Don't miss Dr. Allen Ballard-- who kicks off the Fall schedule on Feb. 2-- accompanying himself to Aupres de ma blonde on YouTube. And while you're at it, preview some of the gospel songs on his new CD, "Early This Morning."
UAlbany has a profile of the beloved faculty member on it's "People" page. And if the Philadelphia of Ballard's new novel piques your interest, you may wish to read One More Day's Journey, a memoir of his family's Great Migration from rural South Carolina to the mean streets of the City of Brotherly Love.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Aupres de ma blonde
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Writers Institute Announces Spring 2010 Visiting Writers Series and Classic Film Series
Visiting Writer Series
February 2 (Tuesday): Allen Ballard, novelist
Reading — 7:00 p.m., [Note early start time] Assembly Hall,
Allen Ballard, novelist, historian and UAlbany Professor of History and Africana Studies, earned national attention with the publication of Where I’m Bound (2000), a Washington Post Notable Book, and one of the first novels to address the Civil War from the perspective of Black soldiers. His new novel is Carried by Six (2009), an urban thriller about a group of ordinary African American citizens determined to rid their
Cosponsored by UAlbany’s Departments of Africana Studies and History, EOP Program, and Affirmative Action Office
February 4 (Thursday): Francine Prose, novelist and nonfiction writer
Seminar — 4:15 p.m., Assembly Hall,
Reading — 8:00 p.m., Assembly Hall,
Francine Prose, novelist and nonfiction writer, is author of Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife (2009), a work of literary history and criticism that celebrates the under-appreciated artistry of the well-known diarist. Prose’s work includes the novels A Changed Man (2005), winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize in fiction and Blue Angel (2001), a finalist for the National Book Award, and the nonfiction New York Times bestseller Reading Like a Writer (2006).
Cosponsored by UAlbany’s Center for Jewish Studies
February 11 (Thursday): Fred LeBrun, journalist
Reading/Talk — 8:00 p.m. Assembly Hall,
Fred LeBrun, one of the defining voices of the Albany Times-Union for more than forty years, has served the newspaper as suburban beat reporter, city editor, arts editor, restaurant critic, and foremost commentator on state politics. LeBrun is also known for his “Hudson River Chronicles,” in which he recounts an 18-day adventure downriver from Mount Marcy to New York Harbor in 1998— a portion of which he repeated in 2009 to commemorate the Hudson 400.
Rescheduled from Fall 2009
Cosponsored by the Women’s Press Club of New York State
February 18 (Thursday): Norberto Fuentes, journalist
Seminar — 4:15 p.m., Standish Room, Science Library
Reading — 8:00 p.m. Assembly Hall,
Norberto Fuentes, Cuban journalist, Hemingway scholar, early friend and confidante of Fidel Castro, and sometime political prisoner of the Castro regime, is the author of the satirical faux-memoir The Autobiography of Fidel Castro (2004, English translation 2009). Fuentes is also the author of Hemingway in Cuba (1985) and Ernest Hemingway: Rediscovered (1988).
March 4 (Thursday):
Seminar — 4:15 p.m., Assembly Hall,
Reading — 8:00 p.m., Assembly Hall,
March 11 (Thursday): AUTHORS THEATRE: Women Playwrights of the Early 20th Century
Staged
The Writers Institute will present staged readings of short, rediscovered, early 20th century plays highlighted in the new volume Women Writers of the Provincetown Players (2009) by UAlbany English
March 16 (Tuesday): Jules Feiffer, editorial cartoonist and author
Seminar — 4:15 p.m., Recital Hall, Performing
Reading — 8:00 p.m., Terrace Gallery, 4th Floor, Cultural
Jules Feiffer, one of the most influential editorial cartoonists of the last half century, received the Pulitzer Prize in 1986 for work that appeared as part of his long-running strip in the Village Voice. A writer as well as an artist, Feiffer has earned distinction in many genres, including fiction, children’s literature, drama, and screenwriting. His new book is a memoir of his
Cosponsored by Friends of the
March 18 (Thursday): American Place Theatre performance of Three Cups of Tea
Performance — 7:30 p.m., Recital Hall, Performing
Pre-performance discussion at 7:00 p.m.
