A Writer's Path from UAlbany to Acclaim

Tom Junod, who visits on Thursday 9/10 and Friday 9/11, is profiled and interviewed by Paul Grondahl in today’s Times Union.

Junod recalls his professors at UAlbany, including Fred LeBrun, Eugene Mirabelli, Warren Roberts and Judith Barlow.

Tom Junod's jagged path from UAlbany to journalistic acclaim

By Paul Grondahl

Updated 6:44 am, Wednesday, September 9, 2015

The only journalism course that Tom Junod — one of the nation's most acclaimed journalists as a two-time National Magazine Award winner and 10-time finalist — ever took was Fred LeBrun's Journalism 101 course his senior year at the University at Albany.

His jagged career path offers an object lesson in perseverance, lucky breaks, the drive of an underdog — and the gift of great teachers who didn't try to fit his square peg of creativity into a round hole.

More in the Times Union:  http://www.timesunion.com/tuplus-local/article/Tom-Junod-s-jagged-path-from-UAlbany-to-6492017.php

More about Tom Junod’s events tomorrow and Friday:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/junod_tom15.html

 

WRITER FOR ESQUIRE, UALBANY GRADUATE AND 11-TIME FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL MAGAZINE AWARD, TO DISCUSS HIS WORK

 

Thursday, Sept. 10, 2015, 4:15 p.m. Seminar, Standish Room, Science Library Uptown Campus

 

Friday, Sept. 11, 2015, 7:00 p.m. Reading in observance of 9/11, New York State Museum, Huxley Theater, Downtown Albany

CALENDAR LISTING:
Tom Junod, journalist, UAlbany graduate, winner of two National Magazine Awards, and the record holder for nominations for that award (11 times), will present a seminar on magazine writing on Thursday, September 10, 2015 at 4:15 p.m. in the Standish Room, Science Library, on the UAlbany uptown campus, 1400 Washington Avenue, Albany. The following day, Friday, September 11, 2015 at 7:00 p.m., in observance of 9/11 at the New York State Museum’s Huxley Theatre in downtown Albany, Junod will read from and discuss his famous article, “The Falling Man,” a 2003 meditation on AP photographer Richard Drew’s iconic image of a 9/11 victim plunging to his death. Free and open to the public, the events are cosponsored by the University at Albany, New York State Museum, and New York State Writers Institute.

For more information contact the Writers Institute at 518-442-5620 or online at www.albany.edu/writers-inst

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Two Poets Laureate in Conversation this Tuesday 9/17

Marie Howe, New York State Poet (2012-2014) and Sydney Lea, Vermont Poet Laureate (2011-2014) will read from their work and discuss the role of poetry in society on Tuesday, September 17, 2013 at 8:00 p.m. in the Huxley Theatre, NYS Museum, Cultural Education Center in downtown Albany. Earlier that same day at 4:15 p.m., the poets will present an informal seminar in the Standish Room, Science Library, on the University at Albany uptown campus. The events are free and open to the public, and are cosponsored by the New York State Writers Institute and Friends of the New York State Library.

Marie Howe and Sydney Lea, reigning state poets of New York and Vermont, will present a joint reading and discuss the role of poetry in today's society.

Appointed State Poet (2012 – 2014) by Governor Andrew Cuomo under the auspices of the NYS Writers Institute, Marie Howe is the author of three collections of poetry: The Kingdom of Ordinary Time (2008), What the Living Do (1997), and The Good Thief (1988), which was selected by Margaret Atwood for the National Poetry Series. The Rochester native and New York City resident is also the past recipient of the Lavan Younger Poets Prize of the American Academy of Poets. In 1995, she coedited the bestselling anthology, In the Company of My Solitude: American Writing from the AIDS Pandemic (with Michael Klein), which helped many AIDS victims "find their voices" as poets and storytellers. She currently teaches at NYU where she is launching a Fall 2013 course entitled "Poetry Everywhere," an immersive production class which seeks to put poetry in unexpected New York City public spaces.

Howe is widely admired for poetry that seeks answers to metaphysical questions in ordinary day-to-day experience. In her work, little incidents and inconsequential memories help to shed light on the nature of the soul and the self, as well as the meaning of life, death, love, pain, hope, despair, sin, virtue, solitude, community, impermanence and the eternal. Playwright Eve Ensler said of her most recent collection, The Kingdom of Ordinary Time, "These poems made me gasp. Each one a revelation, a lifeline, a domestic galaxy. This is the poetry of our times, a guide to living on the brink of the mystical and the mundane."

