Photo: Fred Benenson

Jonathan Lethem, fiction writer and essayist
September 11 (Wednesday)
Seminar — 4:15 p.m., Standish Room, Science Library, Uptown Campus
Reading — 8:00 p.m., Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center, Uptown Campus

Jonathan Lethem, celebrated for his explorations of American culture and the New York City landscape, received the National Book Critics Circle Award for his novel Motherless Brooklyn (1999), a New York Times Best Seller. His new novel is Dissident Gardens, the story of a family of American radicals living in Sunnyside, Queens, and Greenwich Village during much of the last century, as they participate in the home-grown Communism of the 1930s up through the Occupy Wall Street movement of more recent days. Other books by Lethem include Chronic City (2009) and The Fortress of Solitude (2003), a New York Times Best Seller and “Editor’s Choice.” Lethem received a 2005 MacArthur Foundation Fellowship.

Photo: Brad Fowler

Photo: Bruce Paul Richards

Marie Howe, New York State Poet and Sydney Lea, Vermont Poet Laureate
September 17 (Tuesday)
Seminar — 4:15 p.m., Standish Room, Science Library, Uptown Campus
Reading — 8:00 p.m., Huxley Theatre, NYS Museum, Cultural Education Center, Albany

Marie Howe, current New York State Poet (2012 – 2014), is the author of three collections of poetry: The Kingdom of Ordinary Time (2008), What the Living Do (1997), and The Good Thief (1988). The Rochester native and New York City resident is the recipient of the Lavan Younger Poets Prize of the American Academy of Poets. In 1995 she coedited the bestselling anthology, In the Company of My Solitude: American Writing from the AIDS Pandemic (with Michael Klein), which helped many AIDS victims “find their voices” as poets and storytellers.

Sydney Lea, current Vermont Poet Laureate (2011 – 2014), is the author of eleven collections of poetry, including Pursuit of a Wound (2000), a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and To the Bone: New and Selected Poems (1996), a co-winner of the Poet’s Prize. The founder and long-time editor of The New England Review, Lea is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim, Rockefeller, and Fulbright Foundations. Much of Lea’s work focuses on the mystery of the natural world and the physical details of life in a rural setting. His latest book is A North Country Life: Tales of Woodsmen, Waters, and Wildlife (2013).

Cosponsored by Friends of the New York State Library

Photo: Theo Cote

Lydia Davis, “an American virtuoso of the short story form” (Salon), NYS Writers Institute Writing Fellow, and UAlbany English Department faculty member, received the 2013 Man Booker International Prize. The award is given every two years to authors of any nationality to recognize an outstanding body of work in English or English translation. Awarded to a handful of the world’s leading writers, the prize is regarded by many as “an ever more competent alternative to the Nobel” (The Guardian). Davis is the author of five short story collections including, most recently, The Collected Stories (2009). A Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres in France, Davis is a leading translator into English of French literary fiction by Proust and Flaubert.

Bill Bryson, bestselling nonfiction author
October 5 (Saturday)
Reading — 7:30 p.m., Clark Auditorium, NYS Museum, Cultural Education Center, Albany

Bill Bryson is a widely admired nonfiction writer whose books on travel, history, science, and the English language are laugh-out-loud funny and astonishingly scholarly at the same time. His many bestsellers include At Home: A Short History of Private Life (2010), a Washington Post “Best Book of the Year;” A Short History of Nearly Everything (2004), winner of the Aventis Prize for science writing; I’m a Stranger Here Myself (1999); and A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail (1998). His new book is One Summer: America, 1927 (2013), about a pivotal time in America’s national “coming of age.”

Cosponsored by the New York State Library and Friends of the New York State Library

Photo: Jamieson Fry

T. C. Boyle, fiction writer
October 8 (Tuesday)
Seminar — 4:15 p.m., Standish Room, Science Library, Uptown Campus
Reading — 8:00 p.m., Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center, Uptown Campus

T. C. Boyle, “one of the most inventive and verbally exuberant writers of his generation” (New York Times), is the bestselling author of fourteen novels and nine short story collections. His newest book is T. C. Boyle Stories II (October 2013), a 944-page sequel to T. C. Boyle Stories (1998), winner of the PEN/Malamud Award for Short Fiction. Michael Anderson of the New York Times Book Review described the latter as “700 flashy, inventive pages of stylistic and moral acrobatics.” Boyle’s novels include San Miguel (2012), Drop City (2003), The Road to Wellville (1993), and World’s End (1987).

