NYS Writers Institute Sponsors Tribute to Frank McCourt and Readings by Richard Russo and Lorrie Moore

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Novelist and short story writer Lorrie Moore

• Novelist Richard Russo

A Tribute to Author Frank McCourt (1930-2009) Featuring a Staged Performance of "Teacher Man" to be Held October 13, 2009

In tribute to the memory of Frank McCourt (1930-2009), UAlbany's Performing Arts Center and the New York State Writers Institute present American Place Theatre's theatrical adaptation of Frank McCourt's 2005 memoir, "Teacher Man," about his long career as a high school English teacher, on Tuesday, October 13, 2009 at 7:30 p.m. in the Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center, on the University at Albany's uptown campus. There will also be a pre-performance tribute at 7:00 p.m. featuring video clips of McCourt and reminiscences by William Kennedy, who was a longtime friend of the author. Tickets are $15 general public; seniors and UAlbany staff $12; students $10. Contact the PAC box office at (518) 442-3997 or tickets@albany.edu. The event is open to the public, and sponsored by the Performing Arts Center and New York State Writers Institute

The stage adaptation of "Teacher Man" brings to life McCourt's witty and heartbreakingly honest memoir of the trials, triumphs and surprises he faced in public high schools around New York City during his 30 year career as a teacher. "I thought I was teaching. I was learning," the Pulitzer Prize winner says as he and his students take us on a journey laced with humor and fueled by a heart of unlimited circumference.

The play was adapted by Wynn Handman, winner of the Obie Award for Sustained Achievement, and the Rosetta LeNoire Award of the Actor's Equity Association for his contribution to the "universality of the human experience in American theatre." The one-man show stars Irish actor Michael McMonagle.

McCourt served as advisory board member to American Place Theatre, an organization committed to producing high quality new work by American writers and to pursuing pluralism and diversity in all its endeavors. The stage adaptation of "Teacher Man" is an outgrowth of the theatre's Literature to Life program, a performance-based literacy program that presents professionally staged verbatim adaptations of significant American literary works. In April of 2008, with McCourt in attendance, "Teacher Man" was performed for an audience of over 500 public school teachers at NYU's Skirball Theatre in NYC as part of American Place Theatre's Annual "Literature To Life" Gala.

Frank McCourt, one of the master storytellers of American literature, received the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award for "Angela's Ashes" (1996), a memoir of his impoverished Irish boyhood. Other books include "'Tis" (1999), a memoir of his immigration experience in America, and "Angela and the Baby Jesus" (2007), a children's book.

Renowned for his irreverent charm and self-effacing wit, McCourt first became a literary star at the age of 66, after establishing himself as a dedicated and beloved English teacher at McKee Vocational High School in Staten Island, Seward Park High School on the Lower East Side, and Manhattan's famous, fiercely competitive Stuyvesant High School.

McCourt visited the Writers Institute in 1996 and 2006 as part of the Visiting Writers Series, and served as the keynote speaker of the Associated Writing Programs (AWP) international conference in Albany under the Writers Institute's sponsorship in 1999.

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

Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize-winning Novelist from Gloversville, and Lorrie Moore, Novelist and Short Story Writer from Glens Falls, to Share Stage on October 15, 2009

Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and native of Gloversville, NY, and Lorrie Moore, novelist, author of short fiction and native of Glens Falls, NY, will present a joint reading on Thursday, October 15, 2009 at 8:00 p.m. in Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, on the University at Albany's downtown campus. Earlier that same day, at 4:15 p.m., the authors will offer an informal seminar in the Assembly Hall, Campus Center on the University's uptown campus. The events are free and open to the public, and sponsored by the New York State Writers Institute.

Lorrie Moore, master of the short story form, and "one of her generation's wittiest and shrewdest writers" ("Newsweek"), is beloved by fans for her "wry, crackly voice" and "askew sense of humor" (Michiko Kakutani, "New York Times").

"A Gate at the Stairs" (2009), her first novel in 15 years, tells of the dislocation of a sheltered Midwestern farm girl as she enters college life and adulthood in a seemingly idyllic college town— the "Athens of the Midwest"— at the dawn of the 21st century. To support her studies, Tassie Keltjin takes on a nanny job with a fascinating but emotionally troubled family, and experiences various forms of culture shock as she is initiated into the mysteries of higher education, politics, sex and parenthood.

In a "New York Times" review, novelist Jonathan Lethem said, "Moore may be, exactly, the most irresistible contemporary American writer: brainy, humane, unpretentious and warm; seemingly effortlessly lyrical; Lily-Tomlin-funny. Most of all, Moore is capable of enlisting not just our sympathies but our sorrows." Writing in Oprah's "O." magazine, novelist Vince Passaro called "A Gate at the Stairs," "a miracle of lyric force, beautiful and beautifully constructed, with a comic touch that transforms itself to a kind of harrowing precision….. Lorrie Moore shows us in this fine book . . . the mysteries of love, agony, and grace."

Moore enjoys something of a cult following in literary circles. Her earlier books include the story collections "Self-Help" (1985), "Like Life" (1990), and "Birds of America" (1998), and the novels, "Anagrams" (1986) and "Who Will Run the Frog Hospital" (1994). She is a graduate of St. Lawrence and Cornell universities, and has taught at the University of Wisconsin—Madison since 1984.

Richard Russo, novelist and Pulitzer Prize-winner for "Empire Falls" (2001), is widely regarded as the most important writer about "Main St., USA" since Sherwood Anderson and Sinclair Lewis.

His new novel is "That Old Cape Magic" (2009), the story of a troubled marriage set amid weddings and family reunions on Cape Cod and the Maine coast. The novel is told from the perspective of Jack Griffin, a failed Hollywood screenwriter, the child of unhappy university professors who had vowed never to follow in their footsteps. By late middle age, however, Jack has become a professor of cinema studies at a college back East. Like that of his parents, his own marriage is crumbling, and he worries that his daughter may be doomed to suffer a similar fate.

The "Washington Post" reviewer called it "utterly charming," and said, "Richard Russo has written a novel for people who are terrified of becoming their parents, which is to say for everybody…. The shelf of books about middle-aged guys going through midlife crises is long, of course, but Russo threads more comedy through this intro-spective genre than we get from John Updike, Richard Ford or Chang-rae Lee. He's a master of the comic quip and the ridiculous situation."

Russo's other novels include "Nobody's Fool" (1993), which was adapted for the screen starring Paul Newman; "The Risk Pool" (1988), which is currently being adapted for a 2008 film by "Raiders of the Lost Ark" screenwriters Lawrence Kasdan; and "Mohawk" (1986).

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

"THE DAY I BECAME A WOMAN" TO BE SCREENED ON OCTOBER 16, 2009

"The Day I Became a Woman" ("Roozi ke zan shodam," Iran, 2000, 78 minutes, color, in Persian with English subtitles, directed by Marzieh Makhmalbaf) will be shown on Friday, October 16 at 7:30 p.m. in the Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center, on the University at Albany's uptown campus. Sponsored by the New York State Writers Institute, the screening is free and open to the public.

In her award-winning first feature as director, Marzieh Makhmalbaf tells the stories of three Iranian women at three different stages of life: a girl on the edge of adolescence; a wife determined not to be ruled by her husband; and a wealthy widow.

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

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