All Over Albany

NYS Writers Institute visiting writers fall 2014

The fall lineup for the NYS Writers Institute visiting writers series is out. And, as usual, it's full of notable, award-winning writers and names you'll recognize.

Here's the full lineup, compressed and expanded...

All blurbage via the NYS Writers Institute.

Compressed schedule

September 18: Alison Lurie, New York State Author

September 23: Edith Grossman, celebrated translator of Spanish literature

September 27: Reading and Book Signing by Kirsten Gillibrand, U.S. Senator and author

October 1: John Lahr, theatre critic and biographer

October 9: David Finkel, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, and nonfiction author

October 15: American Shakespeare Center's Much Ado About Nothing

October 16: Jacinda Townsend and Tiphanie Yanique, fiction writers

October 21: Poets in Conversation: Edward Hirsch, Kimiko Hahn, and Marie Howe

October 28: Najla Said, memoirist, actress, and playwright

November 9: William Gibson, science fiction author

November 11: Angela Pneuman and Julie Orringer, novelists and short story writers

November 18: Susan Pinker, psychologist and author

November 20: Richard Norton Smith, historian and biographer

December 2: Joseph O'Neill, novelist

Multiple dates: Looking at Lemon: Transforming Life Through Literature

Expanded schedule

September 18: Alison Lurie, New York State Author
Seminar - 4:15 p.m., Campus Center Room 375
Reading - 8:00 p.m., Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center
Alison Lurie, novelist and current New York State Author (2012-2014), is widely regarded as the Jane Austen of contemporary American letters for her modern "comedies of manners," novels including Truth and Consequences (2005) and the Pulitzer-winning Foreign Affairs (1984). Her new nonfiction book is The Language of Houses (2014), an exploration of the expressive power of everyday architecture.

September 23: Edith Grossman, celebrated translator of Spanish literature
Seminar on translation - 4:15 p.m., Assembly Hall, Campus Center
Reading - 8:00 p.m., Assembly Hall, Campus Center
Edith Grossman is one of the world's most celebrated translators of Spanish literature into English. Her newest work is Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (2014), a collection of poems by 17th century nun, poet, and feminist, Sister Juana, known to posterity as the "Phoenix of Mexico" and the "Tenth Muse." Grossman's acclaimed translations include several novels by Latin American Nobel Prize winners, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Mario Vargas Llosa. Cosponsored by UAlbany's Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures

September 27: Reading and Book Signing by Kirsten Gillibrand, U.S. Senator and author
4:00 p.m., University at Albany, Campus Center Ballroom
Tickets: $27 (A copy of Kirsten Gillibrand's new book, Off the Sidelines, is included in the price of a ticket.)Tickets may be purchased in advance from The Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza (518-489-4761), or Market Block Books, Troy (518-328-0045), or at the door. Students with a valid ID are welcome without a ticket as space allows.
Kirsten Gillibrand, junior United States Senator from New York, is the author of the new book, Off the Sidelines: Raise Your Voice, Change the World (2014), a playbook for women who want to step up, whether in Congress or the boardroom or the local PTA. Special Event hosted by The Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza.

October 1: John Lahr, theatre critic and biographer
Seminar - 4:15 p.m., Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center
Reading - 8:00 p.m., Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center
John Lahr, former senior drama critic for the New Yorker, is the author of Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh (2014), a new biography of the brilliant and troubled playwright. The New Republic called it, "A splendid book, one of the finest critical biographies of a playwright extant." Notes on a Cowardly Lion (1969), Lahr's biography of his father, actor-comedian Bert Lahr, was republished in 2000 with a new preface by the author. Cosponsored by the Jarka and Grayce Burian Endowment.

October 9: David Finkel, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, and nonfiction author
Seminar - 4:15 p.m., Standish Room, Science Library
Reading - 8:00 p.m., Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center
David Finkel, staff writer for the Washington Post, is the author of the bestselling 2009 book, The Good Soldiers, which recounts the seven months he spent as an embedded reporter with U.S. troops in Iraq. The sequel to that book, Thank You For Your Service (2013), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, follows some of these same soldiers as they attempt to adapt to life after the war. Cosponsored by UAlbany's Journalism Program.

