Center for the literary arts in New York State
Celebrating literary and arts
conversations at the University at Albany
Upcoming events
THE TRIAL OF THE CENTURY
7:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 23
NYS Museum -- Huxley Theatre
222 Madison Avenue
Albany NY 12230
Join us for a conversation with acclaimed historian Brenda Wineapple about her new examination of the Scopes “Monkey” Trial, Keeping the Faith: God, Democracy, and the Trial That Riveted a Nation (Aug. 2024).
“No subject possesses the minds of men like religious bigotry and hate, and these fires are being lighted today in America.” So said legendary attorney Clarence Darrow in 1925 as hundreds of people descended on the sleepy town of Dayton, Tennessee, for the trial of schoolteacher John T. Scopes, who was charged with breaking the law by teaching evolution to his biology class in a public school. Ken Burns called it, “Propulsive . . . a terrific story about a pivotal moment in our history.”
Cosponsored by the New York State Education Department’s Office of Cultural Education, the New York State Museum, UAlbany’s School of Criminal Justice’s “Justice and Multiculturalism in the 21st Century Project”, and The518.com
(Photo credit: Elena Seibert)
EARTH DAY CONVERSATION: THE NEW AGE OF SUPERSTORMS!
4:30 p.m. Thursday, April 24
University at Albany
Assembly Hall - Campus Center (2nd floor)
1400 Washington Avenue, Albany NY 12222
Porter Fox, climate and travel writer, is the author of the new book, Category Five: Superstorms and the Warming Oceans That Feed Them (Sept. 2024).
The book follows sailors and scientists around the world as they track and study sudden warming in our planet’s oceans and resulting amplification of hurricanes, typhoons, cyclones, and freak weather on a scale never seen before.
Publishers Weekly said, “By combining gripping accounts of sailing voyages through raging storms with fascinating background on how climate scientists are studying extreme weather, Fox delivers a report that’s as entertaining as it is informative.” His previous books include The Last Winter (2021) and Northland (2018).
Cosponsored by UAlbany’s Office of Sustainability, Department of Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences, the New York State Mesonet, and the Honors College in observance of Earth Day.
(Photo credit: Sara Fox)
FILM SCREENING AND DISCUSSION
7 p.m. Tuesday, April 29
Page Hall - University at Albany Downtown Campus
135 Western Avenue, Albany NY 12203
(United States, 2024, 52 minutes, color)
Post-film Q&A with "Ultimate Citizens" director Francine Strickwerda (additional speakers to be determined)
Jamshid is an Iranian who came to study in 1970’s America, and due to the Revolution, never went “home.” As a guidance counselor in Seattle Public Schools, Jamshid’s best work takes place on the playing field with “his kids,” the children of refugees and immigrants. Their parents are in the grips of their own struggles to make a living and a home in a strange land. Mr. Jamshid is the charismatic, fiery, funny human with a Frisbee in hand, who shows that love wins on the field, off the field, at home with family, or boldly forging a new community, in a new country - one kid, chicken, ultra-endurance race, and friend at a time.
Organized and sponsored by Albany Ultimate Disc Association, RISSE (Refugee & Immigrant Support Services of Emmaus, Inc.), and the NYS Writers Institute.
Co-sponsored by UAlbany’s Rockefeller College of Public Affairs & Policy, Department of Political Science, Department of Public Administration and Policy, Center for Women in Government & Civil Society, School of Social Welfare, College of Integrated Health Sciences, Center for International Education & Global Strategy, and The Institute on Immigrant Integration Research and Policy.
7:30 p.m. Saturday, May 3
LITERATURE IN PERFORMANCE
Main Theatre, UAlbany Performing Arts Center
Advance tickets: $15 general public • $10 students, seniors & UAlbany faculty-staff.
Day of show tickets: $20 general public • $15 students, seniors & UAlbany faculty-staff. For tickets, visit the UAlbany PAC box office.
See map.
The hit public radio series Selected Shorts returns to UAlbany for an evening of captivating fiction that explores precious things that appear and disappear from our lives. Host Jill Eikenberry ("L.A. Law") is joined by actors Brandon J. Dirden ("The Americans"), and Campbell Scott ("Billions") to perform stories that weave together moments of longing, discovery, and the magic that happens when what is lost finds its way back.
Our greatest actors transport us through the magic of fiction, one short story at a time. Sometimes funny. Always moving. Selected Shorts connects you to the world with a rich diversity of voices from literature, film, theater, and comedy. Actors subject to change.
