The New York State Writers Institute at the University at Albany (NY) runs a full series each semester of lectures by visiting writers, panel discussions, a film series & film festival, a book fair in the Fall semester, and an annual literary journal, Trolley. There are frequently more than one event each week. A grueling schedule that I don’t even attempt to get to all of them. But I manage to make it to a few each semester. Oh, they’re Free!
The author began with reading an excerpt of her book, then on to a Q&A with Writers Institute Director, Paul Grondahl. The book tells the story of free blacks & slaves from the 1620’s to the 1820’s, with the author researching settlements & homes in Albany County, Kings County & Manhattan, finding names of the folks who lived there. This is part of the research currently going on to show that slavery was not just an issue in the South but going on right here in the Capital Region. The book is available in the Albany Public Library system & I’ve added it to the list of book I want/need to read.
The author had 2 appearances on this date on the UAlbany campus, an afternoon “Craft Talk” & a “Reading/Q&A” later in the evening, both with Professor Alexander Dawson.
Klay had spent 13 months (2007 - 2008) with the US Marines in Iraq, subsequently published a short story collection, Redeployment (2014) inspired by his military experience. Missionaries is his first novel & explores the the US’s involvement in Columbia’s civil wars. It was one of President Obama’s “Favorite Books of 2020.” He said it took him 6 years to research & write, that he wanted to explore the complexity of modern warfare.
In the evening session he read from the opening, & closing, chapters of the novel, described it has having a number of characters “negotiating ethical/spiritual minefields, some are better at it than others” — sounds like what we see in the newspapers each week. I bought the book & it is still waiting on my table for me to get to it.
Paul Grondahl described this event as “two writers who never forgot where they came from.” I have most of William Kennedy’s books, & am a great fan of Russell Banks’ historical novel, Cloudsplitter (1999), about the abolitionist John Brown & his family. Tonight, Banks read from his new novel Foregone (2021), the story of an old man, who as a youth was a Viet Nam War draft evader, turned filmmaker, at the end of his life confronting his memories, “exploring the power & the fallibility of memory,” as Banks described it in conversation with Kennedy.
Kennedy had prepared some remarks that he read from on his reactions to the novel, but not until he realized he had left his reading glasses home. A member of the audience offered to let him borrow her pair of “cheaters” which Grondahl retrieved & delivered to Kennedy, as caught in the accompanying photo.
One amusing anecdote from Banks’ own life was a time when he as was at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill when the writer Jack Kerouac, near the end of his life, & an entourage came to visit & stay at Banks’ house, “one of the worst weeks of my life,” as he described it. That prompted Kennedy to ask about his life “in the novel,” to which Banks’ replied that a theme (but not the point of the novel) is “the function of the imagination in the making of our own life’s story.”
As another Albany poet described it later, “I could have stat there all night listening to them talk until the Sun came up.”
The RED Bookshelf is an Albany non-profit community literacy program that provides free children’s books on bright red bookshelves throughout Albany to ensure that all children have access to the benefits of book ownership, regardless of income level.
On this night the New York State Writers Institute held a fundraiser for The RED (Read Each Day) Bookshelf at The Albany Distilling Company Bar and Bottle Shop, a cavernous, industrial building at 75 Livingston Ave., Albany, NY. The event featured live music from the rock/punk band Doctor Baker that included UAlbany English professor and Writers Institute Fellow Ed Schwarzschild and UAlbany art professor Danny Goodwin.
There were also poetry performances during the band’s breaks by Khalel Hamlin, “Literary Innovator” from The RED Bookshelf, whose spoken word piece incorporated the names of children’s books, that he joyfully held up as he mentioned each book; local poet Poetic Visions who performed a couple of his classic pieces familiar to us who attend open mics & area Slams, including involving the audience in his word-play on the word “Poet;” and poet & professor & Writers Institute advisor Sarah Giragosian who quieted us down with a few introspective love poems.
The audience included, as expected, professors, staff & students from UAlbany, William Kennedy holding forth for friends, family & admirers, & other benefactors of the Writers Institute, a number of writers & poets from the broader literary community, as well as a flock of kids playing hide & seek in an adjoining concrete room. There were cupcakes, pizza, local brews, &, of course, conversations everywhere.
The Writers Institute is not just professors & writers stoking each others’ egos, but some of the best contemporary writers of fiction, non-fiction (political, sociological, social justice, history, etc.) & poets sharing their work in readings & discussions with, yes, professors, but as working writers & thinkers & activists. Did I mention these readings/discussions are free? They are.
If you are not on the mailing list, why? http://nyswritersinstitute.org/
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