October 15: American Shakespeare Center's Much Ado About Nothing
Performance - 7:30 p.m., Main Theatre, Performing Arts Center
Live pre-performance music beginning at 7:00 p.m.
Advance Tickets: $15 general public / $10 students, seniors & UAlbany faculty-staff
Day of Show Tickets: $20 general public / $15 students, seniors & UAlbany faculty-staff
In this powerful comedy full of sparkling wit, the Bard gives us the joy of love won and the ache of love lost. He makes us laugh and breaks our hearts, then magically puts them back together again. Presented by UAlbany's Performing Arts Center

October 16: Jacinda Townsend and Tiphanie Yanique, fiction writers
Seminar - 4:15 p.m., Campus Center Room 375
Reading - 8:00 p.m., Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center
Jacinda Townsend is the author of a first novel, Saint Monkey (2014), the tale of two best friends raised in hardship in rural Kentucky at the beginning of the 20th century whose lives take different paths. In a starred Booklist review, Donna Seamon said, "This is a breathtakingly insightful, suspenseful, and gorgeously realized novel...."

Tiphanie Yanique is the author of a first novel, Land of Love and Drowning (2014), a family saga set in the Virgin Islands that follows three generations of a family as they experience love and death, wealth and ruin, hurricanes, racism, and a rapacious tourist industry. Born and raised on St. Thomas, Yanique is the author of the story collection, How to Escape from a Leper Colony (2010), winner of the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award.

October 21: Poets in Conversation: Edward Hirsch, Kimiko Hahn, and Marie Howe
Seminar - 4:15 p.m., Assembly Hall, Campus Center
Reading - 8:00 p.m., Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center
Edward Hirsch is the author most recently of A Poet's Glossary (2014), a monumental reference work about poetry's devices, forms, and techniques. Winner of a MacArthur Fellowship and the National Book Critics Circle Award (for the 1986 collection, Wild Gratitude), Hirsch is also the author of the 1999 surprise bestseller, How to Read a Poem And Fall in Love with Poetry.

Kimiko Hahn is the author most recently of Brain Fever: Poems (2014), a collection that explores the poet's experiences as a woman, wife, mother, daughter, and artist in the light of her personal fascination with neuroscience and the latest findings of cognitive research. Celebrated for work rooted in Japanese and Chinese aesthetics, Hahn received the American Book Award for her 1995 collection, The Unbearable Heart.

Marie Howe, current New York State Poet (2012-2014), is an advocate for bringing poets and poetry to public places. Howe is the author of the collections, The Good Thief (1988), which was selected for the National Poetry Series, What the Living Do (1997), and The Kingdom of Ordinary Time (2008).

October 28: Najla Said, memoirist, actress, and playwright
Seminar - 4:15 p.m., Standish Room, Science Library
Reading - 8:00 p.m., Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center
Najla Said is the author of the new memoir Looking for Palestine: Growing Up Confused in an Arab-American Family (2013), a witty exploration of post-modern, hyphenated American identity. The daughter of major Palestinian-American intellectual and political activist Edward Said, Najla spent her formative years in the largely Jewish milieu of Manhattan's Upper West Side. Said also wrote and starred in the hit Off-Broadway play, Palestine (2009).

November 9: William Gibson, science fiction author
Reading - 7:00 p.m., EMPAC Concert Hall, Rensselaer (RPI), Troy
William Gibson is a visionary author of speculative fiction whose work explores the future implications of contemporary human technologies. His 1984 novel, Neuromancer, winner of the Nebula, Hugo, and Philip K. Dick awards, helped to define the popular culture of the Computer Age. Gibson's new novel is The Peripheral (2014), about drones, drugs, outsourcing, telepresence, trailer parks, kleptocracy, and 3D fabbing. Cosponsored by Rensselaer's School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences; Union Speakers Forum; and Department of Communication and Media

November 11: Angela Pneuman and Julie Orringer, novelists and short story writers
Seminar - 4:15 p.m., Standish Room, Science Library
Reading - 7:30 p.m., Art Museum, Fine Arts Building
Angela Pneuman, former Ph.D. student and Presidential Fellow at UAlbany and Kentucky native, is widely hailed as an exciting new voice in Southern literature. Her first novel, Lay it on my Heart (2014), recounts the challenges that confront a Kentucky girl after her "prophet" father is committed to a psychiatric hospital. A former Stegner Fellow at Stanford, Pneuman is also the author of the story collection, Home Remedies (2007).