A MOTHER’S DAY SPECIAL:
SEEKING WORK-LIFE BALANCE IN SCIENCE AND MOTHERHOOD
4:30 p.m. Thursday, May 8
University at Albany
Multi-Purpose Room, Campus Center West
1400 Washington Avenue, Albany NY 12222
Marlene Belfort, renowned biochemist and UAlbany professor, is the author of a new memoir, Mommy, Can Boys Also be Doctors? A Message to Young Scientists and Other Humans (May 2025).
The memoir explores the often-daunting struggle to find happiness, meaning, and simply enough minutes in the day to be a leader in scientific research and — at the same time — a loving mother to three sons. She is extremely candid about her difficulties, including two lengthy bouts of major, late-onset depression, one in her fifties, the other in her seventies.
Belfort is a pioneer in the study of introns— non-coding segments that make up 25% of the human genome. Once dismissed as “junk” DNA, introns have been discovered to have a wide range of important functions. Belfort is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
Cosponsored by UAlbany’s RNA Institute and the Department of Biological Sciences.
Spring 2025 season of events
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35 events
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6 film screenings
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1 film festival
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1 staged reading of a play-in-progress
Join our email list to receive announcements and updates.
NOTE: At each event -- excluding the film screenings and theater-related events -- books will be for sale and a signing will follow the conversation.
FILM SCREENING
7 p.m. Friday, January 24
Page Hall - University at Albany Downtown Campus
135 Western Avenue, Albany NY 12203
(United States, 1982, 93 minutes, color, Rated R)
Directed by Susan Seidelman
Starring Susan Berman, Brad Rijn, Richard Hell
An enduring cult favorite, Susan Seidelman’s breakout film follows the exploits of a restless young woman in her pursuit of punk rock stardom. In 1982, it became the first U.S. indie film to be nominated for the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.
Join us for a conversation with director Susan Seidelman at the Albany Film Festival on Saturday, March 29, following a screening of her 1985 hit film, "Desperately Seeking Susan," starring Rosanna Arquette and Madonna— exactly 40 years to the date of its release.
(Photo credit: Michael Lionstar)
THE CREATIVE LIFE
7 p.m. Wednesday, January 29
Conversation/Q&A with WAMC’s Joe Donahue
The Linda, WAMC’s Performing Arts Studio
339 Central Ave, Albany NY 12206
Registration required: https://mcinerney.eventbrite.com
Jay McInerney wrote the decade-defining novel of the 1980s, Bright Lights, Big City (1984), the story of an ambitious young man adrift in New York City’s cocaine-fueled “yuppie” scene.
Revisiting the novel 25 years later, Sam Tanenhaus said in the New York Times Book Review, "Each generation needs its Manhattan novel, and many ache to write it. But it was McInerney who succeeded." His other novels include Story of My Life (1988), Brightness Falls (1992), The Good Life (2006), and Bright, Precious Days (2016). A noted wine columnist and author of three books on wine, McInerney has been called “the best wine writer in America” (Salon).
Major support for The Creative Life is provided by the University at Albany Foundation.
(Photo credit: Deborah Lopez)
SMALL TOWN HORROR
4:30 p.m. Thursday, January 30
University at Albany
Assembly Hall - Campus Center (2nd floor)
1400 Washington Avenue, Albany NY 12222
Erin E. Adams is the author of Jackal (2022), the story of a young Black woman who returns— reluctantly— to her very white hometown in central Pennsylvania to attend a friend’s wedding. Meanwhile, something evil waits for her in the woods— something that has been preying on Johnstown’s Black girls for a very long time.
The novel was a finalist for every major prize in the Horror genre, including the Edgar, Bram Stoker and Shirley Jackson Awards. Cosmopolitan named it one of the “Best Horror Novels of All Time.”
(Photo credit: Jack Mahoney)
Dennis Mahoney is the author of Our Winter Monster (Jan. 2025), set in a ski village in Upstate New York. Seeking a fun getaway, a couple in a troubled relationship loses their way driving in a snowstorm. Kendra Book, the village sheriff, sets out to find them— following a trail of crushed cars, wrecked buildings, and mangled bodies.
A Troy-based horror writer, Mahoney is also the author of Fellow Mortals (2013), a Booklist Top Ten Debut; Bell Weather (2015), an Indie Next pick; and Ghostlove (2020).
Cosponsored by the Writing and Critical Inquiry Program (WCI) and the Honors College.
