New York State Writers Institute Announces Fall 2011 Schedule of Events

ALBANY, NY (08/29/2011)(readMedia)-- The New York State Writers Institute at the University at Albany announces its Fall 2011 schedule of visiting writer appearances and film series screenings. Events take place on the UAlbany uptown and downtown campuses and are free and open to the public (unless otherwise noted).

"With an impressive list of visiting writers that includes five Pulitzer Prize winners, along with bestselling novelists, journalists, and nonfiction writers, the fall 2011 season at the Writers Institute is superb," said Institute Director Donald Faulkner. "It is among the best and most diverse we've assembled, and it rivals our memorable 25th anniversary schedule of a few years ago," Faulkner added.

The Pulitzer Prize winning writers include William Kennedy, who will be reading from his new novel Changó's Beads and Two-Tone Shoes; poet Philip Shultz, who will be discussing his memoir about his struggle with dyslexia; Isabel Wilkerson, the first African American woman to receive a Pulitzer Prize for journalism, whose book The Warmth of Other Suns received the 2011 National Book Critics Circle Award; journalist Tony Horwitz, who will be discussing his new book Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War as part of the "Researching New York" Conference; and biographer Robert Caro, who will receive the 2011 Empire State Archives and History award from the NYS Archives Partnership Trust.

Other bestselling authors in the fall series include novelists Nicole Krauss, Colson Whitehead, and Tom Perrotta, nonfiction authors Eliza Griswold, Ian Frazier, Sylvia Nasar, and Willard Sterne Randall, and science writer Dava Sobel. Rounding out the series will be: poet and cultural critic Wayne Koestenbaum reading from his new book Humiliation; a presentation by New York Times art critic and UAlbany alumnus Ken Johnson on how the drug culture of the 1960s changed the art world; two celebrations of internationally-known authors-Martinique poet Aimé Césaire, and Gonzalo Torrente Ballester, who was a Distinguished Professor of Spanish Literature at UAlbany in the 1960s; and a one-man theatrical adaptation of Piri Thomas's autobiography Down These Mean Streets.

The Classic Film Series features films by internationally renowned directors Ingmar Bergman, Luis Buñuel and Federico Fellini as well as a screening of a documentary by Oscar-nominated filmmakers Steven Ascher and Jeanne Jordan.

VISITING WRITER SERIES

September 22 (Thursday): Nicole Krauss, novelist

Seminar - 4:15 p.m., Assembly Hall, Campus Center, Uptown Campus

Reading - 8:00 p.m., Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center, Uptown Campus

Nicole Krauss, prize-winning novelist, is the author most recently of Great House (2010), a finalist for the National Book Award in Fiction. The novel is composed of interlinked tales about a massive writing desk and its various owners as they cope with tragedies and upheavals, both personal and historical. Krauss's previous novels include the New York Times bestseller, The History of Love (2005), and Man Walks into a Room (2002), a finalist for the L. A. Times First Fiction Prize.

September 27 (Tuesday): Eliza Griswold, journalist

Seminar - 4:15 p.m., Assembly Hall, Campus Center, Uptown Campus

Reading - 8:00 p.m., Assembly Hall, Campus Center, Uptown Campus

Eliza Griswold, journalist, is the author of the New York Times nonfiction bestseller, The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam (2010), an exploration of diverse societies that exist along the line of latitude where the two religions collide. A former Nieman Fellow in Journalism at Harvard, Griswold has covered cultural and military conflicts throughout Africa and Asia.

October 3 (Monday): William Kennedy, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist

Seminar - 4:15 p.m., Assembly Hall, Campus Center, Uptown Campus

Reading - 8:00 p.m., Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, Downtown Campus

William Kennedy, founder and executive director of the New York State Writers Institute, is the author of the new novel, Changó's Beads and Two-Tone Shoes (September 2011). A tale of revolutionary intrigue, heroic journalism, crooked politicians, drug-running gangsters, Albany race riots, and the improbable rise of Fidel Castro, the novel follows the epic adventures of Albany journalist Daniel Quinn and his exotic, unpredictable wife Renata, during the turbulent 1950s and 1960s. Kennedy received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1983 for the novel Ironweed, one of seven novels in what has become known as the "Albany Cycle" (1975-2002).

