Dr. Robert Putnam, Author of Bowling Alone, at UAlbany Tomorrow

The UAlbany School of Public Health in Rensselaer will host bestselling author Dr. Robert Putnam tomorrow. The event is free and open to the public.

MEET THE AUTHOR:  Harvard University’s Dr. Robert Putnam, the author of Our Kids:  The American Dream in Crisis, will speak at the School of Public Health on Wednesday evening, September 16^th, at 5:00 p.m. in the main auditorium.  Dr. Putnam will sign copies of his books (including his equally well-known Bowling Alone) following his talk.  This event is part of the School of Public Health’s “All School Read” program which began last spring when students chose Our Kids to read over the summer and explore the issues when they returned to classes this fall.  Join us for a lively conversation about the growing inequality of opportunity in the U.S.  Light refreshments will be served.  Haven’t read the book?  You are welcome to come and join the discussion of the timely public health issues raised by Dr. Putnam.  Copies of the book will be available for purchase at a 20% discount from The Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza.  Members of book groups and all interested individuals are welcome to attend.  Directions to the School of Public Health are here:  http://www.albany.edu/sph/map_directions.php

For more information contact the School of Public Health:  University At Albany Foundation, 1 University Pl, Rensselaer, NY 12144

(518) 402-0283

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Alice McDermott: Giving Voice to the Unheard

Elizabeth Floyd Mair of the Times Union interviews Alice McDermott who will appear at RPI to discuss her new book Someone on April 15, cosponsored by the NYS Writers Institute's Visiting Writers Series, and who will be the first author featured in the new Times Union Book Club.

Q: How much revision and crafting of the sentences goes into your writing?

A: A great deal. For me, story arises out of the sentences: rhythm, word choice, detail. I don't begin with story and then try to find the words — I begin with words and try to find the story. Strange, right?

More in the Times Union:  http://www.timesunion.com/tuplus-features/article/Giving-voice-to-those-who-went-unheard-6145666.php

More about the Times Union Book Club:  http://www.eventbrite.com/e/timesunionplus-book-club-registration-16145732320?aff=TimesUnionNewspaper

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Times Union Book Club with NYS Writers Institute!

The Times Union is launching a new book club in partnership with the New York State Writers Institute.

Alice McDermott's novel Someone (2014) will be the first featured book. Someone tells the story of one woman's "ordinary" life across the decades of the 20th century in an Irish-American enclave in Brooklyn. McDermott received the 1998 National Book Award for her novel, Charming Billy.

To register for the Book Club go to timesunion.com/tubookclub.

The following events will take place in association with the Book Club:

Book Club discussion hosted by Times Union staff
• When: 7 p.m. April 8
• Where: Times Union, 645 Albany Shaker Road, Colonie
• Note: Copies of "Someone" can be purchased at the Book House in Stuyvesant Plaza in Guilderland or at Market Block Books in Troy.

Reading, Q&A , book- signing and McKinney Writing Contest award ceremony
• When: 8 p.m. April 15
• Where: Biotech Auditorium, Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies Building at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy.
• Note: The event is free and open to the public, and cosponsored by the New York State Writers Institute in conjunction with Rensselaer's 74th Annual McKinney Writing Contest and Reading.

Q&A and meet-and-greet with McDermott
• What: In conjunction with the institute, McDermott will answer questions and sign books at an event for Times Union Plus members (those with print or digital subscriptions). Light refreshments will be served.
• When: 11 a.m. April 16
• Where: Times Union, 645 Albany Shaker Road, Colonie
• Note: The event is free. Register at timesunion.com/tubookclub to attend.

More about the Book Club:  http://www.timesunion.com/tuplus-features/article/Times-Union-Book-Club-Alice-McDermott-6130671.php

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Author Sherry Lee Mueller presents "Working World" 9/19

"Working World is an essential guide to international careers for a new generation of Americans eager to see, feel, and change their world." --  John Zogby, founder of the Zogby Poll

The University at Albany School of Public Health will host Sherry Lee Mueller, coauthor of Working World, 2nd edition (2014). The book explores "how the idea of an international career has shifted: nearly every industry taking on more and more international dimensions, while international skills -- linguistic ability, intercultural management, and sensitivity -- become ever more highly prized by potential employers."

