BESTSELLING NOVELIST AND ACCLAIMED AUTHOR OF SHORT STORIES, TO PRESENT NEW COLLECTION

NYS Writers Institute, October 8, 2013

4:15 p.m. Seminar | Standish Room, Science Library, Uptown Campus
8:00 p.m. Reading | Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center, Uptown Campus

CALENDAR LISTING:
T. C. Boyle, “America’s most imaginative contemporary novelist” (Newsweek), and a master of the short story form, will read from his new 915-page collection, T. C. Boyle Stories II (2013), on Tuesday, October 8, 2013 at 8 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 Standish Room, Science Library, on the uptown campus. The events are free and open to the public, and are sponsored by the New York State Writers Institute.

PROFILE
T. C. Boyle, born and raised in Peekskill, NY, and educated at SUNY Potsdam has been called “one of the most inventive and verbally exuberant writers of his generation” (New York Times), and “America’s most imaginative contemporary novelist” (Newsweek).

Though better-known for his 14 bestselling novels, T. C. Boyle is also a widely admired and wildly prolific practitioner of the short story form. His newest book is T. C. Boyle Stories II (October 2013), a 915-page sequel to the nearly 700-page T. C. Boyle Stories (1998), winner of the PEN/Malamud Award for Short Fiction. In advance praise of the second collection, Booklist said in a starred review, “Can every story by one author be a masterpiece? Boyle’s brilliant book submits itself as evidence for that possibility.” Writing in the Washington Post, Annie Proulx said of the first collection, “T. C. Boyle, a virtuoso craftsman, is one of the reasons readers do love short stories…. Among Boyle’s gifts are his roaring intelligence and a curiosity that has led him over the years to develop a masterly range of subjects and locales.” Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Herb Gold said, “Boyle is a master who has earned the right to be giddy about his bravura creations…. He is the closest thing we have to a modern-day Washington Irving, that American storyteller par excellence.”

Boyle’s bestselling novels include Water Music (1982), winner of the PEN/Faulkner Prize,a tale of 19th century British explorer Mungo Park and his adventures in Africa; World’s End (1987), an epic saga about numerous generations of a family living in New York’s Hudson Valley; The Road to Wellville (1993), a tale of medical quackery and the invention of breakfast cereal that was adapted as a major motion picture starring Anthony Hopkins, Bridget Fonda, and Matthew Broderick; Drop City (2003), about a doomed 1960s “free love” commune in the wilds of Alaska; The Inner Circle (2004), about pioneering “sexologist” Alfred Kinsey and his intimate co-investigators; and The Women (2009), about modernist architect Frank Lloyd Wright and his love relationships with four different women, all of whom shared a single house.

Boyle’s most recent novel is San Miguel (2012), the tale of two families enchanted by a desolate, windswept island off the coast of Southern California, one living in the 1880s, the other in the 1930s. Writing in the Washington Post, Ron Charles called it, “An absorbing work of historical fiction.”  Writing in the San Francisco Chronicle, Terry Tempest Williams said, “Boyle has carved out a beautiful, damp, atmospheric novel, sharp and exacting….  laced with humor, insight, and pathos.”
Boyle received his B.A. in English and History from SUNY Potsdam in 1968, his M.F.A. from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 1974, and a Ph.D. degree in Nineteenth Century British Literature from the University of Iowa in 1977. He has been a member of the English Department at the University of Southern California since 1978, where he is Distinguished Professor of English.

Boyle last visited the Writers Institute more than a decade ago in February 2003.

Previous Visit: February 28, 2003

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