Ann Beattie Fiction writer Previous Visit: November 11, 1999

Peg Boyers Poet

FICTION WRITER ANN BEATTIE AND POET PEG BOYERS TO READ FROM THEIR WORK

NYS Writers Institute, September 29, 2015
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:
Ann Beattie, award-winning short story writer and novelist, and poet and Salmagundi editor Peg Boyers will read from their work on Tuesday, September 29, 2015 at 8:00 p.m. in the Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center, on the University at Albany uptown campus. Earlier that same day at 4:15 p.m., the authors will present an informal seminar in the Standish Room, Science Library, on the uptown campus. Free and open to the public, the events are sponsored by the New York State Writers Institute.

PROFILE
Ann Beattie is one of America’s most celebrated practitioners of the short story form. Margaret Atwood has said, “A new Beattie is almost like a fresh bulletin from the front: We snatch it up, eager to know what’s happening out there on the edge of that shifting and dubious no man’s land known as interpersonal relations.”

Beattie’s newest book is The State We’re In: Maine Stories (2015), set in her adopted home state. In a starred review, Publishers Weekly praised Beattie’s “craftsmanship, precise language, and her knack for revealing psychological truths.” The reviewer for Oprah’s O. magazine said, “Beattie’s signature gifts—her finely tuned language, droll wit, unerring feel for popular culture—are on rich display here…. More than a paean to the Pine Tree State, The State We’re In underscores the indelible contribution Beattie has made to American short fiction.”  The book is a selection of the Times Union Book Club.

Beattie’s work has been featured in numerous prize anthologies, including John Updike’s The Best American Short Stories of the Century (2000), four O. Henry Award collections, and most recently in The Best American Short Stories 2014, edited by Jennifer Egan. Other honors include the 2000 PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story and the 2005 REA Award for the Short Story.

As a twenty-something author in the 1970s, Beattie earned recognition as a leading chronicler of the counter-cultural milieu (described sometimes by critics as “Beattieland,” and “the Beattie Generation”).

Beattie’s earlier collections include Distortions (1976), The Burning House (1982), Park City (1998), and The New Yorker Stories (2011). Her novels include Chilly Scenes of Winter (1976), Picturing Will (1989), and Mrs. Nixon: A Novelist Imagines A Life (2011).

Peg Boyers was born in Venezuela to Cuban and Irish parents, and spent her childhood in many parts of the world, including Libya, Italy, Indonesia, and Cuba. The place with the greatest hold on her imagination, however, is the city where she spent her adolescence—Venice, Italy—the subject of her newest collection, To Forget Venice (2014). In advance praise, poet Chase Twichell called it, “Elegant, contemporary, and wry….” and said, “This Venice is unforgettable.” The Publishers Weekly reviewer said, “Boyers invokes the atmospheric city of Venice, addressing both its dream-like ephemerality and its Shakespearean underbelly of duplicity, sexuality, and debris…. [She] debunks the idea of a scenic, postcard-worthy Venice in favor of a more complex attachment—one no less enchanting for its human influences….”

Her previous collections include Honey With Tobacco (2007), and Hard Bread (2002), which poet Richard Howard called, “the most original debut in my experience of contemporary American poetry.” Boyers is the executive editor of the literary magazine, Salmagundi, which is now celebrating its 50th anniversary. She teaches creative writing at Skidmore College and the New York State Summer Writers Institute.

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