News from New York State Writers Institute

For more information contact: Suzanne Lance, 518-442-5620

Nigerian Fiction Writer, Chinese American Playwright and African American Poet to Read at Writers Institute

NYS Writers Institute Events Week of 10/15 - 10/19/07

ALBANY, NY (10/03/2007; 1414)(readMedia)-- RISING STAR OF WORLD LITERATURE, NIGERIAN FICTION WRITER CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE, TO READ OCTOBER 16, 2007

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, internationally acclaimed Nigerian-born author, will read from and discuss her new novel of the Biafran civil war, “Half of a Yellow Sun” (2006), which Joyce Carol Oates called “a worthy successor to such 20th century classics” as “Things Fall Apart” and “A Bend in the River,” on Tuesday, October 16, 2007 at 8:00 p.m. in the Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center, on the UAlbany uptown campus. Earlier that same day at 4:15 p.m. she will present an informal seminar in the Assembly Hall, Campus Center, on the uptown campus. The events are sponsored by the New York State Writers Institute and are free and open to the public.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie earned widespread international acclaim for her first novel, “Purple Hibiscus” (2003), a Nigerian coming-of-age story about a teenaged girl growing up in a privileged household in a nation plagued by poverty and political strife.

The novel received the Commonwealth Writers Prize. The “Washington Post Book World” called it, “a breathtaking debut....[Adichie] is very much the 21st-century daughter of that other great Igbo novelist, Chinua Achebe.”

Adichie’s second novel is “Half of a Yellow Sun” (2006), which follows the fates of three individuals during Nigeria’s bloody Biafran civil war. The protagonists are Ugwu, an impoverished child soldier conscripted into the ragtag Biafran army, and Olanna and Kainene, twin daughters of a well-educated, upper class family.

Critic Edmund White said the book, “deserves to be nominated for the Booker Prize” (it ultimately was). Joyce Carol Oates called it, “a worthy successor to such 20th century classics” as “Things Fall Apart” and “A Bend in the River.” “Time” magazine called it, “A gorgeous, pitiless account of love, violence and betrayal during the Biafran war.”

The novel was co-winner of the 2007 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and the 2007 PEN “Beyond Margins” Award, and winner of the United Kingdom’s Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction.

Adichie was co-winner of the 2002 BBC Short Story Competition for “Harmattan Morning,” and received the 2003 O. Henry Prize for her short story, “American Embassy.” Her work has been featured in “Granta,” “Zoetrope,” “Iowa Review” and “Calyx.”

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

ELIZABETH WONG, CHINESE AMERICAN PLAYWRIGHT WHO FUSES COMEDY AND SOCIAL COMMENTARY, WILL DISCUSS HER WORK ON OCTOBER 17, 2007

Elizabeth Wong, Chinese American playwright who fuses comedy with social commentary, will discuss her work on Wednesday, October 17, 2007 at 4:15 p.m. in the Standish Room, Science Library on the UAlbany uptown campus. The event is sponsored by the New York State Writers Institute and UAlbany Theatre Department in association with UAlbany’s “China Semester,” and is free and open to the public.

Elizabeth Wong, award-winning Chinese American playwright, fuses comedy and social commentary in plays that explore Asian American themes. Her breakthrough work was “Letters to a Student Revolutionary” (1991), a drama based on her personal correspondence with a Chinese woman during the years before the Tianenman Square Massacre. The play depicts a cautious friendship, fraught with comical misunderstandings, between two young women from radically different cultural backgrounds. The “Seattle Times” called it, “engrossing... an animated exchange of soul-searching dispatches.” The play was the only U. S. invitee to the 1992 Singapore Arts Festival.

NOTE: “Letters to a Student Revolutionary” is being performed by the UAlbany Theatre Department on October 19 – 27 in conjunction with UAlbany’s “China Semester.” For ticket information call 518-442-3997.

Wong’s new musical for young audiences, “The Magical Bird” (2007), is inspired by a Filipino folktale. The play had its world premiere this summer at the Honolulu Theatre for Youth, which commissioned the play in association with a centennial celebration of Filipino immigration to Hawaii.

Other notable plays include “The Amazing Adventures of the Marvelous Monkey King” (2007), winner of the Mississippi Theatre Festival; “The Lovelife of a Eunuch” (2004), a lusty tale of Imperial China; “China Doll” (1995), about silent film star Anna May Wong, winner of the David Mark Cohen National Playwriting Award; and “Kimchee & Chitlins” (1990), about the African American boycott of Korean-owned grocery stores in Brooklyn. In 2003, Wong received a commission from the Kennedy Center to write an opera libretto for her children’s theater adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s “The Happy Prince.”