Julie Orringer, fiction writer, is the author of the bestselling novel, The Invisible Bridge (2010), named one of the 100 Notable Books of 2010 by the New York Times. A former Stegner Fellow at Stanford, Orringer is also the author of the story collection, How to Breathe Underwater (2003), a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year. Cosponsored by the University Art Museum and UAlbany's English Department

November 18: Susan Pinker, psychologist and author
Seminar - 4:15 p.m., Standish Room, Science Library
Reading - 8:00 p.m., Standish Room, Science Library
Susan Pinker, developmental psychologist and bestselling science writer, is the author of the new book, The Village Effect: How Face-to-Face Contact Can Make Us Healthier, Happier, and Smarter (2014). Grounded in the new field of social neuroscience, The Village Effect presents convincing evidence that electronic communication can never replace the fundamentally human need for direct interaction. Pinker is also the author of the international bestseller, The Sexual Paradox: Men, Women and the Real Gender Gap (2008).

November 20: Richard Norton Smith, historian and biographer
A Conversation with Richard Norton Smith - 4:15 p.m., Standish Room, Science Library
Keynote Lecture, "On His Own Terms" - 7:30 p.m., Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, Downtown Campus
Richard Norton Smith, eminent historian of the American presidency, will deliver the keynote lecture for the Researching New York 2014 conference on his new book, On His Own Terms: A Life of Nelson Rockefeller (2014). Fourteen years in the writing, the book is being hailed as the definitive biography of the New York governor and U.S. vice president. Cosponsored by UAlbany's Department of History and the NYS Archives Partnership Trust in conjunction with the Researching New York 2014 conference. For additional information on all conference events go to: www.nystatehistory.org/researchny

December 2: Joseph O'Neill, novelist
Seminar - 4:15 p.m., Standish Room, Science Library
Reading - 8:00 p.m., Assembly Hall, Campus Center
Joseph O'Neill received the 2009 PEN/Faulkner Award for his bestselling novel, Netherland (2008). O'Neill's new novel, The Dog (2014), longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2014, is the story of a luckless middle-aged man who flees New York City after a traumatic break-up with his long-term girlfriend in order to take a job as the household manager of a rich and capricious family in Dubai.
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Looking at Lemon: Transforming Life Through Literature
This series of events focuses on the life and work of Lemon Andersen, writer, performance artist, screen actor, and Tony Award-winning poet. Lemon is also a three-time felon who grew up in Brooklyn and spent years in jail and on probation until he attended a poetry reading and discovered he had a gift for expressing himself through words. This series celebrates Lemon's journey to transform his life through art.

October 24 (Friday) and November 1 (Saturday): LEMON: THE MOVIE film screening

October 24 (Friday): 7:30 p.m., Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue, Downtown Campus

November 1 (Saturday): 9:00 p.m., Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center

Directed by Laura Brownson and Beth Levison

This intricately crafted documentary follows Lemon's struggle to bring his life story to the stage. The movie features the music of hip-hop phenoms Mos Def, Talib Kweli, and Aloe Blacc.

November 6 (Thursday): An Evening with Lemon Andersen
Presentation - 7:00 p.m., University Art Museum, Fine Arts Building

Lemon Andersen discusses his life and work, focusing on what nurtures him as an artist and how that has been the salvation in his life. An original cast member of the Russell Simmons Def Poetry Jam on Broadway (2002-2003), Lemon shared the 2003 Tony Award for Best Special Theatrical Event. Lemon is the author of two poetry collections, Ready Made Real (2004) and County of Kings (2009), which earned the Grand Prize at the 2010 New York Book Festival.

November 13 (Thursday): County of Kings by Lemon Andersen
Performance - 7:30 p.m., Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center
Pre-performance discussion at 7 p.m.
Advance Tickets: $15 general public / $10 students, seniors & UAlbany faculty-staff
Day of Show Tickets: $20 general public / $15 students, seniors & UAlbany faculty-staff

Originally developed and directed by Elise Thoron, American Place Theatre took Lemon's life story and adapted it into a solo play now performed by Michael Angel Viera. Weaving hard-edged drama with urban poetry and gritty prose, the work follows Lemon's coming-of-age memoir. County of Kings is a Literature to Life stage presentation of Young Audiences New York.

LOOKING AT LEMON is presented by The University at Albany Foundation in conjunction with the Writers Institute, UAlbany's Performing Arts Center, and University Art Museum. Addition funding support provided by University Auxiliary Services at Albany; UAlbany's Office of Diversity and Inclusion, Office of Intercultural Student Success, and Alumni Association; and the Holiday Inn Express. Promotional assistance provided by the Campus Programming Board.