THE EXTRAORDINARY LIFE AND “AFTERLIFE” OF ANNE FRANK
4:30 p.m. Tuesday, February 4
University at Albany
Multi-Purpose Room - Campus Center West
1400 Washington Avenue, Albany NY 12222
Ruth Franklin, acclaimed biographer, is the author of The Many Lives of Anne Frank (Jan. 2025). The book explores the transformation of Anne Frank (1929-1945) from ordinary teenager to cultural icon, shedding new light on the young woman whose diary—translated into more than 70 languages— is the most widely read work of literature to arise from the Holocaust.
Franklin received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life (2016), “a feminist reappraisal of a tortured genius of American gothic” (The Guardian).
Cosponsored by UAlbany’s Writing & Critical Inquiry Program (WCI) and the Jewish Federation of Northeastern New York.
BALANCING ON THE BRINK OF CHAOS: AMERICA’S FOREIGN POLICY FUTURE
(Photo credit John Stanmeyer)
7:30 p.m. Wednesday, February 5
Conversation/Q&A
Page Hall - University at Albany Downtown Campus
135 Western Avenue, Albany NY 12203
Robert D. Kaplan’s newest book is Waste Land: A World in Permanent Crisis (Jan. 2025), an urgent exploration of a world in which every regional disaster threatens to become a global conflict— featuring lessons from history that may help us stop the spiral. His 23 bestselling books on foreign affairs and travel include The Loom of Time (2023), The Revenge of Geography (2012), The Coming Anarchy (1994), and Balkan Ghosts (1993). For three decades he reported on foreign affairs for The Atlantic. Foreign Policy twice named him one of the world's "Top 100 Global Thinkers."
(Photo credit: Casey Baugh)
Bartle Bull is the author of Land Between the Rivers: A 5,000-Year History of Iraq (2024), an epic, five millennia history of the region between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers— the birthplace of civilization, and an essential crossroads between East and West up until today. Bull has reported from the Middle East for the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Daily Telegraph, Foreign Policy, Die Welt, and other publications. He is the only western journalist to have been embedded with the Shia militia known as the Mahdi Army in Iraq.
Cosponsored by UAlbany’s Center for International Education and Global Strategy (CIEGS) and Student Fulbright Program; UAlbany Center for Global Health; the Fulbright Association- Eastern New York Chapter; Returned Peace Corps Volunteers of Northeastern New York; and the International Center of the Capital Region (ICCR) at HVCC. In 2024,
UAlbany was named “One of the Top 10 Fulbright Producing Institutions” by the U.S. State Department.
FILM SCREENING
7 p.m. Friday, February 7
Page Hall - University at Albany Downtown Campus
135 Western Avenue, Albany NY 12203
(United States, 2022, 54 minutes, color) Directed by Nicole London and Stanley Nelson.
This Maryland Public Television documentary from Stanley Nelson’s Firelight Films explores the inspiring story of how a man born into slavery transformed himself into one of the most prominent statesmen and influential voices for democracy in America. Actor Wendell Pierce provides the voice of Douglass.
Join us for a conversation with co-director Nicole London at the Albany Film Festival on Saturday, March 29th, following a screening of her film, "Harriet Tubman: Visions of Freedom (2021), also co-directed with major American documentary filmmaker Stanley Nelson.
LANDMARK OF LATINO POETRY
4:30 p.m. Tuesday, February 11
University at Albany
Multi-Purpose Room - Campus Center West
1400 Washington Avenue, Albany NY 12222
Rigoberto González, award-winning poet and director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Rutgers Newark, is the editor of a major new anthology, Latino Poetry (Sept. 2024), from the Library of America. On Good Morning America, National Book Award-winner Elizabeth Acevedo called it “a landmark literary feat,” and said, “This collection is as much literary riot as it is reference text.”
His most recent collection is To the Boy Who Was Night: Poems, Selected and New (2023), an autobiographical meditation on migration, masculinity, sexuality, isolation and the aging body. Toi Derricotte said, “In this stunning collection, a brilliant mind shapes a magical landscape from the ruins.”
Cosponsored by UAlbany’s Writing & Critical Inquiry Program (WCI), and the Department of Africana, Latin American, Caribbean and Latinx Studies (ALACLS).
A VALENTINE’S DAY SPECIAL
4:30 p.m. Thursday, February 13
University at Albany
Multi-Purpose Room - Campus Center West
1400 Washington Avenue, Albany NY 12222
Tony Tulathimutte, fiction writer and humorist, is the author of Rejection (2024), an acclaimed story collection that explores the many ways of being rejected— by lovers, friends, housemates, society, even oneself. Longlisted for the National Book Award for Fiction, the book was also named a New York Times Best Book of the Year.