$15 general public; $12 seniors and faculty/staff; $10 students
Box Office: (518) 442-3997; tickets@albany.edu
American Place Theatre presents a one-person theatrical adaptation of the uplifting true story of renowned humanitarian Greg Mortenson who, following a failed attempt to scale Pakistan’s K2 (the world’s second highest mountain), went on to found girls’ schools throughout mountainous regions in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The program includes pre- and post-show discussions with a teaching artist from American Place Theatre.
Presented by the
March 23 (Tuesday): Rebecca Goldstein, philosopher, fiction and nonfiction writer
Seminar — 4:15 p.m., Science Library 340
Reading — 8:00 p.m., Science Library 340
Rebecca Goldstein, writer, MacArthur Foundation Fellow, and professor of philosophy, is the author of the new novel, 36 Arguments for the Existence of God (2010), the humorous tale of a celebrity
Cosponsored by UAlbany’s Center for Jewish Studies
April 8 (Thursday): Chang-rae Lee, fiction writer
Seminar — 4:15 p.m.,
Reading — 8:00 p.m., Recital Hall, Performing
Chang-rae Lee, Korean American novelist whose work explores the modern Asian immigrant experience, received the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for his first novel, Native Speaker (1995), and was named one of the 20 best American novelists under 40 by the New Yorker in 1999. His new novel is The Surrendered (2010), the epic story of a Korean orphan, an American GI, and a troubled missionary wife who meet during the immediate aftermath of the Korean War. His other books include A Gesture Life (1999), a national bestseller and New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and Aloft (2004).
April 12 (Monday): Authors Theatre: Stephen Adly Guirgis, playwright
Seminar — 4:15 p.m.,
Reading — 8:00 p.m., Recital Hall, Performing
Stephen Adly Guirgis, 1990 UAlbany graduate, is one of the leading playwrights of his generation. His works include “The Last Days of Judas Iscariot” (2005), named one of the “10 Best Plays of the Year” by Time and Entertainment Weekly, and “Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train” (2000) winner of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe First Award.
April 14 (Wednesday): Michael Ondaatje, poet and novelist, and Linda Spalding, fiction and nonfiction writer
Seminar — 4:00 p.m., Rensselaer (RPI) Campus,
Michael Ondaatje, who has received critical acclaim for both his fiction and poetry, is best-known for his Booker Prize-winning novel, The English Patient (1992), later adapted as an Oscar-winning film.
Sri Lankan by birth, Ondaatje is a four-time winner of the Governor General’s Award in Literature in his adopted home country of
Linda Spalding, Kansas-born Canadian fiction and nonfiction writer, often explores world cultures and the clash between contemporary life and traditional beliefs. Her most recent book is Who Named the Knife (2007), the true story of the murder trial of Maryann Acker, a teenager sentenced to life in prison for a murder committed while on honeymoon in
Cosponsored in conjunction with Rensselaer’s 69th McKinney Writing Contest and
April 22 (Thursday): Walter Mosley, novelist
Seminar — 4:15 p.m.,
Reading — 8:00 p.m. Page Hall,
Walter Mosley, award-winning author of 30 books, is one of
Classic Film Series
February 19 (Friday): LOLA
Film Screening—7:30 p.m., Page Hall,
Directed by Jacques Demy
Starring Anouk Aimée, Marc Michel, Jacques Harden
(France, 1961, 90 minutes, b/w, in French with English subtitles)
With spectacular camera work, Jacques Demy pays tribute to the “Lolas” of Max Ophuls’ 1955 Lola Montes and Josef von Sternberg’s 1930 The Blue Angel in this New Wave reinterpretation of the classic tale of a beautiful cabaret singer and the men in her thrall.
February 26 (Friday): CAMP DE THIAROYE [THE CAMP AT THIAROYE]
Film Screening—7:30 p.m., Page Hall,
Directed by Ousmane Sembene.
Starring Sidiki Bakaba, Hamed Camara, Philippe Chamelat
(Senegal, 1987, 157 minutes, color, in Wolof and French with English subtitles)
A group of African soldiers who fought valiantly for
March 5 (Friday): FISTS IN THE POCKET [I PUGNI IN TASCA]
Film Screening—7:30 p.m., Page Hall,
Directed by Marco Bellocchio
Starring Lou Castel, Paola Pitagora, Marino Masé
(Italy, 1965, 105 minutes, b/w, in Italian with English subtitles)
A shocking and influential black comedy of the Italian New Wave, Fists in the Pocket features the exploits of a disturbed young man who kills off members of his peculiar family to “save” them from various medical afflictions. In the words of one Italian critic, “When it came out, it ripped the collective film imagination to shreds.”
