ANDREA
BARRETT
Award-winning fiction writer
NYS Writers Institute, November 1, 2007
4:15 p.m. Seminar | Assembly Hall, Campus Center
8:00 p.m. Reading | Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center
CALENDAR LISTING:
Andrea Barrett will read on Thursday,
November 1, 2007 at 8:00 p.m. in the Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center,
on the UAlbany uptown campus. Earlier that same day at 4:15 p.m. she
will present an informal seminar in the Assembly Hall, Campus Center,
on the uptown campus. The events are sponsored by the New York State
Writers Institute and are free and open to the public.
PROFILE
Andrea Barrett, winner of the National Book Award, is best-known for
fiction about 19th century scientists, naturalists, and explorers. The “Chicago
Tribune” has said, “To call Barrett our poet laureate of
science is perfectly apropos, as long as we recognize that her specialty
is the heart. She is forever humanizing scientists, taking them off the
pedestal and into the messy reality of everyday life.”
Her newest novel is “The Air We Breathe”(2007), the story
of an isolated Adirondack community of tuberculosis patients as they
experience the outbreak of World War I. Barrett has described the novel
as a “low-rent, democratic version of Thomas Mann’s ‘The
Magic Mountain’” transposed from a posh sanatorium in the
Swiss Alps to a run-down state facility in the United States in the fall
of 1916. Unlike Mann’s privileged characters, most of the protagonists
of Barrett’s novel are working class immigrants who must endure
complete separation from family and friends, as well as degrading rules,
claustrophobia, and punishing boredom. With the onset of war in Europe,
the tiny, ethnically diverse community is seized by xenophobia and mutual
suspicion that builds to increasingly dangerous levels. “Publishers
Weekly” called the book, “vivid and engrossing.”
“Servants of the Map”(2002), Barrett’s most recent
book of short stories about the romance and trauma of scientific discovery,
was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Writing in the “New York Times,” Michiko
Kakutani said, “These stories possess a wonderful clarity and ease, the
serene authority of a writer working at the very height of her powers.” The
collection’s title novella—about a timid cartographer in the Himalayas
under British rule—appeared in the “Best American Short Stories” and
the “O. Henry Awards” anthologies. Barrett received the National
Book Award for her earlier story collection, “Ship Fever” (1992).
The “Boston Globe” reviewer said, “In Barrett’s hands,
science is transformed from hard and known fact into malleable, strange, and
thrilling fictional material.”
Barrett’s novels include “The Voyage of the Narwhal” (1998), “The
Forms of Water” (1993), “The Middle Kingdom” (1991), “Secret
Harmonies” (1989), and “Lucid Stars” (1988). Barrett
made use of a 1997 Guggenheim grant to fund an expedition to Baffin Island
in the Canadian Arctic in order to research “The Voyage of the
Narwhal,” a 19th century tale of polar exploration. The “Publishers
Weekly” reviewer said, “Barrett delivers a stunning novel
in which a meticulous grasp of historical and natural detail, insight
into character and pulse-pounding action are integrated into a dramatic
adventure story with deep moral resonance.”
Barrett is the recipient of a 2001 MacArthur Foundation Fellowship and
a 2003 Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
For additional information, contact the Writers Institute at 518-442-5620 or online at https://www.albany.edu/writers-inst.