Writing in the New York Times Magazine, Giles Harvey said, “A master comedian with a virtuoso prose style has produced an audacious, original and highly disturbing book . . . an incandescent satire.” New York magazine called his earlier book, Private Citizens (2016), “The first great millennial novel.”
Cosponsored by UAlbany’s Writing & Critical Inquiry Program (WCI), the English Department’s Creative Writing Program and Young Writers Project, and the Honors College.
(Photo credit: Clayton Cubitt)
FILM SCREENING
7 p.m. Friday, February 14
Page Hall - University at Albany Downtown Campus
135 Western Avenue, Albany NY 12203
(Poland, 2023, 114 minutes, animated, color, Rated R) Directed by DK Welchman and Hugh Welchman. Starring Kamila Urzedowska, Robert Gulaczyk, Miroslaw Baka.
Poland’s official entry at the 2024 Academy Awards, "The Peasants" is an extraordinary, hand-painted animated film that has astonished audiences around the globe. In a 19th century village, a free-spirited young woman finds herself caught between the desires of the richest farmer, his eldest son, and other leading men.
Join us on March 29th at the Albany Film Festival for a virtual conversation with Sean M. Bobbitt, the film’s producer, based in Poland. An American former Peace Corps volunteer who served in Poland (1991-3), he has lived in Poland for the past 34 years. His previous films as producer include the Oscar-nominated animated feature, "Loving Vincent" (2017), the world’s first fully hand-painted film.
Cosponsored by IELP, UAlbany’s Intensive English Language Program.
UALBANY ANNUAL MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. CELEBRATION
(Photo credit: Sameer A. Khan)
7 p.m. Wednesday, February 19
University at Albany
Campus Center West West Auditorium
1400 Washington Avenue, Albany NY 12222
While this event is free and open to the public,
One of the nation’s most prominent scholars, Eddie Glaude, Jr. is an author, political commentator, public intellectual and passionate educator who examines the complex dynamics of the American experience.
Glaude’s latest book, We Are the Leaders We Have Been Looking For, shows how ordinary Black Americans can shake off their reliance on a small group of professional politicians and pursue self-cultivation and grassroots movements to achieve a more just and perfect democracy.
FILM SCREENING
7 p.m. Friday, February 21
Page Hall - University at Albany Downtown Campus
135 Western Avenue, Albany NY 12203
(U.S., 1994, 93 minutes, color, Rated R) Directed by George Huang. Starring Frank Whaley, Kevin Spacey, Michael Forbes
Frank Whaley, UAlbany alum (B.A., Class of ’87) stars as the all-suffering underling of “the boss from Hell”— a Hollywood mogul played by Kevin Spacey. Whaley excels as a naïve young man who accepts humiliation and abuse to “pay his dues” and advance his career in the movie business.
Join us for Frank Whaley’s visit to the Albany Film Festival on Saturday, March 29th. A ubiquitous character actor, Whaley is known for significant supporting roles in "Pulp Fiction," "The Doors," "Field of Dreams," "JFK,", "Ironweed," "The Freshman," and other major films.
WHAT WOULD FRIDA DO?
4:30 p.m. Thursday, February 27
University at Albany
Standish Room, Science Library (3rd floor)
1400 Washington Avenue, Albany NY 12222
Arianna Davis is the editorial director of the online presence of NBC’s "Today" show, overseeing news and lifestyle features. She was previously senior director of editorial and strategy at Oprah Daily. A writer who explores Black and Latina subjects, she is the author of What Would Frida Do? A Guide to Living Boldly (2020), a motivational book inspired by the life of artist and cultural icon Frida Kahlo. Instyle, Boston Globe, and Redbook named it a best gift book of the year. The Esquire reviewer called it “luminous” and said “Self-help meets biography in an inspiring narrative….”
Cosponsored by UAlbany’s Writing & Critical Inquiry Program (WCI), the Department of Africana, Latin American, Caribbean and Latinx Studies (ALACLS), Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies (WGSS), and the Honors College.
4:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 5
University at Albany
Campus Center West Auditorium
1400 Washington Avenue, Albany NY 12222
Nathan Grayson is one of America’s best-known video gaming journalists, and the author of Stream Big : The Triumphs and Turmoils of Twitch and the Stars Behind the Scenes (Feb. 2025)— the definitive story of Twitch, the Amazon-owned livestream platform that has revolutionized technology, entertainment, business, and pop culture. With 2.5 million viewers at any given moment, Twitch is the #1 live stream platform, and often well ahead of Fox and CNN for audience share during primetime. Stream Big follows the careers of nine streamers who began as obscure video gamers and became major internet celebrities. A former reporter at The Washington Post, Grayson is a founder and reporter at the new tech and video game site, Aftermath.
Cosponsored by the new Game Design & Development related programs of UAlbany’s Information Sciences and Technology Department in the College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security and Cybersecurity (CEHC), in partnership with the NYS Writers Institute.
UALBANY’S NEW GAME DESIGN MAJOR PRESENTS…
NEW EVENT!
Eric Puchner
4:30 p.m. Thursday, March 6
University at Albany
Standish Room - Science Library
1400 Washington Avenue, Albany NY 12222
Eric Puchner is the author of Dream State (2025), the newly-named Oprah’s Book Club pick for March 2025. The novel tells the story of a bride-to-be, her fiancé, and his best friend over the course of a single summer— and the unexpected impact of those events on the characters and their families over a 50-year span. Oprah called it, “An exquisite examination of the most important relationships we have in our lives— love and marriage, of course, and friendships, and how life can turn out very differently than we expected.”
Puchner chairs The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. His previous books include the story collection, Music Through the Floor, a finalist for the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award; the novel Model Home, which was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award in Fiction; and a second short story collection, Last Day on Earth.
FILM SCREENING
7 p.m. Friday, March 7
Page Hall - University at Albany Downtown Campus
135 Western Avenue, Albany NY 12203
(United States, 1995, 128 minutes, color, Rated R) Directed by Spike Lee. Starring Mekhi Phifer, Harvey Keitel, Delroy Lindo, John Turturro
Spike Lee directed and co-wrote the screenplay of this influential urban crime drama with Richard Price, based on Price’s 1992 novel. Young drug pushers in the projects of Brooklyn live hard dangerous lives, trapped between their drug bosses and the detectives out to stop them.
Join us for a conversation with major American crime novelist Richard Price on Tuesday, April 1st at 4:30 p.m. He will present his new novel, Lazarus Man (2024), about the aftermath of the collapse of a tenement building in Harlem.
Cosponsored by the School of Criminal Justice’s “Justice and Multiculturalism in the 21st Century Project.”
THE VIEW FROM CENTER-RIGHT
7:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 11
Page Hall - University at Albany Downtown Campus
135 Western Avenue, Albany NY 12203
George Pataki, 53rd Governor of the State of New York, was one of the longest-serving governors in the state’s history.
First elected in 1994, he was reelected in 1998 and 2002, leaving office in 2006. An advocate for small government, tax cuts, and the death penalty, he also prioritized the environment and open space preservation, protecting more than one million acres of wildland and farmland, and championing renewable energy and environmental conservation policies.
Pataki first entered the public eye as the youngest mayor ever of Peekskill, his hometown in New York's Hudson River Valley, before serving as a state representative and senator.
Max Boot is the author of the new biography, Reagan: His Life and Legend (2024), named a Best Book of the Year in the New York Times, Washington Post, NPR and The Economist. General David Petraeus said, “This is the definitive Reagan biography that so many of us have been waiting for.”
Son of the Midwest, movie star, and mesmerizing politician ― America’s 40th president comes to three-dimensional life in this gripping and profoundly revisionist biography. An historian and foreign-policy analyst, Boot is the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick senior fellow for national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and a columnist for The Washington Post.
(Photo credit: Cynthia Van Elk)
SEEKING THE NEXT LIONEL MESSI
4:30 p.m. Thursday, March 13
University at Albany
Multi-Purpose Room - Campus Center West
1400 Washington Avenue, Albany NY 12222
Joseph O’Neill is an acclaimed Irish novelist of Irish and Turkish descent. His new novel is Godwin (2024), a New York Times “Best Book of the Year” that recounts the odyssey of two brothers crossing the world in search of an African soccer prodigy who might change their fortunes. The Boston Globe called it, “a medieval Grail quest reimagined for the 21st century.”
O’Neill is also the author of Netherland (2008), a PEN/Faulkner Award-winning novel about a Staten Island cricket team made up of recent immigrants. The New York Times’s Dwight Garner called it, “the wittiest, angriest, most exacting and most desolate work of fiction we’ve yet had about life in New York and London after the World Trade Center fell.”
