Paul Grondahl interviews Stephen Adly Guirgis in the Times Union:
Guirgis, 50, and his unlikely career trajectory could be viewed as a kind of patron saint for late bloomers, slackers and second chances.
"I wasn't a great student, but it took me more than six years because I kept changing my major," Guirgis said Tuesday by phone from his apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side. "In my last two years, I became a theater major and things really started to click. At the time, Albany was known as a business school and we were kind of like a weird group, but we were always doing something, creating shows, and we stuck together."
More in the Times Union: http://www.timesunion.com/tuplus-local/article/UAlbany-launched-Pulitzer-drama-winner-Stephen-6215221.php
More about Guirgis's 2010 visit to the Writers Institute: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/guirgis_stephen10.html
Wednesday, April 22, 2015
UAlbany launched Pulitzer drama winner Stephen Adly Guirgis
Tuesday, April 21, 2015
UAlbany Grad Stephen Guirgis Wins Pulitzer
Stephen Adly Guirgis, who graduated from the University at Albany in 1990 with a major in Theatre, is the 2015 winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Drama for his new play "Between Riverside and Crazy."
The Pulitzer jury called the work, "a nuanced, beautifully written play about a retired police officer faced with eviction that uses dark comedy to confront questions of life and death."
Guirgis visited the New York State Writers Institute on April 12, 2010.
More about his visit here:
http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/guirgis_stephen10.html
An interview with Guirgis posted on the Institute's YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFR2iMDmcFE
Guirgis studied theatre with NYS Writers Institute Fellow and UAlbany Professor W. Langdon Brown and with the late Jarka Burian of the Theatre Department who-- together with his wife Grayce Burian-- established and endowed the Institute's annual Burian Lecture on the art of the theatre.
More on the Burian Lecture here: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/burian_lectures.html
Tuesday, May 27, 2014
Harry Rosenfeld's Memoir Wins Award
Times Union editor-at-large Harry Rosenfeld has won a 2014 Independent Publisher Book Award, or IPPY, for his book, "From Kristallnacht to Watergate: Memoirs of a Newspaperman."
It is the latest in a recent string of honors for Rosenfeld, 84, of Albany, the son of a Polish-born Jewish furrier. Rosenfeld grew up in Berlin and escaped Nazi Germany as a young boy along with his parents and older sister, and emigrated to America in 1939.
The book details Rosenfeld's formative years in the Bronx as a German refugee, his drive to learn English and landing his first job in newspapers as a teenaged shipping clerk at the New York Herald Tribune, where he eventually rose up the editing ranks.
Rosenfeld also describes in depth his role as Metro Editor of the Washington Post during its Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the Watergate scandal led by the dogged work of Rosenfeld's reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.
More from Paul Grondahl in the Times Union: http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Newspaperman-s-memoir-wins-award-5504423.php
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
A Literary Friendship Spanning 5 Decades
Bill Kennedy's long friendship with E. L. Doctorow (who visited 2/27) is the subject of an article by Paul Grondahl in the Times Union:
"They are both in their 80s now, William Kennedy and E.L. Doctorow, two acclaimed American novelists whose literary friendship spans 50 years, three dozen books, a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Award, four National Book Critics Circle awards and a shelf of other prestigious fiction prizes between them."
"The two met in 1968 when Doctorow, an editor at The Dial Press, acquired Kennedy's first novel, The Ink Truck, a metaphysical tale loosely based on a 1964 newspaper strike at the Times Union, where Kennedy worked as a reporter...."
More in the TU: http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/A-literary-friendship-spanning-five-decades-5289119.php
More about Doctorow's visit: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/doctorow_el14.html
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
Pulitzer Winner Gil King Returns to Niskayuna High
Gil King, graduate of Niskayuna High School, returned to his hometown on Monday to talk with high school students. King, who visited the Writers Institute in September 2013, received the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in nonfiction for Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, The Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America, an elegantly written account of the future Supreme Court Justice’s role in defending four black men falsely accused of raping a white woman in Florida in 1949.
