SHORT STORY WRITER AND ALBANY LAW SCHOOL PROFESSOR, TO DISCUSS LOVE BENEATH THE NAPALM (2014), HIS PRIZE-WINNING STORY COLLECTION

NYS Writers Institute, February 18, 2014

4:15 p.m. Reading | Standish Room, Science Library, Uptown Campus

CALENDAR LISTING:
James Redwood, short story writer and Albany Law School professor, will read from and discuss his first story collection, Love Beneath the Napalm (2014), winner of the Notre Dame Review Book Prize, at 4:15 p.m., Tuesday, February 18, 2014 in the Standish Room, Science Library, on the University at Albany’s uptown campus. The event is sponsored by the New York State Writers Institute, and is free and open to the public.

PROFILE
James D. Redwood, Professor of Law at Albany Law School, is the author of a first collection of stories, Love Beneath the Napalm (2014), inaugural winner of the newly-established Notre Dame Review Book Prize. Based on Redwood’s experiences in Vietnam in the 1970s, and on historical research, the stories are set in a variety of periods, from the Imperial and French Colonial administrations to the Vietnam War and its aftermath.

Writing in advance praise, James Carl Nelson, author of the acclaimed World War I history, The Remains of Company D: A Story of the Great War, said, “James D. Redwood’s Love Beneath the Napalm is a beautifully written and very human testament to a people who suffered untold horrors during the Vietnam War…. a haunting and very powerful collection of stories.” Robert Anderson, Flannery O’Connor Prize-winning author of Ice Age: Stories, said, “As the escalation of the Vietnam conflict nears its golden anniversary, James Redwood celebrates in quiet sepia, reflecting all the complexities of the war in this shoebox full of grainy and glowing human portraits.”

Many of the stories have been published previously in leading literary magazines, including the Virginia Quarterly Review, Black Warrior Review, Kenyon Review, North Dakota Quarterly, TriQuarterly, and the Notre Dame Review.

Redwood lived in Vietnam from 1972 to 1974, returning briefly in 1975 shortly before the fall of Saigon. During that time, he worked as an English teacher, and as a volunteer, and then later as a salaried employee, for a social welfare organization, the Shoeshine Boys Project, which was devoted to assisting street children displaced by the war by giving them a home, an education, and the opportunity to learn a trade.

Redwood has taught at Albany Law School since 1989. In addition to the new collection, he has completed a mystery novel set in San Francisco, the Central Valley of California, and the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas.  Among other projects, he is currently working on a novel, Pale Fate, set in Vietnam in 1969-1970, and an anthology of writings on legal ethics and literature.

Redwood recently participated in a Community Writing Workshop taught by Booker International Prize-winning author and UAlbany English Professor Lydia Davis under the auspices of the New York State Writers Institute.

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