Lynne Tillman Fiction and nonfiction writer Previous Visit: March 28, 2007

Tomás Urayoán Noel Latino Poet and UAlbany Professor

TWO ACCLAIMED UALBANY AUTHORS, FICTION WRITER LYNNE TILLMAN AND POET TOMÁS URAYOÁN NOEL,
TO READ FROM NEW WORK

NYS Writers Institute, Wednesday March 30, 2011
4:15 p.m. Seminar | Campus Center Room 375, Uptown Campus
8:00 p.m. Reading | Standish Room, Science Library, Uptown Campus

CALENDAR LISTING
Two acclaimed UAlbany faculty authors, Lynne Tillman, fiction writer, and Tomas Urayoán Noel, poet, will read from new work on Wednesday, March 30, 2011 at 8 p.m. in the Standish Room, Science Library on the University at Albany’s uptown campus. Earlier that same day, the authors will present an informal seminar at 4:15 p.m. in Campus Center Room 375 on the uptown campus. The events are free and open to the public, and are sponsored by the New York State Writers Institute.

PROFILE
Lynne Tillman’s new story collection, Someday This Will Be Funny (April 2011) was named one of the “Top Ten Literary Fiction” releases of Spring 2011 by Publishers Weekly. Tomas Urayoán Noel’s new poetry collection, Hi-Density Politics (2011), was recently given high praise in the “Small Press Highlights” feature of the National Book Critics Circle blog. Noel (whose previous February 1st event with Douglas Kearney at the Writers Institute was cancelled due to snow) will join Tillman onstage for a public reading and discussion.

Fiction writer, essayist, art critic and educator Lynne Tillman is an Associate Professor/Writer-in-Residence in the Department of English at UAlbany. In a starred review, Publishers Weekly said, “[These] stories are fashioned with candor and animated by fits of wordplay and invention – stories that affirm Tillman’s unshakable talent for wedding the patterns and rituals of thought with the blushing immediacy of existence, defying genre and defining experimental short fiction…. Lynne Tillman peels back the sod and soil of the short story form, revealing at each root a messy tangle of minds made obsessive and listless, of bodies rejoicing, and recoiling.”

Tillman’s most recent novel, American Genius, A Comedy (2006), dismantles American myths, past and present, through the fevered thoughts of an unnamed woman who suffers from dermatographia, a skin condition in which the lightest touch leaves visible lines, like writing on paper. Publishers Weekly said, “An often dazzling, totally disorienting interior riff.... this loopy trip through a meandering, fretful mind proves worthwhile.”

Tillman’s 1998 novel, No Lease on Life (1998), was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and was named a New York Times Notable Book. The novel recounts one oppressively hot day in the life of a woman living in New York City’s East Village.

Tomás Urayoán Noel, Puerto Rican poet, authority on Latino, Nuyorican and slam poetics, and Assistant Professor in the UAlbany English Department, is the author of a new poetry volume, Hi-Density Politics (2011). Rigoberto Gonzalez, writing on the blog of the National Book Critics Circle, said, “No other poet can make music out of NYC’s white noise and stage a play using the ‘scenes from an apocalipsync’ like the inimitable Noel—a poet who packs more energy into a single page than most can pack into an entire book.”

Noel’s other books include Boringkén (2008), the bilingual Kool Logic/La lógica kool (2005), and Las flores del mall (2000). His critical work and poetry have appeared in Contemporary Literature, BOMB, Fence, and New York Quarterly.

Noel is currently completing a book on Nuyorican poetry, and serves as contributing editor of the bilingual literary journal, Mandorla: New Writing from the Americas. He also serves as faculty supervisor for the UAlbany online journal Barzakh, which was recently featured in a lengthy entry in Harriet, the blog of the Poetry Foundation.

Additional Links: http://bookcritics.org/blog/archive/small_press_highlights_2010_edition/#

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