March 12 (Friday): LA NOUBA DES FEMMES DU MONT-CHENOUA [THE SONG OF THE WOMEN OF
Film Screening—7:30 p.m., Page Hall,
Directed by Assia Djebar
Starring Sawsan Noweif, Mohamed Haymour, Zohra Sahraoui
(Algeria, 1977, 115 minutes, color, in Arabic with English subtitles)
In her inventive, experimental debut as film director, major Maghrebi fiction writer Assia Djebar borrows the structure of the nouba, a five-part traditional song, to tell the story of a woman who returns to the town of her childhood fifteen years after the violent War of Independence.
March 19 (Friday): AFTER LIFE [WANDÂFURU RAIFU]
Film Screening—7:30 p.m., Page Hall,
Directed by Hirokazu Kore-Eda
Starring Arata, Erika Oda, Susumu Terajima
(Japan, 1998, 118 minutes, color, in Japanese with English subtitles)
A deliberately spare, thoughtful work, After Life presents a kind of antechamber to heaven in which the recently deceased are asked to choose a single cherished memory to preserve for all eternity. Stephen Holden of the New York Times called it a “brilliant, humorous, transcendently compassionate film.”
April 9 (Friday): LE JOUR SE LÈVE [DAYBREAK]
Film Screening—7:30 p.m., Page Hall,
Directed by Marcel Carné
Starring Jean Gabin, Jules
(France, 1939, 88 minutes, b/w, in French with English subtitles)
A factory worker kills his rival in love, then barricades himself inside his apartment to weather an armed siege by the police, all the while recalling the events that led to the crime. A masterpiece of “realist” cinema from major French director Marcel Carné.
April 16 (Friday): THE TALES OF HOFFMANN
Film Screening—7:30 p.m., Page Hall,
Directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger
Starring Moira Shearer, Ludmilla Tchérina, Anne Ayars
(United Kingdom, 1951, 128 minutes, color)
A young man’s dreams of past romantic adventures come to life on the screen in this exquisite blend of music, ballet and cinematic effects. Directed by the famous team of Powell and Pressburger (The Red Shoes), and based on the 1881 opera by Jacques Offenbach and the stories of E. T. A. Hoffmann.
April 23 (Friday): LITTLE OLD
Film Screening—7:30 p.m., Page Hall,
Directed by Sidney Olcott
Starring Marion Davies, Stephen Carr, J. M. Kerrigan
(United States, 1923, 106 minutes, b/w)
SILENT with live piano accompaniment by Mike Schiffer
An Irish immigrant lass comes to New York City disguised as a boy to claim her dead brother’s inheritance in this charming historical drama set against the background of real events, including the 1807 launch of Robert Fulton’s steamboat on the Hudson River.
For additional information contact the Writers Institute at 518-442-5620 or online at http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst.
Read More......
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
25th Anniversary Celebration Updates
The work of the Institute has been all-consuming of late, and to note that we haven't posted since early October is, well, an embarrassment, both of silences, and of riches. Sometimes it's wonderful to have so many things going on that you can't stop to whistle at them.
On November 16 we celebrated our 25th anniversary with a highlight film and remarks 
by Mario Cuomo, the former governor of New York who signed the establishing legislation for the
formation of the NYSWI into law, and Doris Kearns Goodwin, biographer/historian who has appeared at the Writers Institute six times since its inception.
Visits prior to that, by Richard
Russo, Lorrie Moore, Don DeLillo, Russell Banks, Henry Louis Gates, and others (celebrations of Rumi, and Jazz history included), will be chronicled in due course. Sometimes it's better to be living than to be blogging!
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
UAlbany Community Day to Feature a Variety of NYSWI Events
This is a great weekend to visit the University at Albany. On Friday, the University honors alum and gay rights pioneer Harvey Milk.
