| Writers Project Presents Voices from the Middle East Series Between the war in Iraq... --Lale Davidson
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| Kim Jensen & Voices from the Middle East The Writers Project at Adirondack Community College is pleased to welcome Kim Jensen as the first author in our Voices from the Middle East series. (For more details on this special year-long series, see item below). Jensen, an American who is married to a Palestinian and who has taught and written in the Middle East, has published The Woman I Left Behind (Curbstone 2006), her first novel and a work that is sure to provoke much discussion and praise. A section if the novel won the Raymond Carver Prize for Short Fiction. Set in Southern Calfornia during the first Gulf War with flashback scenes in Jerusalem and Beriut, The Woman I Left Behind tells the story of love between a Palestinian student and a young American woman and explores the difficulties of an intercultural relationship as it gives us a rare glimpse into Palestinian history and culture. The novel's two main characters live on the artistic and political fringe of society. Irene is a student activist on the brink of maturity and intellectual independence. Khalid is a charismatic, yet contradictory figure, who has been indelibly scarred by his experiences of deportation, war and exile. The novel chronicles - in powerful, poetic language - each character's struggle to overcome the personal and political barriers that divide them. --Lale Davidson
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| Tuesday, October 24, 2006 • 7 pm - 9 pm • Visual Arts Gallery • Dearlove Hall |
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| Graphic Novelist:Jessica Abel When you think of cartoons, you think of Peanuts or the X-Men. But the graphic novels, a term coined by Will Eisner in 1978, are best described as literary, extended comics aimed at a more mature audience. And Jessica Abel is one of the few women gaining visibility in a field dominated by men. Born in 1969, Abel began drawing in 1988. But her career really began when she self-published, via a copy machine, the first four issues of Art babe, about hip,twenty-something art-student-types struggling to live authentically, but who are somewhat lost (and find themselves too often in bars, clerical jobs, and bad relationships. In 1996 she earned the prestigious Xeric Grant, which allowed her to publish a full-sized copy of the fifth issue in the Artbabe. She developed an avid cult following and was then picked up by Fantagraphics Books, publisher of Dan Clowes' Ghost World. In 1997 she won the Harvey Award for "Best New Talent" and a similar award from the Friends of Lulu, a non-profit women's advocacy group in comics. Fantagraphics has published two collections, Soundtrack and Mirror, Window, and the first three parts of a serial novel. Her newest and, many say, best work yet, La Perdida (The Lost Girl), is a novel about an American woman named Carla who moves to Mexico in search of her Mexican roots. Emily Hall of theStranger.com describes La Perdida as "a coming of age story in unfamiliar territory, an inner life struggling to find its way around in the outer world. La Perdida," Hall writes, "only seems simple; it's actually sharp, complex and devastating." Abel also has co-written Radio: An Illustrated Guide with Ira Glass, the host of This American Life on National Pubic Radio. Fantagraphics says Jessica Abel is "one of the most exciting and acclaimed debuts Fantagraphics has published in the last decade." Booklist noted her "strong characterization, accurate dialogue and knack for capturing a distinctive milieu" and called her "a graphic storytelling talent to watch." |
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| Thursday, November 06, 2003 • 12:30pm-2pm • Library Auditorium • Crandall Library Thursday, November 06, 2003 • Room 224-$10 • 5:45pm-8:45pm • Miller Auditorium • Dearlove Hall |
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| Joe Connelly:Wrting From the Trenches His first novel,Bringing Out the Dead, about a paramedic in New York City, was based on Joe Connelly's own experience as an EMT.When it was made into a movie directed by Martin Scorsese, starring Nicholas Cage, Connelly wrote his next book, Crumbtown, about Hollywood. The following e:rcerpt is from Bringing Out the Dead: Larry was crunching down violently on the man's chest and as I fit into the slim space between the bed and the man's right arm I heard one of the ribs crack, like deep ice in a winter lake. I turned the arm over, found a trace of blue vein, and plunged the needle in. I hooked up the IV and watched the bubbles ride the salt water into his arm. Epinephrine first, one milligram pure adrenaline, a liquid scream in the vein to make the heart feel it's trapped in a burning shirt factory. Followed by one half milligram of atropine, a more