William Kennedy
as a journalist

William Kennedy, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and founder of the New York State Writers Institute, will help the UAlbany Journalism Program celebrate its 40th anniversary with a lecture on “William Rowley: Journalism and Social Justice.” Rowley, a former editor at the Knickerbocker News and Professor of English at the University, founded the Journalism Program in 1973. An anti-war activist who also taught in the prisons, Rowley believed that journalism and social justice were natural allies, with journalism being a useful tool for developing “imagination, critical intelligence, and intellectual independence.” His first hire to teach in the Journalism Program was a local writer named Bill Kennedy. For almost a decade Kennedy taught a course in Advanced Journalism and Magazine Writing. Kennedy will reflect on his years teaching at Albany and the current state of journalism.

Sponsored by UAlbany's Journalism Program in celebration of its 40th anniversary

Luis Gutierrez, U. S. Congressman and author
October 18 (Friday)
Reading — 7:00 p.m.[Note early start time], Main Theatre, Performing Arts Center, Uptown Campus

Luis Gutierrez (D-IL-4), eleven-term U. S. Congressman from Illinois, and one of America’s preeminent champions of immigration reform and Latino civil rights, spent part of his formative years as a student at UAlbany. Known to his supporters as “El Gallito” (“The Little Rooster”) for his passionate oratory and willingness to fight for worthy causes, Gutierrez is the author of a new autobiography, Still Dreaming: My Journey from the Barrio to Capitol Hill (2013). Honest and often hilarious, the book recounts his rise from teacher, social worker, cab driver, and community activist to one of the most influential members of Congress. A leader of the Hispanic Caucus, Gutierrez serves currently on the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittees on Immigration and Border Security; and Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security.

Sponsored in conjunction with UAlbany’s Homecoming, Reunion, and Family Weekend

Photo: Farhad Daryoush

Women Writers of the Middle East 
Cosponsored by UAlbany’s Office of International Education, International Academic Program, Global Institute for Health and Human Rights, Women’s Studies, Center for Women in Government & Civil Society, and University Auxiliary Services in conjunction with the “Women of the Middle East” series.

Iranian musician Rana Farhan will provide film commentary and answer questions immediately following the screening.
October 22 (Tuesday)

NO ONE KNOWS ABOUT PERSIAN CATS [KASI AZ GORBEHAYE IRANI KHABAR NADAREH]
October 22 (Tuesday)
Film screening with commentary by screenwriter Roxana Saberi — 7:00 p.m., [Note early start time] Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center, Uptown Campus [Note Location]

Directed by Bahman Ghobadi
(Iran, 2009, 106 minutes, color, in Persian with English subtitles)

This quasi-documentary offers a glimpse into Iran’s forbidden underground music scene. Recently imprisoned Iranian musicians attempt to put together a band and secure travel documents to play some concerts in Europe, all the while trying to avoid police detection for their illegal activity. The film won the Cannes Film Festival Un Certain Regard Jury Prize and the Miami Film Festival Audience Award.

Ty Burr of the Boston Globe called it, “a tiny, wonderful movie about Iranian rock ’n’ rollers…. the director treats us to a fast, vibrant montage of Iranian faces and street scenes — as if to say, look, this is who we really are…. [The] message is exquisitely simple: Hear us. Please: Hear us.”

Ava Homa, Kurdish fiction writer and university lecturer born and educated in Iran, is author of the short story collection, Echoes from the Other Land (2010), featuring tales of modern Iranian women in conflict with social and cultural norms. The book was nominated for the 2011 Frank O’Connor International Award, the world’s largest monetary short story prize.

Kaziwa Salih, writer, researcher, and activist from the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, is the author of ten books, both fiction and nonfiction, published in the Kurdish language. She is also the founder and chair of the Canada Anti-Genocide Project, and has served on the board of the United Nations Association in Canada (Toronto branch).

Goli Taraghi is a highly regarded Iranian fiction writer. Her newest work in English translation is the story collection, The Pomegranate Lady and Her Sons (October 2013). Azar Nafisi (Reading Lolita in Tehran) described the book as, “... original and universal, filled with passion, curiosity, empathy, as well as mischief—definitely mischief.” Taraghi’s other works in English include the story collection, A Mansion in the Sky (2003), and the novel Winter Sleep (1973, English 1994). She has been honored as a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres in France. Taraghi also wrote the screenplay of the Iranian film, THE PEAR TREE (1998, see October 23 listing), which received the Silver Hugo for Best Feature at the Chicago International Film Festival.