October 5 (Wednesday): Ian Frazier, humorist and nonfiction writer

Seminar - 4:15 p.m., Standish Room, Science Library, Uptown Campus

Reading - 8:00 p.m., Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center, Uptown Campus

Ian Frazier is a leading American humorist, bestselling travel author, and staff writer for the New Yorker. Frazier has published two highly-praised, insightful and funny travelogues about the regions that have captivated him, Great Plains (1989), a modern-day classic about his explorations of the American Midwest, and Travels in Siberia (2010), a current bestseller about Russia's "Wild East." Other recent books by Frazier include the humor collection, Lamentations of the Father (2008) and Gone to New York: Adventures in the City (2005).

October 6 (Thursday): A Celebration of Aimé Césaire

Panel Discussion/Reading - 4:15 p.m., Standish Room, Science Library, Uptown Campus

Poet of Martinique, Aimé Césaire (1913-2008) was a major voice of Caribbean literature, anti-colonial activism, modern French poetry, pan-African culture, and the historic "Négritude" movement. The celebration marks the first complete and unexpurgated publication in English of his 1948 collection, Soleil cou coupé [Solar Throat Slashed], translated and edited by A. James Arnold and Clayton Eshleman. Arnold will lead a discussion with UAlbany professor Eloise Briére, and other faculty members on Césaire's work.

Cosponsored by the Departments of Languages, Literatures and Cultures; Latin American, Caribbean and U. S. Latino Studies; English; and Africana Studies

October 11 (Tuesday): Sylvia Nasar, journalist and nonfiction writer

Reading - 7:00 p.m. [Note early start time], Main Theatre, Performing Arts Center, Uptown Campus

Sylvia Nasar, journalist and author, achieved international acclaim for A Beautiful Mind (1994), a biography of mathematician and game theorist John Forbes Nash, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was the basis for a 2001 film that received four Oscars including Best Picture. Nasar's newest book is Grand Pursuit: The Story of Economic Genius (2011), a sweeping history of the invention of modern economics.

Cosponsored by UAlbany's Center for Institutional Investment Management

October 12 (Wednesday): RAISING RENEE

Film Screening and Discussion - 7:00 p.m. [Note early start time], Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center, Uptown Campus

RAISING RENEE (U.S., 2011, 81 minutes, color) is the story of acclaimed artist Beverly McIver and her promise to take care of her mentally disabled sister Renee when their mother dies-a promise that comes due just as Beverly's career is taking off. The film won the Audience Award at Boston's Independent Film Festival. The film's producers and directors, Steven Ascher and Jeanne Jordan, will provide commentary and answer questions immediately following the screening.

October 13 (Thursday): Behind the Scenes with Steven Ascher and Jeanne Jordan

Seminar - 9:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m., Standish Room, Science Library, Uptown Campus

Steven Ascher and Jeanne Jordan have been making documentary and fiction films for over 20 years. Their feature documentaries include the Academy Award-nominated TROUBLESOME CREEK: A MIDWESTERN (1995), winner of the Sundance Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award, SO MUCH SO FAST (2006), and RAISING RENEE. Their work has aired on the PBS series "American Experience" and "Frontline" and the BBC's series "Storyville".

Presented by UAlbany's Documentary Studies Program in partnership with the Art Department, School of Social Welfare, History Department, and the NYS Writers Institute

October 13 (Thursday): American Place Theatre Performance of Down These Mean Streets

Performance - 7:30 p.m., Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center, Uptown Campus

Pre-performance discussion at 7 p.m.