subtle agent that rings an alarm and tells the heart it's not dead, only sleeping. This heart wasn't fooled. I waited a minute and gave him another epi, but the flat line only shivered a moment before flattening again. So I decided to hit him with everything at once, get it over with. I shot in an amp of calcium; gives the heart a Joe Louis punch. I drew up a vial of Isuprel and stuck it into the IV bag and let it run. Isuprel scorches everything in its path. It sets the heart on fire, and the heart can either come back tolife to beat the flames out or lie there and bum like dead pine. I added another epi and atropine and sat back to see what would happen. The flat line on the monitor ran untouched, seemingly infinite and perfect like the axis of the universe, then suddenly it flexed, then bowed, a minute later exploding into one thousand shaking point.,. I could see the vibration in the chest under Larry's hand., as every muscle in Burke's heart fired wildly in different directions. I charged up the paddles and placed them on his chest, twelve inches apart. "Clear," I yelled. "Clear." The daughter let go and then screamed when the man's frail body left the pinewood floor... The shock of defibrillation is like a slap in the face to the hysterical heart. Sometimes the slap alone get., the heart to pull itself together and start beating normally, but often the soft voice and soothing hand of lidocaine is needed. Just relax, the lidocaine says, everything will be all right. |
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| Wednesday, October 29, 2003 • 12:30pm-2pm • Library Auditorium • Crandall Library |
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| Innovative Scottish Novelist Janice Galloway to Read on Clara Schumann Award winning author Janice Galloway will be coming over from Scotland to read at Acc from her novel,Clara, based on the diaries of Clara Schumann. In the words of her publicist at Simon & Schuster, "Clara seamlessly fuses fact and fiction to reveal to torturous love affair, seething inner lives and persistant daily struggles of Clara and Robert Schumann." Most people are afamiliar with the composer,Robert Schumann, whose posthumous career eclipsed Clara's career. But in life, says her publicist, "Clara was a far more promient artist. A piano prodigy who debuted at age eleven, Clara was hailed as a virtuosa in Prague, Vienna, Dresden, St. Petersburg, and Berlin. Clara was,in fact,the foremost concert pianist of her day. Chopin and liszt were her nearst rivals, Mendelssohn and Brahms devoted friends." Serendipitously, Pam Firth, the director of the music program at Acc, will be teaching the music of bothe Clara and Robert Schumann in her humanties seminar. Chrintine Breitenfeld, special adjunct in music, will open Galloway's reading with a work by Clara Schumann on piano. "The novel," says her publicist, "chronicles the progression of Clara's intimate relationships- from her courageous break with her tyrannical father whose determination to creat a musical prodigy thrust her toward fame, to her marriage to the brilliant yet unstable alcoholic Schumann whose insecurities prevented him from sustaining himself, much less his family. "Shining light on the most private and dark corners of their relationship, Clara shows both the dysfunction and shame, and undoubted pasion that defined their marriage. As Robert struggled against his demons, Clara was forced to maintain the family(of eight children) by embarking upon a rigorous schedule of concert tours." As fascinating as the story itself is, the style in which it is written also deserves notice, for Galloway is no mainstream writer. Robert A. Morace in Contemporary Novelists, said of her earlier writing that she "combines minimalist style and formal innovation... In a bleak and sometimes blackly humourous manner, she chronicles various forms of social and psychological oppression, particularly as experienced by women." Peter Matthews, of the Observer, called her a fierce and trobling writer." Galloway's previous books include the novels The Trick is to Keep Breathing, Foreign Parts, and the short story collection Blood. Galloway received the prestigious Creative Scotland Award in 2002 and Scotland's McVitie's Prize for best novel in 1994. She also won the American Academy of Arts and Letters E.M Forester Award in 1994. Clara was named the 2002 Saltire Society Scottish Book of the Year and was a New York Times Notable book for 2003. She lives in Glasgow, Scotland. For more information, go to: Janicegalloway.com --Adapted w/ permission from Simon & Schuster
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| Tuesday, March 16, 2004 • 12:30p.m.-1:50p.m. • Visual Arts Gallery • Dearlove Hall |