On Friday evening, UAlbany and the Writers Institute welcomes Krugman, a New York Times columnist and winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Economics. Krugman has been called “the most important political columnist in America” (Washington Monthly), and “the most celebrated economist of his generation” (The Economist). Recent bestsellers include The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008 (2008), The Conscience of a Liberal (2007), and The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century (2003). Krugman’s lecture, part of the Visiting Writers Series, will be at 8 p.m. in Page Hall on the University’s downtown campus.
Saturday is the second annual Community Day, and includes a special presentation by Writers Institute Founder Bill Kennedy and Director Don Faulkner, who will provide video highlights of a quarter century of prize-winning authors, poets and filmmakers who have visited UAlbany. That’s at 2 p.m. in Fine Arts 126.
At 3:30 p.m. in the Recital Hall of the uptown campus you can catch a film screening of Gus Van Sant’s Academy Award-winning film MILK.
At 8 p.m., the University hosts Soldier and statesman General Colin Powell, USA (Ret.), the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Persian Gulf War and U.S. Secretary of State from 2001-2005. Powell gives the inaugural address of the University’s World Within Reach Speaker Series. He will speak on "Diplomacy: Persuasion, Trust & Values,” at UAlbany’s SEFCU Arena.
And don’t forget about the Writers Institute’s 25th Anniversary Celebration on November 16th at Page Hall. Joining us will be special guests Governor Mario Cuomo and biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin.
Read More......
On Friday evening, UAlbany and the Writers Institute welcomes Krugman, a New York Times columnist and winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Economics. Krugman has been called “the most important political columnist in America” (Washington Monthly), and “the most celebrated economist of his generation” (The Economist). Recent bestsellers include The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008 (2008), The Conscience of a Liberal (2007), and The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century (2003). Krugman’s lecture, part of the Visiting Writers Series, will be at 8 p.m. in Page Hall on the University’s downtown campus.
Saturday is the second annual Community Day, and includes a special presentation by Writers Institute Founder Bill Kennedy and Director Don Faulkner, who will provide video highlights of a quarter century of prize-winning authors, poets and filmmakers who have visited UAlbany. That’s at 2 p.m. in Fine Arts 126.
At 3:30 p.m. in the Recital Hall of the uptown campus you can catch a film screening of Gus Van Sant’s Academy Award-winning film MILK.
At 8 p.m., the University hosts Soldier and statesman General Colin Powell, USA (Ret.), the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Persian Gulf War and U.S. Secretary of State from 2001-2005. Powell gives the inaugural address of the University’s World Within Reach Speaker Series. He will speak on "Diplomacy: Persuasion, Trust & Values,” at UAlbany’s SEFCU Arena.
And don’t forget about the Writers Institute’s 25th Anniversary Celebration on November 16th at Page Hall. Joining us will be special guests Governor Mario Cuomo and biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Writers Institute fall 09: the 25th Anniversary Season, with a schedule update
In what Writers Institute Director Donald Faulkner has called "the most difficult series I've organized and one that I'm most proud to present", the New York State Writers Institute offers its 25th anniversary season. As ever, most events are free and open to the public.
In an important update from the recently published series brochure, the Oct 26 co-sponsored event with the Archives Partnership Trust will feature Henry Louis Gates, Jr. James McPherson, previously announced, will not be able to attend.
The website will provide details, but consider this partial list of writers for the fall series:
Douglas Blackmon, current nonfiction Pulitzer awardee in nonfiction for his "Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II" on Sept 24.
Joseph O'Neill, novelist and author of the PEN/Faulkner Award-winning "Netherland" on Sept 29.
Rita Moreno, winner of an Oscar, a Tony, a Grammy, and an Emmy. She will speak on her life in theatre on Oct 7.
Paul Krugman, Nobel Laureate in Economics, and weekly columnist for the New York Times, on Oct 9.
A celebration of Writers Institute friend Frank McCourt in a dramatic presentation of "Teacher Man" on Oct 13.
Novelists Lorrie Moore and Richard Russo in their first joint reading on Oct 15.
Novelists Russel Banks and Don DeLillo talking about their mentor Nelson Algren on Nov 6.
And the actual celebration of the 25th anniversary of the founding of the Writers Institute on Nov 16 with historian Doris Kearns Goodwin and former governor Mario Cuomo who signed the legislation creating the Writers Institute 25 years ago.
Many other events and festivities will be listed on our website, and additions will follow.
Enjoy!
Monday, July 20, 2009
William Kennedy on Frank McCourt
William Kennedy remembers his friend, Frank McCourt
[Note: This material is ok to quote in other materials and sites, but only with a link and reference to the New York State Writers Institute website: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst]
A recollection of Frank McCourt
By WILLIAM KENNEDY
Frank McCourt may be dead, but I don’t think so.
He grew up and old with death, a frequent visitor to his family and to his neighborhood in
We were friends for twenty-five years and he came to
In July 2005 I was en route to
Fifty-fifty, not great odds. My wife, Dana, and I saw him and his wife, Ellen, a few months ago after their return from Tahiti where he had suffered the seizure that sent him into horrible pain; and he had to endure it in Tahiti for three days as a hostage to Air France, which couldn’t find him a seat on any US-bound planes. Back in
I met him first on January 4, 1984, when he and his brother Malachy and a dozen other writers, literary critics, talkers, and drinkers came to
The club had been formed to promote mid-day drinking while talking, and perhaps eating, by members, and on this day in 1984 I heard Frank McCourt talk for the first time and I was convulsed. A luncheon in
I learned that the club had been founded on the basis of a novena in the Catholic religion: that if you receive communion on nine consecutive first Fridays you will die in a state of grace and go directly to Heaven. This was slightly modified by the club to assure members that whoever came to lunch nine Fridays in a row would be guaranteed a bartender at his deathbed.
On March 4, 1996 Frank sent me a letter:
“Do you realize it’s 12 years since the First Friday Club pilgrimated to your side at an Italian restaurant in
“I, meself, couldn’t stand it any longer, so I wrote a book and I’m sending you a copy for perusal and, perhaps, a blurb note. That’s if you like the book, of course; if you don’t like it we have a special place for the negative notes and it’s usually not on the book jacket.
“I haven’t seen you in ages … Will we see you ever again at a F.F. gathering? Your membership is not in danger. First Fridayites are like Mafiosi – once you’re in the only way out is the grave.”
So I gave a blurb to the book, which he called ‘Angela’s Ashes’ and I said he was a wizard and that his writing about his boyhood and poverty and family pain in Limerick was as real as a stab in the heart, and I said its language, its narrative grace were that of a fine novel, which is the highest praise I can offer to a prose work. Frank had taught school all his adult life after he came back to this country (he was born here in 1930), and he only began writing with fervor after he retired in 1987. In time the book took shape and it was snatched up in 1996 and Frank’s life changed.
“Nothing happened to me till I was 66,” he said.
But then it happened with skyrockets. ‘Angela’s Ashes’ won rave reviews from the critics, was a New York Times number one best-seller for a year and on the list for two years; it sold four million in hardcover, millions and millions more in England, Ireland, Germany and everywhere else too. It won the Pulitzer, the National Book Critics Circle Award, it became a movie, and Frank became one of the most famous people on earth. We were in
His talent was singular – in the spoken word as well as his writing, a master raconteur. Every word he uttered could be comic, if he wanted it that way, and he usually did. ‘Angela’s Ashes’ reads like a novel (as do his two subsequent books, ‘’Tis’ and ‘Teacher Man’) but he called it a memoir and so it became; and its form and style loomed with such excellence and success that the memoir has become the form of choice for a legion of authors ever since. Frank had been trying for years to turn his old diaries into a novel but couldn’t make it work. Then he found a voice that sounded like the child he remembered being and he let the boy talk, and the talk captivated the world.
Listen to Frank the boy watching Protestant girls going to church. “I feel sorry for them, especially the girls, who are so lovely, they have such beautiful white teeth. I feel sorry for the beautiful Protestant girls, they’re doomed. That’s what the priests tell us. Outside the Catholic Church there is no salvation. Outside the Catholic Church there is nothing but doom. And I want to save them. Protestant girl, come with me to the
“He says, Frankie, what’s the use of not playing croquet when you’re doomed?”
Frank was very good on doom. But I don’t think it’s in the cards for his big book. That silver-tongued kid from
#
Read More......
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Frank McCourt
We mourn the passing of our good friend, Frank McCourt.
Keep posted to the website and the blog for further statements.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)