Bill Buell of the Schenectady Gazette reports:
[King] was thrilled that so many students seemed interested and excited by their interaction with a Pulitzer Prize winner.He conceded a similar situation probably wouldn’t have interested him when he was in high school.
“Yeah, I would have checked out mentally of something like this back then,” he said. “But everybody seemed to be paying attention and that was nice. They asked a lot of questions, and some were very passionate and I love that. I was shocked. I can’t believe how much time I let pass in high school without paying attention to anything.”
More in the Gazette: http://www.dailygazette.com/news/2014/mar/04/0304_king/
More about King's visit: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/king_gilbert13.html
Thursday, September 26, 2013
How to Win a Pulitzer Prize
Gilbert King went from writing about Mr. Potato Head to crafting an award-winning story about racial injustice.
More in The Writer from Susan Kershner Resnick:
Last year, I sent out a request on Facebook asking experienced writers to share advice with my undergraduate writing students. A few snarky responses appeared first: Go to law school; get comfortable with a life of poverty. Then Gilbert King weighed in.
“Work. Read. Work. Think. Work. Write. Work. Connect. Work. Pitch. Same as always,” he wrote.
Continue: http://www.writermag.com/2013/09/09/win-pulitzer-prize/
Gilbert King visits Albany today: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/king_gilbert13.html
Rejected by 35 Publishers, Gilbert King
“I also want beginning writers to know that you need some good luck to be successful. This book was rejected by 35 publishers, mostly because my first book didn’t sell very well.”
Gilbert King, Niskayuna native and Pulitzer-winning author of Devil in the Grove, talks to Jack Rightmyer of the Gazette about writing, Thurgood Marshall, boyhood dreams of being a baseball player, and more.
Article in the Gazette: http://www.dailygazette.com/news/2013/sep/21/marshalls-legacy-inspires-book-niskayuna-native/?free
Thursday, September 19, 2013
Gilbert King, Pulitzer Winning Author, to Visit Next Week
Gilbert King, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Devil in the Grove (2012),
a nonfiction account of an early case in the legal career of Thurgood Marshall,
America's first African-American Supreme Court Justice, will read from and
discuss his work on Thursday, September 26, 2013 at 8:00 p.m. in the Recital
Hall, Performing Arts Center, on the University at Albany's uptown campus.
Earlier that same day at 4:15 p.m., the author will present an informal seminar
in the same location. The events are free and open to the public, and are
sponsored by the New York State Writers Institute in conjunction with CELEBRATE
AND ADVANCE, a weeklong celebration culminating in the inauguration of
UAlbany's 19th President, Robert J. Jones, Ph.D.
Gilbert King, Niskayuna native, received the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for General
Nonfiction for Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys,
and the Dawn of a New America (2012), a meticulously researched, elegantly
written account of the future Supreme Court Justice's role in defending four
black men falsely accused of raping a white woman in Florida in 1949. Of the
four defendants, one was murdered by a white mob before he could stand trial,
and two were murdered by the local county sheriff after they had been
exonerated by the U. S. Supreme Court.
The Salon reviewer said, "King recreates an important yet
overlooked moment in American history with a chilling, atmospheric narrative
that reads more like a Southern Gothic novel than a work of history." The
book was also named a "Best Book of 2012" by the Boston Globe,
Christian Science Monitor, and Library Journal.
In writing Devil in the Grove, King obtained access to two
heretofore unpublished and unpublicized sources of information: the
confidential files of the NAACP's Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and the
unedited files of the FBI. In previous, more comprehensive biographies of Marshall,
the Groveland case had been treated as little more than a footnote to a
distinguished legal career. King's research, however, brings back to life the
shock and drama of a courtroom battle that established important legal
precedents on the road to ending Jim Crow laws in the South.
King's relative rise from obscurity has generated a fair amount of interest
in the writing community and on the internet. Especially remarked upon is the
fact that, after the announcement that he had won the Pulitzer Prize, the
surprised author informed a New York Times interviewer, "I'd just
gotten a notice from my publisher that the book had been 'remaindered.'"
