As the weather cools down the local literary world is heating up, as renowned writers make their way to the University at Albany.
The New York State Writers Institute recently announced its fall semester Visiting Writers Series and Classic Film Series, which kicked off Wednesday, Sept. 11, with fiction writer and essayist Jonathan Lethem and extends until the final event on Dec. 3 with author Ayana Mathis. All of the events are free and open to the public, with most writer events held at UAlbany’s Uptown Campus and most films being shown at the university’s Downtown Campus in Page Hall.
“The Visiting Writers Series brings many of the best contemporary writers around to Albany for free visits with the audiences and readings. We do these afternoon sessions, too, where the writers talk about their work and answer questions,” institute Director Don Faulkner said. “We got a lot of firepower here, but it covers a broad range from history to poetry to fiction writing, even to political writing and biography.”
Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist William Kennedy founded the state Writers Institute, hosted at UAlbany, in 1983; the following year Gov. Mario Cuomo signed legislation creating the institute as a state-supported cultural program. Since 1984, Faulkner said the program has been “going at a pretty high pitch,” with more than 1,000 writers sharing their work.
“The institute has been doing this for nearly 30 years and it is really a mainstay of the art scene in the Capital Region and Upstate New York,” Faulkner said.
Over the years the program has grown and hosted more events while continuing to attract renowned and prestigious writers.
“The quality has always been part of the profile and we have always worked at the highest level,” Faulkner said. “The standard is high and we work to maintain it and make it a valuable experience for our audience and writers they want to know about.”
Faulkner said he was impressed with the fall series’ diversity of backgrounds and ethnicities of the visiting writers.
Nabbing bestselling nonfiction writer Bill Bryson was a “really big pick up” for the program, Faulkner said.
Bryson will be giving a reading on Saturday, Oct. 5, at 7:30 p.m., at the Clark Auditorium in the New York State Museum’s Cultural Education Center in Albany.
“We are very excited to have him,” Faulkner said. “He is one of the most engaging … and easy to read writers that I know of.”
Bryson’s new book, “One Summer: America, 1927,” focuses on a pivotal time in American history, from Charles Lindbergh becoming the first man to fly nonstop across the Atlantic Ocean to Al Capone strengthening his grip on the illegal alcohol industry through murder and government corruption.
Before Bryson, the series will host a conversation between two poets laureate – current New York state Poet Marie Howe and current Vermont poet Sydney Lea – on Tuesday, Sept. 17, at 7:30 p.m.
Howe is a Rochester native living in New York City and was awarded the Lavan Younger Poets Prize of the American Academy of Poets. She recently launched the “Poetry Everywhere” project at New York University, which is an immersive poetry class seeking to put poetry in unexpected public spaces throughout the city.
Lea has authored 11 collections of poetry and this year he released “A North Country Life: Tales of Woodsmen, Waters, and Wildlife.” Lea’s work tends to focus on “the mystery of the natural world” and rural lifestyle. He serves as president of Downeast Lakes Land Trust, which seeks to create a million-acre wildlife preserve on the border between Maine and the Canadian province of New Brunswick.
Closing out the Visiting Writers Series is novelist Ayana Mathis, author of “The Twelve Tribes of Hattie,” which is her first novel and achieved critical acclaim. The book focuses on a family’s struggles as African Americans moved from the rural South to the urban North. It was the second selection for Oprah Winfrey’s “Book Club 2.0” and is a New York Times bestseller.
“It is her first novel, but it is a very accomplished piece of work,” Faulkner said. “Her appearance is sort of designed to come after book clubs have read the book and want to see the author.”
He said the institute has been promoting Mathis’ book to different book clubs in the area and will be providing discussion materials to clubs.
If you’re interested in the cinema, the Classic Film Series kicks off on Friday, Sept. 20, with a screening of “Thurgood,” which is about the nation’s first black Supreme Court justice. The film captures Laurence Fishburne’s Tony-nominated one-man show as Thurgood Marshall.
This focus on Marshall will continue Sept. 26, with 2013 Pulitzer Prize winner Gilbert King, a Niskayuna, who released this year a new biography on Marshall, “Devil in the Grove.” The book details Marshall’s early career experience defending four black men falsely accused of rape in Florida.
Faulkner said the film series has been going just as long and strong as the writer series.
“We have tired to show classic films and in a lot of ways contemporary classic films that people haven’t had time to see,” he said. “Things that are not seen on TV and not readily accessed on Netflix-type of opportunities. We are giving access to the real, solid, important list of films from generations ago.”
Every year there is a silent film in the series that includes live piano accompaniment. This fall Mike Schiffer will be playing piano as the German film “People On Sunday” is screened on Sept. 27 at 7:30 p.m.
Niskayuna native Ben Coccio will hold a discussion after a screening of the film he co-wrote, “The Place Beyond The Pines,” with the event starting earlier at 7 p.m. Coccio will also hold an informal seminar on screenwriting at 4:15 p.m. in the Science Library Room 340 earlier that day.
“The film is a big film, so it’s something we are very happy to be doing,” Faulkner said. “There is a 70-foot screen, so it is a screening situation that has never been had when it was shown in the area. It has always been shown in the multiplexes, which at most are a 25- to 30-foot screen.”
Faulkner, who has been director of the institute for around 12 years, said he has enjoyed getting to meet and talk with all of the writers, with some being friends and others people he has always wanted to meet.
He also enjoys the process of trying to organize the series annually, which involves a “very concentrated effort of planning.” He said the program doesn’t have a lot of staff members, but the people at the institute are “the best at what they do.”
“To see it actually take place and to see people come and learn something and enjoy it, to see people want to buy books and read them, there is a lot of pleasure in that,” he said. “The sense of community has always been what the Writers Institute is about.”
Visit the Writers Institute’s website at www.albany.edu/writers-inst for more information on either of the series, including event dates and details.