NYS Writers Institute at the University at Albany launches new online literary journal "Trolley"

Web magazine extends Institute's engagement with an online audience

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Screenshot of trolleyjournal.com, a new web magazine published by the NYS Writers Institute

ALBANY, NY (03/15/2018) (readMedia)-- Contact: Paul Grondahl, 518-442-5625 | Michael Huber, 518-437-3969

Albany, NY - The NYS Writers Institute announces the launch of Trolley, a web magazine -- trolleyjournal.com -- of essay, opinion, literature, culture, and politics.

Trolley began with an idea from William Kennedy, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and founder of the Writers Institute, who envisioned an online literary journal published free of charge in which each edition's words and images related to a single theme.

Kennedy shared his idea with Writers Institute Director Paul Grondahl, who collected submissions from writers whose range of opinions – and diverse writing styles – converged on the issues of truth, fake news, and journalism. Those themes were central to the Institute's two-day "Telling the Truth in a Post-Truth World" symposium held in October, 2017.

The name Trolley was selected as an homage to Kennedy's 1984 collection of his journalism, Riding the Yellow Trolley Car.

The trolleyjournal.com site includes a BBC article titled "The corpse factory and the birth of fake news," a selection of award-winning editorial cartoons, and essays from, among others, author Eugene Garber, professor emeritus in English at the University at Albany; Rex Smith, editor of the Albany Times Union and host of "The Media Project" on Northeast Public Radio; Rebecca Wolff a poet, fiction writer, and editor and creator of Fence Magazine and Fence Books; Leonard Perlmutter, founder of The American Meditation Institute in Averill Park, NY; and Frank S. Robinson, an author and former administrative law judge with the New York Public Service Commission.

The journal will also regularly feature an interview excerpted from the extensive archives of the Writers Institute's cache of hundreds of transcripts of talks from visiting authors. For the inaugural issue, author and UAlbany faculty member Edward Schwarzschild edited a transcript of a talk between William Kennedy and E.L. Doctorow recorded in 2014.

For additional information, contact the Writers Institute at 518-442-5620.

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