A former news reporter for the “San Diego Tribune” and “Hartford Courant,” Wong worked as a comedy writer for the ABC sitcom, “All-American Girl,” starring Margaret Cho, the first network series to feature an Asian-American woman as its central character.

This year, she received the Tanne Foundation Award for “artists and organizations who persevere in creating and presenting art of any type, in any media, and to encourage those endeavors through unrestricted financial support.”

The event is being held in association with UAlbany’s University-wide “China Semester.”

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

NATHANIEL MACKEY, 2006 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER FOR POETRY, TO READ OCTOBER 18, 2007

Nathaniel Mackey, 2006 National Book Award winner for poetry for “Splay Anthem” (2006), and a leading authority on musical influences in African American poetry, will read from his work on Thursday, October 18, 2007 at 8:00 p.m. in the Assembly Hall, Campus Center, UAlbany uptown campus. Earlier that same day at 4:15 p.m. he will present an informal seminar in the Standish Room, Science Library, uptown campus. The events are sponsored by the New York State Writers Institute and are free and open to the public.

Nathaniel Mackey, major American poet, as well as a novelist and critical theorist, received the 2006 National Book Award for Poetry for “Splay Anthem” (2006), an epic work about a lost tribe in “the imperial, flailing republic of Nub the United States has become, the shrunken place the earth has become, planet Nub.” The collection draws on West African folklore and American Modernist poetics, and partakes of the rhythms and structures of two major musical traditions: West African ensemble music and American jazz. “The Nation” called it, “enchanting and haunting, provocative and unsettling.” “The Library Journal” reviewer chose it as one of the 10 Best Poetry Books of 2006.

A Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, Mackey is a coeditor of the Library of America’s “American Poetry: The Twentieth Century” (2000), and coeditor of the influential anthology, “Moment’s Notice: Jazz in Poetry and Prose” (1993). He also serves as Professor of Literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and longtime host of the popular world music radio program “Tanganyika Strut,” on Public Radio station KUSP. He is widely regarded as a leading authority on the reciprocal impacts of African and African American music and literature.

Mackey’s poetry and prose find inspiration in the cultures, mythologies and musical forms of various West African peoples, as well as ancient Egyptian texts, the Koran, Bedouin traditions, and African American music and history. His poetry collections and novels frequently constitute installments in larger, ongoing, open-ended literary works.

Earlier poetry collections include “Whatsaid Serif” (1998), “Song of the Andoumboulou: 18-20” (1994), “School of Udhra” (1993), “Eroding Witness” (1985), “Septet for the End of Time” (1983), and “Four for Trane” (1978). Writing in “Black Issues in Higher Education” Lenard D. Moore called “Whatsaid Serif,” “a testament to the magic, possibilities, and audacity of exceedingly noteworthy poetry.”

Mackey’s novels form part of the ongoing cycle, “From a Broken Bottle Traces of Perfume Still Emanate,” about the adventures of a jazz-and-poetry ensemble called the Mystic Horn Society. The novels include “Atet, A.D.” (2001), “Djbot Baghostus’s Run” (1993) and “Bedouin Hornbook” (1986). “Publishers Weekly” said that “Atet, A.D.” “has all the charged verve of Henry James encountering Charlie Parker’s Ko-Ko and perfectly transcribing every note and nuance.”

In the spring of 2000, Mackey received the unusual honor of having an entire issue of “Callaloo,” the premier literary journal of the African diaspora, devoted to his work.

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

“PANDORA’S BOX” TO BE SCREENED ON OCTOBER 19, 2007

“Pandora’s Box” (“Der Büchse der Pandora,” Germany, 1928, 110 minutes, b/w, 35 mm, silent with live piano accompaniment by Mike Schiffer, directed by G. W. Pabst) will be shown on Friday, October 19, 2007 at 7:30 p.m. in Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, on the University at Albany’s downtown campus. Sponsored by the New York State Writers Institute, the screening is free and open to the public.

Expatriate Kansas-born actress Louise Brooks became an icon of the Jazz Age after starring in this dark tale of a sexy vaudeville performer who ignites madness and desire—and brings ruin— everywhere she goes. Pabst’s creation, based on playwright Frank Wedekind’s character Lulu, scandalized Berlin upon its release and began the clash between artistic freedom and Hollywood censorship. Today, film critics regard “Pandora’s Box” as “one of European silent cinema’s crowning achievements,” (Tom Dawson, BBC). It has influenced the work of a number of filmmakers including Fritz Lang, Alfred Hitchcock, and Billy Wilder. The film also features moviedom’s first lesbian character, the Countess Geschwitz. The film will be shown in a newly struck 2006 print.

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

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Attachments

Chinese American playwright Elizabeth Wong

Nathaniel Mackey

Nigerian-born fiction writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie