Institute in the Times Union's "Year in the Arts"

"What stood out the most, though, was the New York State Writers Institute's fall season. To name just of few of the visitors from one of the best Writers Institute seasons of recent memory: Nobel Prize-winning novelist J. M. Coetzee and novelist Paul Auster lead a seminar on Herman Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivener" in the afternoon on Oct. 12 and shared a conversation that night; Pulitzer-winner Junot Diaz, who was also named a MacArthur "genius" grant winner just days before his Oct. 4 appearance, led a seminar and a reading; and National Book Award-winner Denis Johnson gave a seminar and had his new play "Des Moines" presented as a staged reading on Nov. 12."

So writes Steve Barnes in today's Times Union.  Read more in "2012: Year in the Arts"--
http://www.timesunion.com/entertainment/article/2012-Year-in-the-arts-4146769.php#page-3

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We're on C-SPAN 2's Book TV This Weekend

The Institute will be featured this weekend on C-SPAN 2, Book TV at 12PM, Saturday, December 8^th, and at 9AM Sunday, December 9^th. Included among the interviews with various authors are segments with Institute Executive Director William Kennedy, and with Institute Director Donald Faulkner.

Here is a link to the Book TV schedule:  http://www.booktv.org/schedule.aspx

And here is a link to C-SPAN’s Albany webpage:  http://www.c-span.org/LocalContent/Albany/

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J. Hoberman at the Movies this Friday

We invite you to attend our final event of the season, a special opportunity to view and discuss film clips and the future of cinema with major film critic J. Hoberman, a contributor at the Village Voice for more than three decades, and author of the new book about trends in 21^st century cinema, Film After Film (2012).

Among other films, Hoberman will be showing clips from animated adult feature, Waking Life, and the Polish-Japanese video game digital feature, Avalon.

 

J. Hoberman, film critic
December 7 (Friday)
Reading/Discussion — 8:00 p.m., Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center, Uptown Campus

J. Hoberman, one of the most influential American film critics of recent decades, is admired for his wit, intellectual energy and incomparable knowledge of experimental, international, independent, and Hollywood cinema. His new book is Film After Film (2012), which argues among other things that the future of film is animation and digital-image-making, ending “the need for an actual world, let alone a camera.” Senior film critic at the Village Voice from 1988 to 2012, Hoberman started with the paper in the 1970s as a third stringer under critic Andrew Sarris. Jessica Winter of Time magazine praised his work as “elegant, erudite, ambitious, and wondrously droll arts and media criticism,” and credited him for teaching her generation of critics “how to think and write about popular culture.” A portion of the Writers Institute’s fall 2012 Classic Film Series was based on Hoberman’s list of his favorite 21st century films
(see Classic Film Series Listing).

 

For more information contact 518-442-5620 or writers@albany.edu, or visit us online at http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/ . You may also wish to visit our blog at http://nyswiblog.blogspot.com/, or to friend us on Facebook. 

 

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New York Times 100 Notable Books

Numerous Writers Institute visitors are featured in this year's edition of the New York Times 100 Notable Books.

Recent visitors (who have discussed the new books featured on the list) include Lauren Groff (Arcadia), Shalom Auslander (Hope: A Tragedy), Junot Diaz (This is How You Lose Her), David Quammen (Spillover), and Robert Caro (Passage of Power).

Other past visitors with new books on the list include Colm Toibin, Nathan Englander, Sherman Alexie, Steve Stern, Richard Ford, Barbara Kingsolver, Dave Eggers, Toni Morrison, John Irving, Louise Erdrich, T. Coraghessan Boyle, Kevin Young and David Nasaw.

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Writers Institute on Jeopardy! and C-SPAN

Two notable television events for the New York State Writers Institute are coming up that may be of interest:

Our graduate assistant Josh Bartlett will appear on Jeopardy! with Alex Trebek on Thanksgiving Day, 7:30 p.m. on News10.

“The waiting, which began with the tryout in January, extended through the taping in August and then through all the months Joshua Bartlett had to smile and say nothing, is over: The University at Albany graduate student will finally appear Thursday on Jeopardy!”

Read more in the Times Union:  http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Local-contestant-on-Jeopardy-4057184.php

A special program on the City of Albany, in which the Writers Institute, William Kennedy, Donald Faulkner and The Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza are prominently featured, will air on C-SPAN2's Book TV and C-SPAN3's American History TV on the weekend of Dec. 8 and 9. The program is part of C-SPAN’s LCV (Local Content Vehicle) 2012 Cities Tour of all of America’s state capitals.

"The idea is to look at a city's rich history and unique literary life," said producer Debbie Lamb, whose three-member crew will fan out across the city all week. "We wanted to get outside Washington and highlight medium-sized cities that a national audience normally wouldn't get to see."

Read more in the Times Union:  http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/The-good-the-bad-the-colorful-4035365.php

Here’s a link to the C-SPAN Local Content page:  http://www.c-span.org/LocalContent/

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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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