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| Naton Leslie: Steel Valley in the Hudson Valley You can take the poet out of Steel Valley, but you can't take Steel Valley out of the poet, not this, anyway. Naton Leslie, poet, fiction and non-fiction writer has been living in the Hudson Valley teaching at Siena College for 15 years, but most often his writing themes return to the quandaries of the working class. He has published five volumes of poetry, a book of short stories, was the receipent of the highly competive National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship for poetry, and a grant from New York State Foundation for the Arts, and most recently published a book of narrative non-fiction, That Might Be Useful( Lyon Press, 2005). He is originally from Warren, Ohio, an area sometimes referred to as the "Rust Belt" or "Steel Valley," because it was once the home of steel mills and manufacturing plants that have been steadily outsourced to other countries over the past half century, leaving towns in economic and physical ruin. His second and third book of poetry, Moving to Find Work (Bottom Dog Press/Working Lives Series 2000) and Salvaged Maxims (Word Press 2002), as well as his book of short stories, Macroni's Dream and Other Stories ( The Texas Review Press,2003), which was also the winner of the George Garrett Fiction Prize, depict the Steel Valley and Upstate New York landscape of "smokeless smokestacks, abandoned city buildings, and vanishing immigrant neighborhoods." Macroni's Dream, says Douglas Glover, the author of Elle, is peopled with characters "desperately trying to find love and dignity in the wreckage of a society where the old verities-honesty, hard work, fair dealing- don't count for much any more. Yet...these good, decent men and women [struggle] to keep faith." With That Might Be Useful: Exploring America's Second Culture, Leslie claims the territory of narrative non-fiction, and depicts another America- not the bright, glossy, commercial America, but the lively eccentric and intimate world of second hand goods- the places where the characters from his earlier books might go to shop. What he finds is an older, truer America: "Americans, I have discovered, are not naturally wasteful," writes Leslie in this eminently readable book. " We are by nature scavengers rather than monied consumers." --Lale Davidson
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| Wednesday, November 09, 2005 • 12:30 p.m.-2:00 p.m. • Visual Arts Gallery • Dearlove Hall |
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| The Many Sides of Shartle Mary Sanders Shartle is not an easy writer to peg and she seems to like it that way, for she describes herself as poet,fiction writer, signer and songwriter. Her poetry alone shows many faces. Some poems, Like "Mohegan Lake," conjure exquisite silence, washed into existence by the Shinto painter's brush which calls out to the mythic wolf and the sun-goddess, without naming them in that oh-so-unsubtle manner of the new age. Some poems, like "Hawk and Moon," are informed by a deep, strong and-dare I say it?-womanly voice-womanly in the best of all possible senses-not frilly or pretty, but salt of the earth and everlasting-a female archetype who licks arms firmly and joyfully with the masculine archetype. Others, like "The Timber Ball," are sardonic, tossed over the shoulder with an intellectually flirty shrug. All can be read in her third chapbook, Notes from the Fire Tower"Three Poets on the Adirondacks, which also features Elaine Handley and Marilyn McCabe. It won the first literary award from the Adirondack Center for Writing 2004-2005 for best book of poetry. Though she claims poetry writing is more fun, her fiction is masterful. She deftly blends philosophy,language, and wit with intriguing characters and resonant themes, while expertly manipultaing the mechanics of plot to keep the story moving swiftly and elegantly. The main character of the novwel Between the Two falls in love with ehr married employer as her own childess marriage falls apart. On her contemporary search fo her Italian Catholic family's history in Assisi during the German Occupation, she is accompanied by two mysterious beings, "one a rope pullng me forward from my heart space; the other like hands pushing between my shoulder blades and at the base of my spine." You never find out if they are a figment of her imagination or supernatural beings. Shartle weaves Lorca-like themes of blocked female fertility, both physical and spiritual, through the novel, while the Assisi plot brings The DaVinci Code to mind. Another novel, The Philosopher's Child, springs to life out of the historical fact that Jean-Jacques Rousseau, an eighteenth century philosopher known for his treatise on how to care for and educate young men, actually gave all his illegitimate children away to the foundling home in Paris. Evincing Shartle's well-read, lightning intelligence, this novel imagines the life of a girl who survives abandonment and live to track her father down. She was a research and editorial assistant for John Houseman(Run Through, Front and Center) and for Dr. Phyllis Chesler (Woman and Madness). She was a board member and past president of the Saratoga Arts Council. She has served on the Saratoga Program for the Arts Funding Panel and is currently the Vice Chair for project and for individual artists' grants, and she is also the director of the Saratoga Poetry Zone. Even though she hasn't marketed her own writing with the same devotion she has shown to the work of others, you should keep an eye out for her inevitable future publications. --Lale Davidson
