New York State Summer Writers Institute returns in July
Updated July 16, 2013--Please scroll to the end of the story to link to media coverage
of the NYSSWI.
The 27th summer of the New York State Summer Writers Institute at Skidmore continues this month and has announced a new final event — a July 26 public conversation on "Truthfulness in Fiction," with authors Darin Strauss and Jim Miller.
Strauss won the 2011 National Book Critics Circle Award for his book Half a Life, a harrowing memoir recounting the impact on his life of an accident in which he, as driver, killed a young girl. Miller is a writer-biograher-journalist-rock critic and the author of many works of non-fiction, including Democracy Is in the Streets, Examined Lives, Flowers in the Dustbin and The Passion of Michel Foucault.
Strauss is one of two Summer Writers Institute alumni returning as a featured author this year. The other is Paul Harding, who will read July 9. Strauss and Harding were students at the Summer Writers Institute in the 1990s (before they had published their work), where they studied with such experienced writers as Marilynne Robinson and Russell Banks. In 2010 Harding won the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction for his novel Tinkers, which had been rejected by more than 15 publishers before being printed by Bellevue Literary Press. The New York Times called Harding's experience "the most dramatic literary Cinderella story in recent memory."
Following is the complete schedule of events for summer 2013. All begin at 8 p.m. in Davis Auditorium of Palamountain Hall. Admission to all events is free.
Jamaica Kincaid reads July 23 (photo by
Emma Dodge Hanson)
July 1 -- Poetry and Fiction Reading:
Campbell McGrath (poet, American Noise) and Elizabeth Benedict (novelist, Almost)
July 2 -- Fiction Reading:
Paul Auster (author, The Brooklyn Follies) and Siri Hustvedt (novelist, What I Loved)
July 3 -- Fiction and Poetry Reading:
Ann Beattie (novelist, Love Always) and Robert Polito (poet, Hollywood and God)
July 4 -- Poetry and Fiction Reading:
Frank Bidart (poet, Metaphysical Dog) and Binnie Kirshenbaum (novelist, The Scenic Route)
July 5 -- Poetry Reading:
Robert Pinsky (former U.S. Poet Laureate)
July 8 -- Fiction Reading:
Phillip Lopate (author, Portrait Inside My Head) and Adam Braver (novelist, Misfit)
July 9 -- Poetry and Fiction Reading:
Rosanna Warren (poet, Ghost In A Red Hat) and Paul Harding (fiction, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Tinkers)
July 10 -- Fiction Reading:
Bharati Mukherjee (novelist, Miss New India) and Clark Blaise (novelist, The Meagre Tarmac)
Paul Harding reads July 9
July 11 -- Fiction and Poetry Reading:
Claire Messud (novelist, The Woman Upstairs) and Jorie Graham (Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Dream of the Unified Field)
July 12 -- Fiction Reading:
Joyce Carol Oates (National Book Award, them, We Were the Mulvaneys)
July 15 -- Fiction Reading:
Amy Hempel (fictionist, The Dog of the Marriage) and Honor Moore (memoirist, The Bishop’s Daughter)
July 16 -- Fiction and Poetry Reading:
Russell Banks (novelist, The Darling) and Chase Twichell (poet, Dog Language)
July 17 -- Fiction and Poetry Reading:
Rick Moody (fictionist, Demonology) and Tom Healy (poet, What the Left Hand Knows)
July 18 -- Non-Fiction and Poetry Reading:
Mark Strand (former U.S. Poet Laureate, Pulitzer Prize, Blizzard of One) and Peg Boyers (poet, Honey with Tobacco, Hard Bread)
July 19 -- Fiction Reading:
William Kennedy (Pulitzer Prize, Ironweed, Roscoe)
July 22 -- Fiction and Poetry Reading:
Mary Gaitskill (novelist, Veronica) April Bernard (poet, Romanticism)
Bharati Mukherjee reads July 10
July 23 -- Fiction and Poetry Reading:
Jamaica Kincaid (novelist, See Now Then) and Henri Cole (poet, Middle Earth)
July 24 -- Poetry and Fiction Reading:
Charles Simic (former U.S. Poet Laureate, Pulitzer Prize, New & Selected Poems) and Linda Spalding (novelist, The Purchase)
July 25 -- Fiction Reading:
Michael Ondaatje (Booker Prize, The English Patient) and Howard Norman (novelist-memoirist, I Hate to Leave this Beautiful Place).
July 26 -- "Truthfulness in Non-Fiction" with Darin Strauss and Jim Miller
A new concluding event to this year's Summer Writers Institute calendar.
Elizabeth Floyd Mair interviews authors Jamaica Kincaid, Siri Hustvedt, and Adam Braver about their recent works for stories in the Albany Times Union; Thomas Dimopoulos covers readings by audience favorites Robert Pinsky and Joyce Carol Oates for Saratoga Wire. Upcoming is an interview of Paul Harding by Joe Donahue, to air on WAMC-FM's The Book Show.