Date: Friday, September 19, 2014

Time: 12:00 noon – 1:15 PM

Location: School of Public Health Auditorium
George Education Center
UAlbany East Campus
1 University Place
Rensselaer, NY 12144

RSVP: Please register and confirm your attendance by emailing sph07@albany.edu by Monday, September 15th

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William Gibson, The Man Who Saw Tomorrow, coming to Troy, NY

The Guardian celebrates the 30th birthday of the science fiction novel Neuromancer by William Gibson, scifi author and technology prophet (according to many). Gibson visits RPI under the cosponsorship of the New York State Writers Institute, on Sunday, November 9th.

More about Gibson's upcoming event:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/programpages/vws.html#Gibson

From the Guardian:

On its release, Neuromancer won the "big three" for science fiction: the Nebula, Philip K Dick and Hugo awards. It sold more than 6m copies and launched an entire aesthetic: cyberpunk. In predicting this future, Gibson can be said to have helped shape our conception of the internet. Other novelists are held in higher esteem by literary critics, but few can claim to have had such a wide-ranging influence. The Wachowskis made The Matrix by mashing Gibson's vision together with that of French philosopher Jean Baudrillard. Stieg Larsson's Lisbeth Salander is a facsimile of Molly Millions, the femme fatale in Neuromancer. Every social network, online game or hacking scandal takes us a step closer to the universe Gibson imagined in 1984.

More in the Guardian:   http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jul/28/william-gibson-neuromancer-cyberpunk-books

Full schedule of upcoming events:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/programpages/vws.html#lurie

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Lydia Davis Interviewed on NPR

 

Lydia Davis, Writers Institute Writing Fellow who will be the featured guest at RPI's 73rd Annual McKinney Writing Contest and Reading (Wed., April 16, free and open to the public) was interviewed last week by NPR's Rachel Martin.

More about Lydia's appearance at Rensselaer:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/davis_lydia14.html

From Rachel Martin's interview:

On the moment when she realized that she didn't need to write long to write well
I can date that pretty precisely to the fall of 1973. So I was 26 years old and I had just been reading the short stories or the prose poems of Russell Edson. And for some reason, I was sparked by those. I thought, "These are fun to read, and provocative and interesting, and I'd like to try this." So I set myself the challenge of writing two very short stories every day just to see what would happen.

On how she knows when to end a story
I think I have a sense right in the beginning of how big an idea it is and how much room it needs, and, almost more importantly, how long it would sustain anybody's interest. And that's sometimes been a problem with a story when it's sort of offered me two ways that it could go, and I have to choose one or the other.

More on the NPR website:  http://www.npr.org/2014/04/06/299053017/lydia-davis-new-collection-has-stories-shorter-than-this-headline

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Lydia Davis profiled in this week's New Yorker

 

Lydia Davis, NYS Writers Institute Writing Fellow, is profiled in the March 17th issue of the New Yorker.

"Somewhere in the files of General Mills is a letter from the very-short-story writer Lydia Davis. In it, Davis, who is widely considered one of the most original minds in American fiction today, expresses dismay at the packaging of the frozen peas sold by the company’s subsidiary Cascadian Farm. The letter, like many things that Davis writes, had started out sincere and then turned weird. Details grew overly specific; a narrative, however spare, emerged. “The peas are a dull yellow green, more the color of pea soup than fresh peas and nothing like the actual color of your peas, which are a nice bright dark green,” she wrote. “We have compared your depiction of peas to that of the other frozen peas packages and yours is by far the least appealing. . . . We enjoy your peas and do not want your business to suffer. Please reconsider your art.” Rather than address her complaint, the company sent her a coupon for Green Giant."

