Real Good for FREE: New York State Writers Institute

The New York State Writers Institute has announced its 2013 winter/spring schedule of readings by visiting writers, and once again, it’s a diverse assortment of novelists, poets, journalists, essayists, historians, playwrights, memoirists and more.

Unless noted, all events are free and take place on the UAlbany campus in Albany.

Here’s the schedule of readings, seminars and performances from spring of 2013:

COLMAN DOMINGO (actor, director and playwright)
Monday, February 4
Seminar — 4:15pm, UAlbany Campus Center Assembly Hall
Lecture — 8pm, UAlbany Performing Arts Center Recital Hall
Tony Award nominee Colman Domingo, whose stage credits include “The Scottsboro Boys,” “Wild With Happy” and “A Boy and His Soul.” His film credits include Spielberg’s “Lincoln” and Spike Lee’s “Red Hook Summer.”

JORGEN RANDERS (author and environmental scientist)
Wednesday, February 6
Reading — 7:30pm, UALbany Lecture Center 7
Leading futurist, bestselling author and founding figure in the new field of “sustainability studies,” Norwegian environmental scientist Jorgen Randers coauthored the enormously influential 1972 book, “The Limits to Growth.”

GEORGE SAUNDERS (writer of short stories and novellas)
Wednesday, February 20
Seminar — 4:15pm, UAlbany Science Library’s Standish Room
Reading — 8pm, UAlbany Performing Arts Center Recital Hall
George Saunders, winner of a 2006 MacArthur Foundation fellowship, and a four-time winner of the National Magazine Award for fiction, is widely regarded as one of the most original writers of short fiction of his generation. His new book is “Tenth of December: Stories.”

EUGENE MIRABELLI (novelist) and ANN HOOD (novelist)
Tuesday, February 26
Seminar — 4:15pm, UAlbany Campus Center Assembly Hall
Reading — 8pm, UAlbany Campus Center Assembly Hall
Eugene Mirabelli, Professor Emeritus at the University at Albany, is the author of eight highly praised novels. His most recent, “Renato, the Painter,” is the story of an elderly artist who lives his messy life with gusto, and who applies himself to art with great energy, defying the neglect of the public and the critics.
Ann Hood is the author of the best-selling novel, “The Knitting Circle,” about a woman who takes up knitting in order to cope with the death of her young daughter. Her newest book is “The Obituary Writer,” about two women coping with heartbreak and loss during two different periods in American history.

CHRISTA PARRAVANI (photographer and memoirist)
Thursday, March 7
Seminar — 4:15pm, UAlbany Science Library’s Standish Room
Reading — 8pm, NYS Museum’s Huxley Theatre, Albany
Christa Parravani, acclaimed photographer, is the author of the new memoir, “Her,” about the life and early death of her identical twin, Cara, and her struggle to carry on after the tragedy.

GRETEL EHRLICH (poet and essayist)
Tuesday, March 12
Seminar — 4:15pm, UAlbany Campus Center Assembly Hall
Reading — 8pm, UAlbany Campus Center Assembly Hall
Gretel Ehrlich is the author most recently of “Facing the Wave,” an account of her travels in Japan in the aftermath of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, and the subsequent meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

NATHAN ENGLANDER (short story writer and novelist)
Thursday, March 14
Seminar — 4:15pm, UAlbany Performing Arts Center Recital Hall
Reading — 8pm, UAlbany Lecture Center 7
Nathan Englander, major contemporary short story writer who mines his Jewish heritage and Orthodox boyhood for pathos and humor of universal significance, was named one of “20 Writers for the 21st Century” in the New Yorker. His newest story collection is “What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank,” which received the Frank O’Connor Award.

JAMES SALTER (novelist)
Thursday, April 4
Seminar — 4:15pm, UAlbany Campus Center Room 375
Reading — 8pm, UAlbany Campus Center Room 375
James Salter, prize-winning fiction writer and former New York State Author (1998–2000), has been called “one of the best writers in this country” (Bloomsbury Review). At the age of 85, he is the author of a major new novel, All That Is, about a naval officer who returns from the battles of World War II to make a life as a book editor in bohemian New York.

