Peter Quinn

Novelist and essayist

NYS Writers Institute, April 15, 1999
2:30- 4:00 p.m. | Albany Omni Hotel
Associated Writing Programs Conference

Talking About William Kennedy, with Frank McCourt and Dennis Smith

PETER QUINN is a novelist and essayist, and a chronicler of Irish-America. A third-generation New Yorker whose grandparents were born in Ireland, Quinn is the author of Banished Children of Eve (1994), which won the American Book Award. An historical novel set amid the New York City draft riots during the Civil War, Banished Children of Eve combines Quinn's lifelong interests in New York City, Irish history and immigration, and the Civil War into one unforgettable tale. Publishers Weekly described the book as "the best kind of historical novel, providing both the compelling detail and the broad understanding that makes a past age both believable and comprehensible."

Since 1979, Quinn has been a speech writer, first for New York Governor Hugh Carey, until he left office in 1982, and then for Governor Mario Cuomo from 1983 to 1985. Currently he is chief speech writer for Time Warner.

Quinn's lecture will focus on the writer's/historian's problem of interpreting the horrible experiences, the causes, and the long term effects of the Irish famine.

Peter Quinn was a visiting writer on March 12, 1997 for the Commemoration of the Irish Famine and Celebration of Irish Literature along with Eamon Grennan. Mr. Quinn's talk was entitled "Writing About the Famine: Reflections of Ireland's Great Disaster of 1847". This event was cosponsored by the Greater Capital Region Teachers Center.

". . .a terrific novel, an ebullient mingling of fiction and history that recreates America during and after the Civil War." - William Kennedy on Banished Children of Eve

"Peter Quinn has created a New York as surely as Dickens gave us London. We can only be grateful that it has at last been uncovered, like a lost treasure." - Robert Cranny, The World & I on Banished Children of Eve

"Convincing and intriguing. . .Hardly a page of this book is without some revelation." - The New York Times Book Review on Banished Children of Eve

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