5 Writing Tips from Dinaw Mengestu in PW

Dinaw Mengestu, who visited us on March 13, offers five writing tips in the latest issue of Publishers Weekly:

1.     Be generous to your characters: kill them, save them, break their hearts and then heal them. Stuff them with life, emotions, histories, objects and people they love, and once you've done that, once they are bursting at the seams, strip them bare. Find out what they look like—how they stand, talk move, when they have nothing left. Now put them back together, fill them once more with life, except now leave enough room for the reader to squeeze their own heart and imagination inside.

More:  http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/tip-sheet/article/62003-5-writing-tips-dinaw-mengestu.html?utm_source=Publishers+Weekly&utm_campaign=25e089a2d2-UA-15906914-1&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0bb2959cbb-25e089a2d2-304584381

More about Mengestu's visit:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/mengestu_dinaw14.html

Read More......

Labor Day Weekend Reading

Publishers Weekly new "Picks of the Week" include books by two past visitors to the Writers Institute who also happen to be giants of world literature, Margaret Atwood [pictured here] and J. M. Coetzee.

MaddAddam by Margaret Atwood (Doubleday) - The final entry in Atwood’s brilliant MaddAddam trilogy roils with spectacular and furious satire. The novel begins just after most of the human species has been eradicated by a man-made plague. The early books explore a world of terrifying corporate tyranny, horrifying brutality, and the relentless rape of women and the planet. In Oryx and Crake, the pandemic leaves wounded protagonist Jimmy to watch over the Crakers, a humanoid species bioengineered to replace humankind by the man responsible for unleashing the plague. In The Year of the Flood, MaddAddamites wield science to terrorize corporate villains while God’s Gardeners use prayer and devotion to the Earth to prepare for the approaching cataclysm. Toby, a God’s Gardener and key character in the second book, narrates the third installment, in which a few survivors, including MaddAddamites, God’s Gardeners, Jimmy, and the Crakers, navigate a postapocalyptic world.

The Childhood of Jesus by J.M. Coetzee (Viking) - In this captivating and provocative new novel, a small boy who has been renamed David, and Simón, the man who has become David’s caretaker since David was separated from his mother, have immigrated to a nameless country. Simón soon finds work on the docks, is given an apartment for new arrivals, and sets about the impossible task of finding David’s mother, whose name they do not know and whose face the boy does not remember. Precise, rich, and wonderful.

Atwood's Albany visit: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/atwood.html

J. M. Coetzee's recent visit: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/coetzee_auster12.html

Read More......

PW Picks of the Week

Publishers Weekly "Picks of the Week" for August 19 include new books by two past visitors to the Institute-- James McBride (pictured here) and Thomas Keneally.

The Good Lord Bird by James McBride (Riverhead) - McBride offers a fresh perspective on abolitionist firebrand John Brown in this novel disguised as the memoir of a slave boy who pretends to be a girl in order to escape pre–Civil War turmoil, only to find himself riding with John Brown’s retinue of rabble-rousers from Bloody Kansas to Harpers Ferry. “I was born a colored man and don’t you forget it,” reminisces Henry Shackleford in a manuscript discovered after a church fire in the 1960s.

The Daughters of Mars by Thomas Keneally (Atria) - The horrific butcher’s bill of WWI trench fighting, which took a toll not only on the wounded soldiers but on the doctors and nurses who tended to them, is at the heart of this moving epic novel from the author of Schindler’s List. The story is told through the experiences of two sisters, Sally and Naomi Durance, both nurses, who enter the morally complex area of treating the devastatingly injured with peacetime experience.

McBride's visit to the Institute: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/mcbride.html

Keneally's visit to the Institute: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/keneally.html

Read More......

This Week's Summer Reading Recommendations

3 out of 9 of Publishers Weekly's summer reading picks for the week of July 8th are new books by NYS Writers Institute visitors....

Chris Bohjalian, who brought out the Armenian community in droves this past April for The Sandcastle Girls:

"The Light in the Ruins by Chris Bohjalian (Doubleday) - An exploration of post-WWII Italy doubles as a murder mystery in this entertaining historical whodunit from Bohjalian (The Sandcastle Girls). In 1952 Florence, Francesca Rosati, a dress-shop worker, is brutally murdered by a killer who carves out her heart, and Detective Serafina Bettini is assigned to solve the homicide."

Howard Norman, regular visitor to the Summer Writers Institute, who reads again on July 25:

"I Hate to Leave This Beautiful Place by Howard Norman (HMH) - In this luminous memoir, novelist Norman (The Bird Artist) recalls moments of 'arresting strangeness,' even in the midst of his quest to gain clarity and stay balanced emotionally. Norman writes of five places where he lived and the characters he met in each, providing him with an opportunity to reflect on his life. With a twinge of melancholy and a steely resolve not to let himself be moved or hurt, Norman regales us with his tale of lust, death (he inadvertently kills a swan on a local lake), and disappointment that mark his teenage summer of 1964 in Grand Rapids, Mich."

And Stacey D'Erasmo who visited us in 2009:

"The Art of Intimacy: The Space Between by Stacey D’Erasmo (Graywolf) - Part of Graywolf’s “Art of” series on the craft of writing, edited by Charles Baxter, this first work of nonfiction by novelist D’Erasmo (The Sky Below) examines the concept of intimacy and the ways this mysterious phenomenon has been conveyed by writers, visual artists, and filmmakers. D’Erasmo organizes the book into chapters based on the places where intimacy occurs, and the results are lucid and provocative."

More:  http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/tip-sheet/article/58057-pw-picks-the-best-new-books-for-the-week-of-july-8-2013.html?utm_source=Publishers+Weekly&utm_campaign=27e6247d6a-UA-15906914-1&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0bb2959cbb-27e6247d6a-304669825

Read More......