Another ironic detail of King's biography is that he flunked English at
Niskayuna High School and had to attend summer school after his junior year,
according to an interview with Paul Grondahl of the Times Union.
A featured contributor to the Smithsonian magazine history blog,
King is also the author of The Execution of Willie Francis: Race, Murder,
and the Search for Justice in the American South (2008), an account of the
wrongful conviction and death sentence of a 17-year-old black boy in Louisiana
in 1946. The Counterpunch magazine reviewer called it, "...almost
certainly the best book on capital punishment in America since Mailer's The
Executioner's Song."
King's appearance is sponsored by the New York State Writers Institute in
conjunction with "Celebrate and Advance," a weeklong celebration at
UAlbany culminating in the inauguration of the new University president, Robert
J. Jones. For additional information on all inauguration week events go to: www.albany.edu/inauguration .
For additional information on Gilbert King's appearances, contact the
Writers Institute at 518-442-5620 or online at http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst.
Tuesday, August 27, 2013
"Celebrate & Advance" at UAlbany
UAlbany will host a weeklong celebration-- "Celebrate & Advance," featuring a variety of arts, sports and cultural events, and culminating in the inauguration of new University President Robert J. Jones.
More info and a full schedule of events here: http://www.albany.edu/inauguration/
In conjunction with these events, the Writers Institute will sponsor appearances by Pulitzer Prize winning author Gilbert King on September 26: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/programpages/vws.html
Inauguration Week is an opportunity to celebrate the University at Albany’s honored past while advancing our future. In the week leading up to the Installation Ceremony, departments from across campus will host special events that will highlight and demonstrate our notable strengths in research and scholarship, vibrant academic and campus life, diversity that enriches learning, and community engagement.
Friday, July 19, 2013
William Kennedy Reads Outtakes from "Legs" Tonight
William Kennedy will present a reading of portions of his landmark Albany novel Legs tonight, featuring a variety of scenes that did not make it into the final draft.
The free reading is at 8:00 p.m., Friday, 7/19, in Davis Auditorium in Palamountain Hall, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY.
Free and open to the public. For directions to Skidmore, call 518-580-5590.
Full series of free readings: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/sumread.html
More about Legs, a novel about Albany crime boss "Legs" Diamond, http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/wjk/legs.html
More about Pulitzer Prize winning novelist and Writers Institute Executive Director William Kennedy: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/wjk/biography.html
Wednesday, July 10, 2013
Poet Jorie Graham: Imagining the Unimaginable
Pulitzer-winning poet Jorie Graham, who presents a free reading tomorrow in Saratoga Springs, talks to an interviewer about the purpose of art:
"And what is art for then? What is dreaming for? What is the imagination supposed
to do with its capacity to 'imagine' the end? Is the imagination of the
unimaginable possible, and, perhaps, as I have come to believe, might it be one
of the most central roles the human gift of imagination is being called upon to
enact? Perhaps if we use it to summon the imagination of where we are
headed— what that will feel like— what it will feel like to look back at this
juncture— maybe we will wake up in time?"
Read more of Deidre Wengen's Phillyburbs.com interview on the Poets.org website: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20176
Full schedule of free readings: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/sumread.html
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
Poems About Divorce-- Sharon Olds
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/video/2013/jan/17/sharon-olds-life-art-video
The poems in the book, which also received the UK's T. S. Eliot prize, were written 15 years earlier. Olds delayed publishing them to protect the sensitivities of her children. Read More......
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
Poet Sharon Olds at the Writers Institute in 2004
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Here's a YouTube video of new 2013 Pulitzer Prize winning poet and former New York State Poet Laureate Sharon Olds with poet Edward Hirsch at the Writers Institute in 2004. She confesses: "I tend to write a lot. Most of it's bad. That just how it is for me." But she adds that the fact that she doesn't need to show a poem to anyone gives her a certain freedom to write what she wants.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ut97FMOY7M8&feature=youtu.be
More about their joint visit:
http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/olds_sharon-and-hirsch_edward.html
Olds served as the official State Poet under our sponsorship 1998-2000.
