Writers' workshop in the works

Five nights a week during July, Skidmore Professor Robert Boyers sets the table in his home for an extraordinary dinner party, as he and his wife host literary luminaries in town for the New York State Summer Writers Institute held on the Skidmore campus. Now in its 30th year, the institute draws a distinguished roster of writers as its teaching faculty, among them institute founder and Pulitzer winner William Kennedy, as well as Pulitzer honorees Jorie Graham, Carl Dennis, Charles Simic and Louise Gluck; prolific novelists Francine Prose, Russell Banks and Jamaica Kincaid; National Book Award winner Joyce Carol Oates; New York State Author Mary Gordon; and former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky. In 2016 Margo Jefferson, author of Negroland: A Memoir, which made the best-of-2015 lists of the New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times, will be part of the program.

In directing the summer institutes (and hosting their faculty), Boyers has fostered an intimate community of writers who are passionate about the program. And it shows in the enthusiasm and quality of students, many of whom are many-year regulars at the intensive monthlong workshops in fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Often, evolving writers in the student ranks are "discovered" by publishers through institute connections; alumni include Pulitzer winner Paul Harding and acclaimed novelists Garth Greenwell, Helen Ross and Cristina Garcia.

Under the joint auspices of Skidmore's Special Programs and the New York State Writers Institute at the University of Albany, the institute is "indisputably a great miracle, a great vision," says Boyers, now in his 47th year at Skidmore. "We have been able to attract the best writers and the best students from far and wide. It is very well known because of the caliber of the visiting writers and because we do well by students." His colleague-wife, Peg O'Higgins Boyers '75, has attended for 18 summers and has published three books.

When Kennedy chose Skidmore to establish the program, he cited the vibrancy of Saratoga Springs as a factor. But Saratoga's downtown may be only a minor draw. Boyers says most attendees live on campus and "immerse themselves in…writing and attending readings for the weeks they are with us. They find it life-changing. They can conceive their work at the institute and get feedback from exceptional writers as well as each other."

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