$15 general public / $12 faculty-staff & seniors / $10 students Box Office: (518) 442-3997; tickets@albany.edu

The "Literature to Life" program of American Place Theatre presents a one-man theatrical adaptation of Piri Thomas's classic Afro-Latino autobiography, Down These Mean Streets (1967), an account of the author's descent into a life of drugs and crime in the barrios of New York City in the 1940s and ultimate redemption.

Presented by the Performing Arts Center in conjunction with the New York State Writers Institute as part of Hispanic Heritage Month

October 14 (Friday): A Celebration of Gonzalo Torrente Ballester (1910–1999), Spanish novelist and Distinguished Professor of Spanish Literature at UAlbany (1966–1973)

Panel Discussion/Reading - 1:30 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.., Standish Room, Science Library, Uptown Campus

Known in Spain by the affectionate title, "El Señor de las Letras," the late Gonzalo Torrente Ballester is regarded as one of the most important Spanish novelists of the twentieth century. Dismissed from his teaching job for his political views and stifled by government censors under the Franco regime, Torrente Ballester found a temporary refuge at the University at Albany. The celebration will feature lectures and panel discussions by Spanish literature scholars, emeritus faculty, and students.

Cosponsored by the Office of International Education and the Department of Latin American, Caribbean and U. S. Latino Studies

October 20 (Thursday): Wayne Koestenbaum, poet and cultural critic

Seminar - 4:15 p.m., Assembly Hall, Campus Center, Uptown Campus

Reading - 8:00 p.m., Assembly Hall, Campus Center, Uptown Campus

Wayne Koestenbaum, poet and critic, is the author most recently of Humiliation (2011), a philosophical meditation on the nature and meaning of personal embarrassment. In advance praise, filmmaker John Waters called it, "the funniest, smartest, most heartbreaking yet powerful book I've read in a long time." A recipient of the Whiting Writers' Award, Koestenbaum also wrote the surprise bestseller, The Queen's Throat: Opera, Homosexuality, and the Mystery of Desire (1993), a critical inquiry into the affinity of gay men for opera, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

October 25 (Tuesday): Philip Schultz, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and memoirist

Seminar - 4:15 p.m., Standish Room, Science Library, Uptown Campus

Reading - 8:00 p.m., Campus Center Room 375, Uptown Campus

Philip Schultz, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, is the author of the new memoir, My Dyslexia (2011), a first-hand exploration of the mind's ability to triumph over its own disabilities. Unable to read until the age of 11, Schultz avoided a medical explanation of his difficulties until his oldest son was diagnosed with the same condition. The author of seven books of poetry, Schultz received the Pulitzer Prize for Failure (2007).

November 1 (Tuesday): Colson Whitehead, fiction writer

Seminar - 4:15 p.m., Assembly Hall, Campus Center, Uptown Campus

Reading - 8:00 p.m., Assembly Hall, Campus Center, Uptown Campus

Colson Whitehead, prize-winning fiction writer, is the author most recently of Zone One (2011), a post-apocalyptic zombie horror novel set in Manhattan. Winner of a MacArthur Fellowship and the Whiting Writers' Award, Whitehead is also the author of Sag Harbor (2009), Apex Hides the Hurt (2006), The Colossus of New York (2003), and John Henry Days (2001), winner of the New York Public Library Young Lions Award.

November 7 (Monday): Ken Johnson, art critic

Reading/Discussion - 7:00 p.m. [Note early start time], University Art Museum, Fine Arts Building, Uptown Campus

Ken Johnson, notable New York Times art critic and UAlbany graduate, is the author of Are You Experienced?: How Psychedelic Consciousness Transformed Modern Art (2011). Johnson received an M.A. in studio art from UAlbany in 1978, and is the guest curator of the University Art Museum's fall 2011 UAlbany Alumni Exhibition (October 14 – December 10, 2011).