Appointed Poet Laureate by Governor Peter Shumlin under the auspices of the Vermont Arts Council, Sydney Lea is the author of eleven collections of poetry, including I Was Thinking of Beauty (2013); Growing Old in Poetry: Two Poets, Two Lives (with Delaware Poet Laureate Fleda Brown, 2013); Pursuit of a Wound (2000), a Pulitzer Prize finalist; To the Bone: New and Selected Poems (1996), a co-winner of the Poet's Prize; and Prayer for the Little City (1991). The American Book Review said of To the Bone, "It's past time that this poet's memorable best work should be known and praised and analyzed and loved as well as Frost's is."

Much of his work focuses on the mystery of the natural world and the physical details of life in a rural setting. He recently published the essay collection, A North Country Life: Tales of Woodsmen, Waters, and Wildlife (2013). The Wall Street Journal reviewer said, "Sydney Lea is a fisherman, a hunter, a philosopher, a trainer of bird dogs, an interpreter of the past and a collector of stories. This abundance of experience shows up to good effect.... He writes memorably. His stories ring true."

The founder and long-time editor of the influential literary magazine, The New England Review, Lea is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim, Rockefeller, and Fulbright Foundations.

Lea is a dedicated environmental activist and serves currently as President of Downeast Lakes Land Trust, an organization dedicated to creating a million-acre wildlife preserve on the border between Maine and the province of New Brunswick. He also serves as President/Treasurer of the adult literacy organization, Central Vermont Adult Basic Education.

For additional information, contact the Writers Institute at 518-442-5620 or online at http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst.

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• Marie Howe, New York State Poet Photo: Brad Fowler: http://app.readmedia.com/news/attachment/52174/Howebw_16251_0.jpg
• Sydney Lea, Vermont Poet Laureate Photo: Bruce Paul Richards: http://app.readmedia.com/news/attachment/52175/syd_lea_at_home_with_birch_16251_0.JPG

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Lincoln Fans are "Just Nutty"

The TU's Paul Grondahl writes about David W. Blight's current project, a new biography of Frederick Douglass based on newly discovered sources, as well as Blight's opinion of people who are obsessed with Abraham Lincoln. Blight visit Albany tomorrow, 7:30 p.m. at the State Museum.

[Blight] is currently immersed in writing a biography of Frederick Douglass, scheduled to be published by Simon & Schuster in 2013, a subject he has been researching since his doctoral dissertation 23 years ago.

"You have to make a subject an obsession to write seriously about it, although I have moments I'd like to get Frederick Douglass out of my life," Blight said. What spurred him to sign a book contract for a biography of the abolitionist, orator and writer was his discovery three years ago of nine personal scrapbooks kept by Douglass' sons, mostly newspaper clippings that documented the final 35 years of the life of their father, who died in 1895. The scrapbooks are owned by a collector in Savannah, Ga., who made them available to Blight.

"I figured if there can be more than 11,000 books on Lincoln, I can write the fifth or sixth biography of Douglass," Blight said.

He added, "I've only written essays on Lincoln, but I've encountered a lot of Lincoln people and their obsession is crazy. They need a shrink. They're just nutty."

More in the Times Union: http://www.timesunion.com/living/article/Civil-War-historian-to-speak-4021294.php

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Civil War Historian David Blight in the Times Union

Civil War historian David W. Blight will visit tomorrow to speak about the Civil War in the American imagination at the New York State Museum, 7:30 p.m., Clark Auditorium.

Paul Grondahl wrote an article about Blight this past Sunday in the Times Union:

"Even after 150 years, the Civil War exerts a powerful and conflicting hold on the collective American imagination unlike any other event in the nation's history."

"David Blight, a professor of American history at Yale University and author of two books on the Civil War that have been called 'memory studies,' will present a lecture titled 'America Divided, Then and Now: The Civil War in our National and Local Imagination.'"

More:  http://www.timesunion.com/living/article/Civil-War-historian-to-speak-4021294.php

More on the event:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/blight_david12.html

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