NYS Summer Writers Institute brings big names to Skidmore
The New York State Summer Writers Institute returns to Skidmore College for its 32nd
season July 1-26, bringing major writers from across the nation to Saratoga Springs.
The summer institute, which is an extension of the New York State Writers Institute
at the University at Albany, provides opportunities for students of all ages and financial
backgrounds to learn from award-winning novelists, poets and nonfiction authors. The
intensive four-week program consists of workshops and lessons catered to college-level,
professional and rising writers.
Students of the institute have access to celebrated authors’ creative wisdom, expertise
and experience, as well as direct feedback on their own works in progress.
The institute also features free public readings at 8 p.m. every weekday until July 26 in Palamountain Hall’s Davis Auditorium, unless
otherwise noted, as well as interactive discussions. The expansion of those panel discussions, which will be held one night a week and cover topics ranging from the scholarly —
like “Reading Like a Writer” — to the political — such as “The Fate of Liberalism
and Democracy in the Age of Trump” — will make this year’s event even more special,
said Robert Boyers, a professor of English at Skidmore and director of the summer
institute.
“This is the first time we’ve included so many panels and thus provided opportunities
for audience members to ask questions and interact with the writers speaking at these
sessions,” said Boyers. “We imagine that these interactions will be lively, given
that our topics are challenging, sometimes controversial, and also given that our
speakers are not known for caution or timidity.”
Margo Jefferson is the winner of a Pulitzer Prize for criticism and previously served as book and arts critic for Newsweek and the New York Times. Her memoir, "Negroland," received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography.
Among the visiting writers this year are Pulitzer Prize winners, National Book Critics Circle Award and National Book Award recipients, poet laureates and Guggenheim fellows, including novelists Paul Auster, Russell Banks, Siri Hustvedt, William Kennedy and Jamaica Kincaid; poets Frank Bidart, Louise Glück, Tom Healy, Robert Pinsky and Charles Simic; critic and memoirist Margo Jefferson; biographer and poet Honor Moore; novelist, short-story writer, poet and critic Joyce Carol Oates; fiction and nonfiction writers Caryl Phillips and Francine Prose; and novelist and essayist Danzy Senna.
Skidmore English professors April Bernard and Peg Boyers will also take part.
For more information on the summer institute at Skidmore, visit the New York State Writers Institute website.
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