Sponsored by the University Art Museum

November 10 (Thursday): Dava Sobel, science writer

Seminar - 4:15 p.m., Assembly Hall, Campus Center, Uptown Campus

Reading - 8:00 p.m., Assembly Hall, Campus Center, Uptown Campus

Dava Sobel, bestselling science writer, is renowned for her ability to present arcane subjects in riveting and readable prose. She is the author most recently of A More Perfect Heaven: How Copernicus Revolutionized the Cosmos (2011). Embedded in the new book is Sobel's play about Copernicus, "And the Sun Stood Still," which was presented as a staged reading by the Writers Institute in April 2008. Previous internationally bestselling books by Sobel include Longitude (1995), winner of the British Book of the Year Award, and Galileo's Daughter (2000), a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

November 15 (Tuesday): Isabel Wilkerson, nonfiction writer and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist

Seminar - 4:15 p.m., Assembly Hall, Campus Center, Uptown Campus

Reading - 8:00 p.m., Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, Downtown Campus

Isabel Wilkerson is the author of The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration (2010), a rich, sweeping history of the movement of Blacks from the former slave states of the rural South to the cities of the industrial North during the first half of the twentieth century. In 1994, she became the first African American woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for journalism for her 1993 coverage of floods in the Midwest.

November 17 (Thursday): Tony Horwitz, nonfiction writer and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist

Reading/Discussion - 7:30 p.m., Clark Auditorium, NYS Museum, Cultural Education Center, Albany

Tony Horwitz, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for journalism, and author of four nonfiction bestsellers, is the featured speaker for the "Researching New York" Conference. He will discuss his new book, Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War (2011). His previous books include A Voyage Long and Strange (2008), Blue Latitudes (2002), Confederates in the Attic (1998), and Baghdad Without a Map (1991).

For additional information on the "Researching New York" Conference go to: http://nystatehistory.org/researchny

November 29 (Tuesday): Tom Perrotta, novelist

Seminar - 4:15 p.m., Assembly Hall, Campus Center, Uptown Campus

Reading - 8:00 p.m., Assembly Hall, Campus Center, Uptown Campus

Tom Perrotta is the author of masterpieces of satirical fiction set in the American suburbs. His new novel is The Leftovers (2011), the story of ordinary suburbanites who are forced to cope when they are left behind after "the Rapture," the New Testament apocalypse. His previous novels include The Abstinence Teacher (2007), Little Children (2004), Joe College (2000), and Election (1998).

December 5 (Monday): Robert Caro, Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer and historian

Archives Partnership Trust Award Ceremony - 7:30 p.m., The Egg, Empire State Plaza, Albany, NY

Tickets: $10 (plus handling fees) Contact The Egg Box Office at 518-473-1845 or www.theegg.org

Robert Caro, renowned political biographer, will receive the 2011 Empire State Archives and History Award of the New York State Archives Partnership Trust. Caro's books include The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (1974), winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and a series of books on the life and career of Lyndon B. Johnson: The Path to Power (1982), Means of Ascent (1990), and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Master of the Senate (2002).

Contact the Archives Partnership Trust at 518-473-7091 for more information

December 6 (Tuesday): Willard Sterne Randall, biographer and historian

Fossieck Lecture - 4:15 p.m., Standish Room, Science Library, Uptown Campus

Reading - 8:00 p.m., Huxley Theatre, NYS Museum, Cultural Education Center, Albany, NY

Willard Sterne Randall, eminent biographer of leading figures of the American Colonial and Revolutionary War periods, is the author of the new book Ethan Allen: His Life and Times (2011), a revelatory portrait of the flamboyant guerilla fighter and Vermont patriot. Randall's previous books include Alexander Hamilton: A Life (2003), Benedict Arnold: Patriot and Traitor (1990), and A Little Revenge: Benjamin Franklin and His Son (1984).