More in the New Yorker:   http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/03/17/140317fa_fact_goodyear

Davis (who poses frequently with cats) speaks on Wednesday, April 16 at Rensselaer (RPI):

Lydia Davis, short story author and translator
April 16 (Wednesday)
Reading and McKinney Writing Contest Award Ceremony — 8:00 p.m., Biotech Auditorium, Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies, Rensselaer (RPI), Troy

Lydia Davis, winner of the 2013 Man Booker International Prize, will read from her newest story collection, Can’t and Won’t (2014). Masterpieces in miniature, the stories feature complaint letters, reflections on dreams, and small dilemmas. Davis has been called “one of the quiet giants of American fiction” (Los Angeles Times Book Review), and “one of the best writers in America” (Oprah’s O Magazine). Her previous collections include The Collected Stories (2009), Varieties of Disturbance (2007), Samuel Johnson is Indignant (2001), Almost No Memory (1997) and Break it Down (1986).

Sponsored in conjunction with RPI’s Vollmer W. Fries Lecture and the 73rd McKinney Writing Contest and Reading
For directions see: http://www.rpi.edu/tour/index.html

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The Lyrical Violence of J. G. Ballard at RPI

EMPAC at Rensselaer (RPI) will present "Ballard," a theatre piece inspired by the work of innovative English writer J. G. Ballard (1930-2009), author of Crash, Empire of the Sun and a variety of dystopian and apocalyptic works of fiction.

Ballard

Kris Verdonck

A Two Dogs Company

September 7, 2013, 7PM

After spending three weeks in residence, Belgian theater maker and visual artist Kris Verdonck invites the audience to an open studio and lecture demonstration of his innovative stereoscopic (3D) filming techniques developed with the EMPAC team. The presentation will provide insight into the microcosmic sets built on the theater stage, and a behind-the-scenes look at the development process.
BALLARD inhabits the world and characters from the apocalyptic science-fiction novels of J.G. Ballard, whose visionary descriptions of a future world resemble today’s neoliberal society more and more.

Verdonck’s visual arts, architecture, and theater training is reflected in the work he produces: his creations are situated in the transit zone between visual arts and theater, installation and performance, and dance and architecture.

Reservations are recommended and can be made in person at the box office or over the phone at 518.276.3921.

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On Madness and Visual Imagery, Monday

Leading cultural theorist W.J.T. Mitchell, known for his brilliant analysis of the "language of images" and visual culture, presents a talk, “Seeing Madness: Insanity, Media and Visual Culture,” at RPI, Monday, April 29, 4-6PM, in the Darrin Communications Center, Rm. 330., free and open to the public.

W. J. T. Mitchell, Gaylord Donnelly Distinguished Service Professor of English and Art History at the University of Chicago, is a scholar and theorist of media, visual art, and literature. Editor of the journal Critical Inquiry, Mitchell has been a key figure in developing the field of visual culture and in exploring the relationship of visual and verbal representations of social and political issues. He has written on the politics of space in the Occupy Movement and the Arab Spring, as well as the question of landscape in Israel and Palestine. His books include  Seeing Through Race, Cloning Terror: The War of Images, 9/11 to the Present, What do Pictures Want?: The Lives and Loves of Images, The Last Dinosaur Book: The Life and Times of a Cultural Icon, Picture Theory, and Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology. Mitchell has been the recipient of numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Morey Prize in art history given by the College Art Association, and the James Russell Lowell Prize from the Modern Language Association.

For more information: esroce@rpi.edu.

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Interesting Interview with Marilynne Robinson in the New York Times

 

Marilyn Robinson spoke to a standing room only audience last night at RPI's Biotech Building.

Here's an interesting interview with her from last month's New York Times:

"Oddly enough, my favorite genre is not fiction. I’m attracted by primary sources that are relevant to historical questions of interest to me, by famous old books on philosophy or theology that I want to see with my own eyes, by essays on contemporary science, by the literatures of antiquity. Every period is trapped in its own assumptions, ours, too, so I am always trying, without much optimism, to put together a sort of composite of the record we have made that gives a larger sense of the constant at work in it all, that is, ourselves. The project is doomed from the outset, I know. Still."