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| Wednesday, November 01, 2006 • 7 pm - 9 pm • Visual Arts Gallery • Dearlove Hall |
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| Marilyn McCabe: A Parachute of Words Marilyn McCabe moved to the Saratoga area in the mid-90s, leaving a tedious state job in Albany for a tenuous life in an old barn in the woods skirting the foothills of the Adirondack Mountains. The move was more than physical. It was a psychic break with much of what she knew-a steady income, cultural city life, and a tight group of worker-bee friends-to embrace the unknown future of sketchy paychecks, patchwork editing jobs, college admissions and hanging touch in a rural neighborhood crawling with writers and artists. Some of us would refer to this as free-fall, without sure knowledge of where the ripcord is and whether the parachute will engage. It did. The parachute was made of words-strong, fibrous words. Poetry came. Essays came. Stories and novels came- all billowing out around her. She has written several books for a young adult audience. her poetry has been accepted by Nimrod, Blueline, CQ, Poetry Motel and Bright Hill Press's Word Thursday's Anthology. With two other poets, Elaine Handley and Mary Sanders Shartle, she has co-produced two chapbooks of poetry-Three Poets on Themes of Love, Death and Sex and Notes from the Fire Tower:Three Poets on the Adirondacks, which won the first ever literary award for poetry in 2006 from the Adirondack Center for Writing. McCabe has given readings of her work at Caffe Lena in Saratoga Springs, at Tannery Pond in North Creek for Black Crow Network's Celebration of Women in the Adirondacks, and at Coffee Planet in Ballston Spa. She has read ehr essays on National Public Radio. She has published her work in regional newspapers and magazines including Adirondack Life. She also sings, and has performed in Albany and Saratoga. Sometimes she sings when she reads poems. She has a voice both poetic and musical that rocks the rafters. It's a vigorous voice that spans the distance from a recital hall to the mountaintops where she hikes, skis and cycles. You will hear in her work both the spirit of the out-of-doors as a place of raw physicality,spirituality, cosmic witness, geologic upheaval and confrontations with God and scripture. The Writers Project is delighted to introduce the work and words of Marilyn McCabe-not to be trifled with. Apocalypse One large hawk, the cold shadow of outstretched wings on a squirrel's back. Squirrel in full flight blends to root, then trunk, the slender limb of tree. Hawk misses, lights on higher limb, stretches a leg, flexes a talon, flies away. This is how the world almost ends again and again, in terrible beauty, in full expression of our stregnths. The threat of death brings out the best in us:fierce courage as we steel to the sound of wind through feathers, the heat of the hunters eye. --Marilyn McCabe --Mary Sanders Shartle
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| Wednesday, November 08, 2006 • 7 pm - 9 pm • Visual Arts Gallery • Dearlove Hall |
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| Crandell Public Library Presents the Fall 2006 Writers Series The following free public programs are co-sponsored by the Crandall Public Library Reference Department, the Friends of Crandell Library and the New York State Councilon the Arts (NYSCA). This is part of an ongoing collaborative effort between the Writers Project and Crandall Library to expand the audirence for these programs. |
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| Wednesday, October 11, 2006 • Mark Bowie - Adirondack Waters: Spirit of the Mountains • 7 pm • Library Auditorium • Crandall Library Thursday, October 12, 2006 • Fergus Bordewich - Bound for Canaan: The Underground Railroad and the War for the Soul of America • 7 pm • Library Auditorium • Crandall Library Sunday, October 22, 2006 • Rena Bernstein - Bitter Freedom: Memoirs of a Holocaust Survivor by Jafa Wallach The Chronicle Book Fair • TBA • Library Auditorium • Crandall Library Thursday, October 26, 2006 • Mary Jablonski - Poetry reading • 7 pm • Library Auditorium • Crandall Library Thursday, November 30, 2006 • Paul Pines - Poetry reading • 7 pm • Folklife Center • Crandall Library |
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