Cosponsored by UAlbany's History Department and the Friends of the NYS Library

CLASSIC FILM SERIES

October 14 (Friday): Gonzalo Torrente Ballester Double Feature

Film Screening - 7:30 p.m., Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, Downtown Campus

GTB x GTB

Directed by Luis Felipe Torrente Sánchez-Guisande and Daniel Suberviola Garrigosa

(Spain, 2009, 36 minutes, color and b/w, in Spanish with English subtitles)

Starring Gonzalo Torrente Ballester

Made in celebration of the late Gonzalo Torrente Ballester's centennial year, and co-directed by his son, this short documentary traces the life of the great Spanish author, and presents his reflections on life, death, myth, power, history, women, and his native Galicia.

EL REY PASMADO [THE DUMBFOUNDED KING]

(Spain, France, Portugal, 1991, 106 minutes, color, in Spanish*)

Directed by Imanol Uribe

Starring María Barranco, Joaquim de Almeida, Laura del Sol, Gabino Diego

*Note: This film will be screened in Spanish only.

Set in 1620 and based on Gonzalo Torrente Ballester's 1989 novel, Crónica del rey pasmado, the film tells the story of a young king whose marriage is left unconsummated because he has been kept ignorant of matters of sex by the real rulers of the state, the Supreme Council of the Inquisition. The film received eight Spanish national film (Goya) awards, including Best Screenplay.

October 21 (Friday): PERSONA

Film Screening - 7:30 p.m., Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, Downtown Campus

Directed by Ingmar Bergman

(Sweden, 1966, 85 minutes, b/w, in Swedish with English subtitles)

Starring Bibi Andersson, Liv Ullmann, Margaretha Krook

A touchstone of 1960s experimental cinema, PERSONA tells the story of two women: a troubled actress who falls mute in mid-sentence during a performance of "Electra," and the young nurse who takes care of her. Bergman continually disrupts the narrative, and shatters the medium of film in an effort to explore and deconstruct the very foundations of human identity.

October 28 (Friday): THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME

Film Screening - 7:30 p.m., Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, Downtown Campus

Directed by Wallace Worsley

(United States, 1923, 100 minutes, b/w, silent with live piano accompaniment by Mike Schiffer)

Starring Lon Chaney, Patsy Ruth Miller, Norman Kerry

The sets, make-up, costumes, and epic scale of this silent film adaptation of Victor Hugo's novel set a new standard for studio filmmaking. Lon Chaney's sympathetic portrayal of "the monster" established him as a major star.

November 4 (Friday): BELLE DE JOUR

Film Screening - 7:30 p.m., Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, Downtown Campus

Directed by Luis Buñuel

(France, 1967, 101 minutes, color, in French with English subtitles)

Starring Catherine Deneuve, Jean Sorel, Michel Piccoli

Deneuve stars in this story of a respectable doctor's wife who keeps a secret job in a brothel two days a week. Never graphic in its depictions of sex, the film is universally acknowledged as an erotic masterpiece.

November 11 (Friday): LE CERCLE ROUGE [THE RED CIRCLE]

Film Screening - 7:30 p.m., Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, Downtown Campus

Directed by Jean-Pierre Melville

(France, 1970, 140 minutes, color, in French with English subtitles)

Starring Alain Delon, André Bourvil, Gian Maria Volonté, Yves Montand

A meticulously constructed film about a jewel heist gone wrong, LE CERCLE ROUGE features master thieves, brilliant twists, and a cat-loving police inspector who refuses to be outwitted.

November 18 (Friday): 8 ½

Film Screening - 7:30 p.m., Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, Downtown Campus

Directed by Federico Fellini

(Italy, 1963, 138 minutes, b/w, in Italian with English subtitles)

Starring Marcello Mastroianni, Claudia Cardinale, Anouk Aimée

Fellini offers a tour of his own subconscious in this tale of a narcissistic film director trying to get past a creative dry spell while the people around him demand yet another masterpiece. Whimsical, comic, and frequently absurd, the film received an Oscar for Best Foreign Film.

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

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Posted Monday August 29, 2011 at 05:00 pm by New York State Writers Institute