Marie Howe comments on Sharon Olds
Our reigning State Poet, Marie Howe, comments (officially) on Sharon Olds' winning the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Stag's Leap:
"Sharon olds has
been writing life altering poems so deeply and well and so long it's not
possible to imagine american poetry without her."
(Sent from her iPhone)
Monday, April 15, 2013
Sharon Olds Wins Pulitzer for Poetry!
Sharon Olds, who served as New York State Poet Laureate under our sponsorship (1998-2000), has just received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Stag's Leap.
Writers Institute State Poet page for Sharon Olds: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/olds.html
"Like Whitman, Ms. Olds sings the body in celebration of a power stronger than political oppression." --New York Times
Adam Johnson Wins Pulitzer for Fiction
Adam Johnson, who visited the Writers Institute in February 2012 has just received the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction for The Orphan Master's Son.
Here is a YouTube video from his visit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZVAtO11X9A
More about Johnson's visit here last year: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/johnson_adam12.html
Nathan Englander, who visited us in March 2013, was one of two Pulitzer finalists.
A Conversation with Charles Fuller at the Egg
Thursday, April 18, 7:30 PMThe evening’s events will include scenes from "A Soldier’s Play", a conversation with Mr. Fuller, and an awards presentation.
A native son of the City of Brotherly Love, Charles Fuller’s distinguished career began with working the Henry Street Settlement and the Negro Ensemble Company. After achieving critical success with "The Village: A Party" and the Obie Winner "Zooman and the Sign," Mr. Fuller received accolades for "A Soldier’s Play" produced by the Negro Ensemble Company in 1981. Mr. Fuller went on to adapt the work into a screenplay for the award winning film A Soldier’s Story, starring Denzel Washington.
For the further information and tickets call 518.227.0154 or e-mail info@aacccr.org Read More......
Thursday, December 27, 2012
Institute in the Times Union's "Year in the Arts"
So writes Steve Barnes in today's Times Union. Read more in "2012: Year in the Arts"--
http://www.timesunion.com/entertainment/article/2012-Year-in-the-arts-4146769.php#page-3
Read More......
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
An Embarrassment for the Pulitzer Jury
"Mr. Quammen... is not just among our best science writers but among our best writers, period.... That he hasn’t won a nonfiction National Book Award or Pulitzer Prize is an embarrassment."
So writes Dwight Garner this month in the New York Times.
Read the article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/03/books/spillover-by-david-quammen-on-how-animals-infect-humans.html?_r=0
Quammen visits us tomorrow:
David
Quammen, nature writer and author
October 18
(Thursday)
Seminar — 4:15 p.m., Assembly Hall, Campus Center, Uptown
Campus
Reading — 8:00 p.m., Assembly Hall, Campus Center, Uptown
Campus
David Quammenis one of America’s leading
nature writers. His new book is Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next
Human Pandemic (2012), about his travels in the remote corners of the globe
with field researchers investigating disease outbreaks in rats, monkeys, bats,
pigs, and other species, with the potential to “spillover” to humans. Walter
Isaacson described the book as “a frightening and fascinating masterpiece of
science reporting that reads like a detective story.” A widely-travelled
contributing writer for National Geographic, and the author of the
column, “Natural Acts,” for Outside magazine for 15 years, Quammen has
written several nonfiction bestsellers, including The Reluctant Mr. Darwin
(2006), Monster of God (2003), The Boilerplate Rhino
(2001), and The Song of the Dodo (1996).
Cosponsored by UAlbany’s School of Public Health
Monday, October 1, 2012
Junot Diaz Likes Character Flaws
“Characters who have all the answers and know exactly how to live and how to always do the right thing give off very little heat in a story,” he said in a recent phone interview.
“Most of us love ambivalence,” he said, “and my character Yunior is one of those dicey cats that will at times turn off and offend readers. He often makes the wrong choice, especially in relationships, but I still thought writing about him would be worth the risk because he’s an honest cat and there’s something refreshing about that.” More.
Read More......