MARGUERITE HOLLOWAY (science writer, biographer and journalist)
Thursday, April 11
Seminar — 4:15pm, UAlbany Science Library’s Standish Room
Reading — 8pm, NYS Museum’s Huxley Theatre, Albany
Marguerite Holloway, science journalist, is the author of a new biography of the forgotten 19th century Albany-born genius who developed Manhattan’s street-grid, “The Measure of Manhattan: The Tumultuous Career and Surprising Legacy of John Randel, Jr., Cartographer, Surveyor, Inventor.”

MARILYNNE ROBINSON (Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist)
Wednesday, April 17
Reading and McKinney Award Ceremony – 8pm, RPI’s Biotech Auditorium, Troy
Marilynne Robinson, celebrated writer of novels set in small-town America, is the author most recently of the essay collection, “When I Was a Child I Read Books,” reflections on disquieting political, social and cultural trends.

MANIL SURI (fiction writer and mathematician)
Friday, April 19
Seminar — 4:15pm, UAlbany Science Library’s Standish Room
Reading — 8pm, UAlbany Campus Center Assembly Hall
Manil Suri, Indian-American mathematician and major contemporary novelist, is the author most recently of “The City of Devi,” an epic novel set in the author’s native city of Mumbai after it has been abandoned under threat of nuclear attack.

CHRIS BOHJALIAN (bestselling novelist)
Thursday, April 25
Seminar — 4:15pm, UAlbany Science Library’s Standish Room
Reading — 8pm, UAlbany Campus Center Ballroom
Chris Bohjalian, bestselling writer of fifteen novels, is the author most recently of The New York Times bestseller, “The Sandcastle Girls,” an epic tale of the Armenian genocide that mines Bohjalian’s own Armenian heritage (his grandparents survived the tragedy).

GAIL COLLINS (journalist and New York Times columnist)
Tuesday, April 30
Reading — 8pm, UAlbany’s Page Hall
One of the most recognizable names in American journalism, Gail Collins served as the first female editor of The New York Times Editorial Page (2001-2007), and has contributed an influential biweekly column to the Times Op-Ed page for most of the past decade. Her column is distinguished by its fondness for humor and storytelling, its attention to political absurdity, and its championing of women’s rights. Her newest book is “As Texas Goes… How the Lone Star State Hijacked the American Agenda.”

AMERICAN PLACE THEATRE’S “THE GIVER” (theater performance)
Wednesday, May 1
Performance — 7:30pm, UAlbany Performing Arts Center Recital Hall
Pre-Performance discussion at 7pm
$15 general public / $12 seniors & faculty-staff / $10 students
Winner of the 1994 Newbery Medal, Lois Lowry’s richly provocative novel “The Giver” (1993) was published nearly 20 years ago and is still widely read today. In a dystopian world of “Sameness,” where all negative emotions and feelings of pain have been successfully eliminated, twelve-year-old Jonas is selected to receive the memories of humankind’s experiences from the time before.

RUSSELL SHORTO (historian and journalist)
Friday, May 3
Lecture — 3:15pm, UAlbany Campus Center Assembly Hall
Russell Shorto is renowned for his best-selling history of life in Dutch colonial New York, “The Island at the Center of the World.” His most recent book is Descartes’ Bones: A Skeletal History of the Conflict Between Faith and Reason, which traces the strange adventures of the skeletal remains of the Enlightenment philosopher—bought, sold, stolen, fought over, studied, revered and reviled — following his death in 1650.

K. ERIC DREXLER (author and nanoscientist)
Monday, May 6
Reading — 8pm, UAlbany Campus Center Assembly Hall
K. Eric Drexler is often hailed as nanotechnology’s “founding father.” He received the first Ph.D. (MIT), taught the first course, and chaired the first two conferences on the subject. His 1981 paper, “Molecular engineering,” published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, established fundamental principles of molecular design, protein engineering, and productive nanosystems. His new book, the first in 20 years, is “Radical Abundance.” Written for a general audience, it explores the ways in which nanotechnology is likely to transform material civilization in the near future.

ADDITIONAL REAL GOOD FOR FREE EVENTS FOR 2013
Music at Noon @ Troy Savings Bank Music Hall, Troy (select Tuesdays through May)