Hollis Seamon, this year's featured guest author at the New York State Summer Young Writers Institute for high school-aged writers, tied for the 2014 Independent Publisher Book Award ("Ippy") Gold Medal for Short Fiction for her story collection, Corporeality.
More 2014 "Ippy" results here: http://www.independentpublisher.com/article.php?page=1791
Students at the Young Writers Institute will read Seamon's 2013 young adult novel, Somebody Up There Hates You, about a 17-year-old battling cancer.
Booklist said, "Seamon’s first young-adult novel is a tender, insightful, and unsentimental look
at teens in extremis. It brings light to a very dark place, and in so doing,
does its readers a generous service."
More about Hollis Seamon: http://www.skidmore.edu/youngwriters/guest-author.php
More about the New York State Summer Young Writers Institute: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/programpages/nyssywi.html
Monday, June 2, 2014
Hollis Seamon wins "Ippy" Gold Medal
Wednesday, August 14, 2013
PEN America Announces 2013 Literary Awards
Among this year's winners of the 2013 PEN American Literary Awards are some past visitors to the New York State Writers Institute, including Kevin Young (PEN Open Book Award for The Grey Album), and Marilyn Hacker (PEN/Heim Translation Award for The Bridges of Budapest by Jean-Paul de Dadelson). Jill Lepore was runner-up for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay for The Story of America: Essays on Origins.
Complete list of winners: http://www.pen.org/blog/announcing-2013-pen-literary-award-winners
Monday, June 3, 2013
Gene Mirabelli Wins Top Indie Fiction Prize
82-year-old Eugene Mirabelli, Professor Emeritus at UAlbany who presented his newest novel at the Writers Institute on February 26, 2013, has won the Literary Fiction Gold Medal in the 2013 Independent Publisher (IPPY) Book awards.
This year the number one spot in the literary fiction category was a tie, and Eugene Mirabelli’s novel, Renato the Painter, shares top honors with Ned Bachus’s City of Brotherly Love.
The Awards program was created to highlight the year’s most distinguished books from independent publishers. Award winners are chosen by librarians and booksellers who are on the front lines, working everyday with patrons and customers. Some 125 books competed for the literary fiction Gold Medal. These books are examples of independent publishing at its finest.
More about Delmar resident Gene Mirabelli: http://mirabelli.net/
More about last February's event: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/mirabelli_hood13.html
Friday, May 24, 2013
Short Is Big for Local Writer
Paul Grondahl writes about Lydia Davis in the Times Union, with statements from Writers Institute
director Don Faulkner, and fellow UAlbany faculty member Lynne Tillman:
"She is a unique fiction writer who writes very short stories that are highly reflective, kind of ironic and sometimes comical. They play with the very concept of what storytelling is," said Donald Faulkner, director of the New York State Writers Institute at UAlbany.
"She is an excellent editor, great teacher and sympathetic reader who has helped a lot of young writers," Faulkner said. "She's not a prima donna on any level."
Read more: http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Short-is-big-for-local-writer-4544778.php#ixzz2UDyIRcwD
Thursday, May 23, 2013
Lydia Davis Will Teach Here Again in the Fall of 2013!
Lydia Davis, winner of the 2013 Man Booker International Prize, will teach a free Community
Writers Workshop at the NYS Writers Institute in the fall of 2013! The workshop is open to the general public on a competitive basis.
Previous winners of the prize have included Philip Roth, Alice Munro, Chinua Achebe and Ismail Kadare.
Here's some video of Lydia from a 2010 talk at the Institute: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7rPWVS8MT0
More on Lydia and her prize: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/davis_lydia13.html
Friday, March 29, 2013
James Salter Wins New Literary Award
Yale University.
"Yale University rained glory and gold on nine writers today (March 4), as it announced the winners of the Windham Campbell Prize, a new literary award worth $150,000 for each recipient.
The most prominent winner, James Salter, is best known for "A Sport and a Pastime," an erotic novel which has attained literary cult status in the half-century since its publication. Among his peers, Salter, 87, is widely regarded as the dean of American fiction writers. Knopf will publish Salter’s sixth novel, “All That Is,” in April.
The awards honor "outstanding achievement" for emerging and established writers of fiction, nonfiction and drama."
More in the New Orleans Times-Picayune: http://www.nola.com/books/index.ssf/2013/03/windham_campbell_prize_rains_1.html
More about Salter's visit: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/programpages/vws.html#james Read More......
Friday, March 1, 2013
National Book Critics Circle Awards Announced
http://bookcritics.org/awards/
Picture: Robert Caro Read More......
Friday, July 20, 2012
Andy Rooney Named a "Giant of Broadcasting"
From the official announcement: "No one should be asked to sum up ANDY ROONEY in a paragraph. He was foremost a writer, and at least a marginal iconoclast, and became most famous for his generally irreverent closings on 60 Minutes on CBS (“A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney”) featuring his observations on daily life and the passing parade...." More.
For Paul Grondahl's 2001 Times Union interview of Rooney at his summer house in Rensselaerville, click here.
Thursday, July 19, 2012
The Carnegie Medal and Us
Anne Enright, who visited on April 18 has received the first-ever Andrew Carnegie Medal for Fiction.
Both of the remaining two finalists for the medal were also recent Institute guests: Karen Russell, who came in February 2011, and Russell Banks, who visits often.
Robert K. Massie (who, oddly, has never been here though he lives in Irvington, NY) received the Carnegie Medal for Nonfiction.
Among the remaining two nonfiction contenders was James Gleick, who came in March 2011. The reamining finalist was the late Manning Marable.
For more on the award, visit American Libraries, the magazine of the American Library Association. Read More......
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
The Pulitzers and Us
Karen Russell (pictured here), who visited in February 2011, was a finalist for this year's Pulitzer Prize in Fiction (no winner this year).
Diane Ackerman, who visited in 1992, was a finalist for General Nonfiction.
Michael Cunningham, who visited in 2001, was a fiction judge.
Jean Valentine, who served as New York State Poet (2008-2010) under our auspices, and recent visitor Philip Schultz served as poetry judges.
Anne Enright Shortlisted for Orange Prize
It was announced today that The Forgotten Waltz by Anne Enright (who visits RPI tomorrow) was shortlisted for the United Kingdom's Orange Prize for Fiction, which comes with an award of 30,000 British pounds (approximately 48,000 U.S. dollars).
The novel is a tale of adultery and its consequences.
The prize is awarded for "excellence, originality and accessibility in women's writing from throughout the world."
Other authors on the shortlist include Cynthia Ozick, now 84 years old, who visited the Writers Institute in March 2005, as well as Ann Patchett, Madeline Miller, Georgina Harding and Esi Edugyan.
Read more in the Irish Independent.
Monday, January 23, 2012
National Book Critics Circle Award Nominees
Teju Cole, who comes Friday 2/10, is among the nominees for the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award.
Also featured is James Gleick, who visited this past March. Other past participants in the Visiting Writers Series who make the list are Diane Ackerman and Yusef Komunyakaa.