Poet Major Jackson and War Correspondent Dexter Filkins to Speak at Writers Institute

ALBANY, NY (10/01/2008)(readMedia)--

Major Jackson, Poet of Urban Neighborhoods and Basketball Courts, to Speak October 15, 2008

Major Jackson, prize-winning African American poet, will read from and discuss his work on Wednesday, October 15, 2008 at 7:30 p.m. [Note change to earlier start time to avoid conflict with televised Presidential debate] in the Standish Room, Science Library, on the University at Albany’s uptown campus. Earlier that same day at 4:15 p.m. the author will present an informal seminar in the same location. The events are sponsored by the New York State Writers Institute and are free and open to the public.

The product of a tough Philadelphia neighborhood, Major Jackson transforms the everyday artifacts and pastimes of urban life— empty lots, low-rider jeans, gold chains, iPods, and basketball games— into rich and expressive symbols.

Critics often praise Jackson’s work in language that evokes the sport of basketball. Poet Jay Parini has said that “[Jackson’s] poems are systems of cleverly linked sounds: words colliding, bouncing off each other, in rhyme and slant rhyme, with lots of internal echoes. He has an ear for the speech of the streets, and this ear plays well in the lines, which have a wonderful bounce.”

Jackson’s most recent collection, “Hoops” (2006), was a finalist for the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literature-Poetry. While the title poem explores basketball as a metaphor for life in general, more than half the collection is devoted to letter poems to Jackson’s literary hero, the late poet Gwendolyn Brooks.

The “Library Journal” reviewer said, “In this newest volume of poems, Jackson takes aim with a series of free throws, exploring his North Philadelphia roots as he explodes over the urban landscapes of bars and oddities, basketball and poets, good friends and lost souls. A mixture of elevated diction and street language…. his lines seem to throb and pulse with the rhythms of the city and the game….” “Publishers Weekly” said “This book works to forge a large and spacious America, one capable of housing imagination.”

Jackson’s first collection, “Leaving Saturn” (2002), was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His third volume of poetry “Holding Company” is forthcoming from W.W. Norton.

Jackson is a past winner of numerous prizes, including the Whiting Writers’ Award, the Witter Bynner Prize of the Library of Congress, a Pew Fellowship in the Arts, a Bread Loaf Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize, and the Cave Canem Poetry Prize.

A former Arts Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, Jackson is the Richard Dennis Green and Gold Professor of English at the University of Vermont and a regular instructor at the Bennington Writing Seminars. He also serves as the Poetry Editor of the “Harvard Review.”

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

Dexter Filkins, War Reporter for the “New York Times,” to Speak October 16, 2008

Dexter Filkins, prize-winning war correspondent for the “New York Times,” will discuss his new book “The Forever War” (2008), on Thursday, October 16, 2008 at 8:00 p.m. in the Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center, on the University at Albany’s uptown campus. Earlier that same day at 4:15 p.m. the author will present an informal seminar in the Assembly Hall, Campus Center, on the University at Albany’s uptown campus. The events are sponsored by the New York State Writers Institute and are free and open to the public.

Dexter Filkins, prize-winning war correspondent for the “New York Times,” is a major contributor to America’s understanding of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Jeffrey Goldberg of the “New Yorker” has called him “the preeminent war correspondent of my generation,” and the late David Halberstam praised him for “reporting of the highest quality imaginable.” Filkins is also famous within his field for risking life and limb in order to report the war “at boots level.”

His first book, “The Forever War” (2008), based on his reportage for the “Times,” is an epic account of America’s current wars in the Middle East, including Afghanistan where he covered the rise of the Taliban prior to the outbreak of the Second Iraq War. Filkins offers a compassionate, precise, frequently poetic depiction of the carnage and misery that have consumed the region during the last ten years.

Robert Stone, writing on the front page of the “New York Times Book Review” called the new work, “Stunning...it is not facetious to speak of work like that of Dexter Filkins as defining the ‘culture’ of a war...This unforgettable narrative [represents]...a haunting spiritual witness that will make this volume a part of this awful war’s history.” Elissa Schappell said in “Vanity Fair,” “Dexter Filkins’s ‘The Forever War,’ brutally intimate, compassionate, often poetic accounts of the battle against Islamic fundamentalism, is destined to become a classic.”

Filkins is perhaps best-known for his courageous month-long coverage of street-by-street fighting between Iraqi insurgents and U. S. Marines during the Battle of Fallujah in November 2004. Writing in “Slate” magazine, Jack Schafer said, “War correspondents decide when they want to face death and when they want to retreat to the rear echelon, where safety and the comforts of three hots and a cot reside…. But the reporter who walks side-by-side with Marines taking a city an inch at a time, as ‘New York Times’ reporter Dexter Filkins did this month during the battle of Fallujah, owes nobody an apology, not even the man walking point.”

Filkins is a past winner of the George Polk Award for War Reporting, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and a recent recipient of a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard. Before serving as Baghdad correspondent for the “New York Times,” Filkins worked on the paper’s “Foreign Desk,” served as Istanbul Bureau Chief, and covered the mayor’s office and the Bronx for the New York City “Metro Desk.” Prior to joining the “Times,” he served as the New Delhi bureau chief for the “L. A. Times.”

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

“Last Year at Marienbad” to be Screened on October 17, 2008

“Last Year at Marienbad” (“L’Année Dernière à Marienbad”, France, 1961, 94 minutes, b/w, 35 mm, directed by Alain Resnais, in French with English subtitles) will be shown on Friday, October 17 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.

In this celebrated work of surrealism, a man pursues a woman through a palatial hotel — “a universe of marble and stucco, columns, moldings, gilded ceilings, statues, motionless servants” — insisting despite her denials that they had been lovers the previous year. J. Hoberman of the “Village Voice” said, “Hopelessly retro, eternally avant-garde, and one of the most influential movies ever made . . ., “Marienbad” is both utterly lucid and provocatively opaque. . ..” The screenplay was written by Alain Robbe-Grillet (1922–2008), the foremost proponent of the French “New Novel” (Nouveau Roman) movement. A new restored print will be shown.

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

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Posted Wednesday October 01, 2008 at 10:09 am by New York State Writers Institute