Stig Dagerman was considered to be Sweden’s next great literary phenomenon for his critically acclaimed fiction and essays published during the late 1940s and early 1950s. Then in 1954, at the age of 31, he committed suicide. His work is currently experiencing a revival in the United States and Europe as several noted authors, translators, and publishers have praised his writing. Working with the author’s daughter, Lo Dagerman, Steven Hartman, UAlbany Ph.D. graduate and former graduate assistant at the Writers Institute, has translated and published a number of Stig Dagerman’s stories in American literary magazines since the early 1990s. These translations have been collected in the new volume, Sleet (2013). This event will feature readings and discussions of Dagerman’s work by Lo Dagerman and Hartman, as well as screenings of short films based on Hartman’s translations of two stories, Our Need for Consolation (19 min., 2012), and The Games of Night (20 min., 2008), directed by the author’s grandson, Dan Levy Dagerman.

Douglas Bauer, fiction writer and essayist
October 29 (Tuesday)
Seminar — 4:15 p.m., Standish Room, Science Library, Uptown Campus
Reading — 8:00 p.m., Assembly Hall, Campus Center, Uptown Campus

Douglas Bauer’s new book is What Happens Next? Matters of Life and Death (2013), a collection of memory-rich, deeply-felt personal essays on the meaning of human existence, from his boyhood on an Iowa farm to intimations of mortality in middle age. Author Margot Livesey said in advance praise, “Bauer is a master of the telling detail. This is a beautiful book about mortal matters and the great lessons of time that are written on the body.” Novelist Andre Dubus III praised the book as “… a masterful, soul-nourishing work, and I simply cannot recommend it highly enough.” A graduate of UAlbany with a Ph.D. in English, Bauer is currently Professor of English at Bennington College. His previous books include the novels The Book of Famous Iowans (1997), The Very Air (1993), and Dexterity (1989).

Rick Blunt as Iago and Fernando Lamberty as Othello in Othello.

Photo by Michael Bailey

American Shakespeare Center performance of Othello
November 7 (Thursday)
Performance — 7:30 p.m., Main Theatre, Performing Arts Center, Uptown Campus
In advance: $15 general public / $10 students, seniors & UAlbany faculty-staff
Day of show:  $20 general public / $15 students, seniors & UAlbany faculty-staff | Box Office: (518) 442-3997

In a magnificently complex study of extremes, Shakespeare pairs his most loving and trusting leading man with his most conniving and ruthless villain in a dangerous dance of deceit and revenge. The radiant language of love transforms into delirious ravings as his characters descend into jealousy, fear, and rage. American Shakespeare Center’s production is presented in classic Shakespearian style with actors playing multiple roles and surrounded by the audience on three sides.

Presented by the Performing Arts Center in conjunction with the Writers Institute. Support provided by the UAlbany Foundation and University Auxiliary Services.

Robert Orsi, “the reigning scholar of American Catholicism” (Publishers Weekly), will deliver the keynote lecture of the Researching New York 2013 conference. The title of Orsi’s talk is “The Gods of Gotham: Religion and the Making of New York, 1800 to 1950.” The Grace Craddock Nagle Chair in Catholic Studies at Northwestern University, Orsi is the author of the landmark study, The Madonna of 115th Street: Faith and Community in Italian Harlem, 1880-1950 (1985, 25th Anniversary edition 2010).

Cosponsored by UAlbany’s Department of History and the NYS Archives Partnership Trust. For additional information on all Researching New York conference events go to: http://nyshistory.org/researchny

David Treuer, prize-winning Native American author, critic and academic is the author of the highly-praised nonfiction work, Rez Life: An Indian’s Journey Through Reservation Life (2012). Combining memoir, history, investigative journalism, storytelling, and public policy analysis, Rez Life provides an insider’s view of modern Native American community experience. The Boston Globe called it a “blistering, illuminating, ultimately hopeful book.” Son of an Ojibwe mother and Holocaust survivor father, Treuer is the author of several books including the novel The Translation of Dr. Apelles (2006), a Washington Post “Book of the Year,” and the critical survey, Native American Fiction: A User’s Manual (2006).

Cosponsored by SUNY Press in conjunction with the annual John G. Neihardt Lecture