Contenders for the 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature

Nearly 30% of the leading contenders for the 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature (according to British betting giant, Ladbrokes, for what that's worth) have visited Albany under the sponsorship of the New York State Writers Institute.

They include frequent frontrunner Philip Roth; upstate New York native and Summer Writers Institute stalwart Joyce Carol Oates; Polish poet Adam Zagajewski; Chinese poet Bei Dao; Somali novelist Nuruddin Farah (who visited twice); Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood; Bronx novelist Don DeLillo (twice); Israeli novelist Amos Oz; American novelist Richard Ford (twice); Irish poet Paul Muldoon; Australian poet Les Murray; and Irish novelist Colm Toibin.

The Wall St. Journal discusses Ladbrokes' oddsmaking regarding the Nobel Prize in Literature here: http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2014/09/30/bookmakers-weigh-in-on-who-will-win-the-nobel-prize-for-literature/

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Blackmon Leaves the Wall St. Journal

Douglas Blackmon, Pulitzer-winning author who visits the Writers Institute on February 3rd, is leaving the Wall St. Journal, where he is Senior National Correspondent, in order to head a presidential policy institute at the University of Virginia, where he will also be a lecturer in media studies.

In Albany, Blackmon will discuss his new discuss his new documentary film, Slavery By Another Name, based on his 2008 book. The film is one of only 16 documentaries (out of thousands of entries) selected for the upcoming 2012 Sundance Film Festival competition.

Link here to New York Times article on his departure.

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Ethan Allen Named a "Best Biography" in the WSJ

Carl Rollyson talks up Willard Sterne Randall's Ethan Allen in the Wall Street Journal "Gift Guide: Best of Biography" last month. Randall visits Tuesday, December 6.

"With every publishing season hailing another biography of some already well-documented Founder, it was a pleasure to descend into the trenches of American history with Willard Sterne Randall. His absorbing and comprehensive "Ethan Allen: His Life and Times" (Norton, 617 pages, $35) puts a good deal of flesh on the New England hero who captured the British-held Fort Ticonderoga in May 1775. A spirited man, Allen was, like many of his contemporaries, not averse to profiting from land speculation and accumulating family wealth in ways that allied him as much with the old world as the new. Allen was also notable for his unconventional guerrilla warfare and his searing accounts of his time as a British prisoner of war." WSJ

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