William Kennedy hailed it as “the first piece of literature since the Book of Genesis that should be required reading for the entire human race.”
More in the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/18/books/gabriel-garcia-marquez-literary-pioneer-dies-at-87.html?_r=0
Monday, April 7, 2014
Peter Matthiessen (1927 - 2014)
Peter Matthiessen, major American writer and former New York State Author under the auspices of
the New York State Writers Institute (1995-1997) has died at the age of 86.
Here's the New York Times obituary: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/06/books/peter-matthiessen-author-and-naturalist-is-dead-at-86.html?_r=0
Picture: Peter Matthiessen, Grace Paley, William Kennedy and UAlbany President Karen Hitchcock at the Writers Institute's 1995 New York State Author and Poet awards ceremony.
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
Writers' Residencies on Amtrak Trains
Yes, you read that correctly....
"The wheels have begun moving on Amtrak’s plan to offer writers a rolling residency aboard their trains. On Monday the company announced that up to 24 writers, chosen from a pool of applicants, will be given a round-trip ticket on a long-distance train, including a private sleeper-car room with a bed, a desk, and electrical outlets. The trains promise the romance. The writers will have to do the rest."
More in the New York Times: http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/10/now-boarding-amtrak-writers-residency/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0 Read More......
Front Page of NY Times Book Review: Dinaw Mengestu
Dinaw Mengestu, who visited us on March 13 to present his new novel All Our Names, landed on the front page of the New York Times Book Review this past Sunday.
Malcolm Jones writes: "The victories in this beautiful novel are hard fought and hard won, but won they are, and they are durable."
More in the NY Times Book Review: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/23/books/review/all-our-names-by-dinaw-mengestu.html?_r=0
More about Mengestu's visit: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/mengestu_dinaw14.html
Friday, March 21, 2014
Walter Kirn Interviews Himself in the NY Times
Walter Kirn, who visits the Institute on Tuesday, 3/25, presents a comic and self-deprecating, but incisive profile of himself in Wednesday's New York Times.
"Mr. Kirn’s prickliness and flashes of arrogance seem to disguise a basic insecurity that may explain why he longed for the approval of a con man posing as a blue blood."
More in the Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/23/books/walter-kirn-interviews-himself-on-blood-will-out.html?emc=eta1&_r=0
More about Kirn's visit: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/kirn_walter14.html
Read More......
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
Author Joe McGinniss Dies
McGinniss visited the Writers Institute at UAlbany in November 2007 to present his true crime book, Never Enough.
Obituary in the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/11/books/joe-mcginniss-71-dies-wrote-about-politics.html?_r=0
A remembrance in the New Yorker:
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2014/03/postscript-joe-mcginniss-1942-2014.html
McGinniss also wrote the major nonfiction bestseller, The Selling of the President, 1968 (1969), a pioneering study of the role of marketing in Richard Nixon’s presidential campaign.
More about his visit to Albany: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/jmcginniss.html Read More......
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
Dinaw Mengestu's New Novel in the NY Times
In yesterday's NY Times, Michiko Kakutani reviews All Our Names by Dinaw Mengestu, who visits us on Thursday, March 13:Dinaw Mengestu’s deeply moving new novel, “All Our Names,” takes place in the early 1970s in two worlds that could not be farther apart: a quiet, semirural town named Laurel in the American Midwest, and Kampala, the capital of Uganda, where bright hopes of independence have given way to violence, corruption and brutal government crackdowns. The young African man who transits these two worlds is named Isaac — or at least that is the name on the passport he carries. He has arrived in Laurel with a one-year student visa and is introduced to a social worker named Helen, who is supposed to be “his chaperone into Middle America — his personal tour guide of our town’s shopping malls, grocery stores, banks and bureaucracies.”
More in the Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/04/books/dinaw-mengestus-all-our-names-describes-unexpected-love.html?hpw&rref=books&_r=0
More about Mengestu's upcoming visit: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/mengestu_dinaw14.html Read More......