More:  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/10/books/review/marilynne-robinson-by-the-book.html

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Atheist Loves Christian Writer

 

Writing in the New Yorker, self-described atheist Mark O'Connell explains why he loves Marilyn Robinson's work, though it is steeped in Christianity.

Robinson visits RPI tomorrow:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/robinson_marilynne13.html

"When I say that I love Marilynne Robinson’s work, I’m not talking about half of it; I’m talking about every word of it."

More in the New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/05/marilynne-robinson.html



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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.

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If It Hadn't Been for the Child: Anne Enright

Anne Enright, who visits RPI on April 18th, writes in her new novel, The Forgotten Waltz (2011), about a child caught in the strife caused by an adulterous love affair:

"IF IT HADN'T BEEN FOR THE CHILD then none of this might have happened, but the fact that a child was involved made everything that much harder to forgive. Not that there is anything to forgive, of course, but the fact that a child was mixed up in it all made us feel that there was no going back; that it mattered. The fact that a child was affected meant we had to faceourselves properly, we had to follow through. "

"She was nine when it started, but that hardly matters. I mean her age hardly matters because she was always special—isn’t that the word? Of course all children are special, all children are beautiful. I always thought Evie was a bit peculiar, I have to say: but also that she was special in the oldfashioned sense of the word. There was a funny, offcentre beauty to her. She went to an ordinary school, but there was, even at that stage, an amount of ambivalence about Evie, the sense of things unsaid. Even the doctors—especially the doctors—kept it vague, with their, 'Wait and see.'" More in Caravan magazine.

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Love Destroys Everything in Its Path-- Anne Enright

Writing in Oprah's O. magazine, Lizzie Skurnick reviews The Forgotten Waltz by Anne Enright, who comes to RPI on April 18th:

"In America we like our adultery straight up: a bubble of illicit passion that ends in regret. That's not what Irish novelist Anne Enright is serving in The Forgotten Waltz (Norton), which forgoes the simple morality tale for something more complex and satisfying. The novel begins as the otherwise involved Gina first sees the love of her life, the also-spoken-for Seán. Detailing the standard stuff of clandestine affairs—tawdry hotels, wife-stalking—Enright does not hide the ugliness of betrayal. But her real story is about the once illicit lovers' fraught attempt to live as a family—one that includes Seán's alarmingly strange preadolescent daughter, Evie. Casting aside cultural bromides about the immorality of affairs, Enright puts us squarely in the center of a terrible truth: Love can be miraculous—and still destroy everything in its path."

Original posting.

Picture: At her home near Bray, Ireland (from the New York Times)

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The Short Story: The "Cat of Literary Form"

Anne Enright, who visits RPI 4/18, writes about the shortcomings of the short story as a literary form in The Guardian:

"I am not sure whether the novel is written for our convenience, but it is probably written for our satisfaction. That is what readers complain about with short stories, that they are not 'satisfying'. They are the cats of literary form; beautiful, but a little too self-contained for some readers' taste. Short stories are, however, satisfying to write, because they are such achieved things. They become themselves even as you write them: they end once they have attained their natural state. "

"Or some of them do. Others keep going. Others discard the first available meaning for a later, more interesting conclusion. In the interests of truth, some writers resist, backpedal, downplay, switch tacks, come back around a different way. Poe's famous unity of impulse is all very well, but if you know what the impulse is already, then it will surely die when you sit down at the desk." More.

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Love, Dark and Doomed

As her favorite Valentine's Day reading choice, New York Times Preview Editor Jen McDonald chose Anne Enright's The Gathering (2007).

Enright visits RPI under the cosponsorship of the Writers Institute on April 18th.

"I tend to like my literary love dark and doomed, so my pick is Anne Enright’s “The Gathering,” a novel whose tragedy unspools from a pulse-quickening romantic scene in the third chapter. It’s a flashback to the moment the narrator’s grandmother, Ada Merriman, first laid eyes on Lambert Nugent, who would not become her husband but would play an outsize role in the lives of her descendants...." More.

Enright also visited us in 2008.

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