Cosponsored by UAlbany’s Writing & Critical Inquiry Program (WCI), the English Department’s Creative Writing Program and Young Writers Project, and the Honors College
(Photo credit: Michael Lionstar)
FILM SCREENING
7 p.m. Friday, March 14
Page Hall - University at Albany Downtown Campus
135 Western Avenue, Albany NY 12203
(United States, 1976, 139 minutes, color, Rated R) Directed by Frank Pierson. Starring Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson
A rock musical written by the unlikely, but prolific screenwriting team of Joan Didion and her husband John Gregory Dunne— two of the best-known literary nonfiction writers and “New Journalists” of the 1960s and ‘70s — "A Star Is Born" earned four Oscar nominations, winning “Best Song” for “Evergreen.”
Join us for a conversation with New York Times film critic Alissa Wilkinson, who grew up in the Capital Region, presenting her new book about Joan Didion’s adventures in Hollywood, We Tell Ourselves Stories: Joan Didion and the American Dream Machine (March 2025), at the Albany Film Festival on Saturday, March 29th.
FROM “FRESH PRINCE” TO SWEET BLACKBERRY PRESS
7 p.m. Wednesday, March 19
The Alice Moore Black Arts and Cultural Center
135 South Pearl St., Albany NY 12202
Karyn Parsons, a multi-talented creative artist, starred as Hilary Banks, Will Smith’s shopping-and-money-obsessed cousin, on the NBC sitcom, "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" from 1990 to 1996.
An author of books for children, she is the founder of Sweet Blackberry, a small press whose mission is to bring little-known stories of Black achievement to young readers. Her middle grade novel, How High the Moon (2019), recounts the challenges of a 12-year-old girl living in the Jim Crow South in 1944. Jacqueline Woodson called it, “historical and timely, captivating, and lovely.” Her newest book, Clouds Over California (2023), is about a girl coming of age in 1970s Los Angeles, during a time of unrest and social change. Parsons will spend much of her day visiting with middle school students in Albany.
Major support and funding provided by the Carl E. Touhey Foundation.
A RIVETING STORY OF AMERICAN INGENUITY
Join Paul Grondahl and the Historic Albany Foundation for a lively discussion of Wedding of the Waters: The Erie Canal and the Making of a Great Nation by Peter L. Bernstein.
About the book:
The history of the Erie Canal is a riveting story of American ingenuity. A great project that Thomas Jefferson judged to be “little short of madness,” and that others compared with going to the moon, soon turned into one of the most successful and influential public investments in American history.
Featuring a rich cast of characters that includes political visionaries like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Martin van Buren; the canal’s most powerful champions, Governor DeWitt Clinton and Gouverneur Morris; and a huge platoon of Irish and American diggers, Wedding of the Waters reveals that the twenty-first-century themes of urbanization, economic growth, and globalization can all be traced to the first great macroengineering venture of American history.
A.I. AND SOCIETY CONVERSATION SERIES:
SPYING ON PEOPLE’S DREAMS
4:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 25
University at Albany
Multi-Purpose Room Campus Center West
1400 Washington Avenue, Albany NY 12222
In conversation with UAlbany Political Science Professor Virginia Eubanks, author of Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor (2018)
Laila Lalami, major contemporary author, will present her new dystopian sci-fi novel, The Dream Hotel (2025), about a near-future world in which the surveillance state uses technology to spy on dreams. Jennifer Egan called it, “A gripping, Kafkaesque foray into an all-too-plausible future where data collection penetrates interior life.”
Lalami is the bestselling author of five books, including The Moor’s Account, winner of the Arab American Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and The Other Americans, a finalist for the National Book Award. NPR called her a “maestra of literary fiction.” Her acclaimed nonfiction book, Conditional Citizens: On Belonging in America (2020), explores the struggles of new immigrants to achieve the full rights of citizenship— drawing on her own experiences as a female, Muslim Moroccan-American.
(Photo credit Beowulf Sheehan)
Cosponsored by the AI Plus Institute, UAlbany's hub for interdisciplinary AI research. For more events, visit www.albany.edu/ai-plus/institute. Also cosponsored by the Honors College and the School of Criminal Justice’s “Justice and Multiculturalism in the 21st Century Project.”
Saturday, March 29
University at Albany
Campus Center West
1400 Washington Avenue, Albany NY 12222
Featuring in-depth panel discussions and how-to workshops with writers, screenwriters, filmmakers and film industry professionals, film critics and authors who have adapted their books into films. The Albany Film Festival provides an intensive immersion into the intersection between writing and filmmaking. Stay tuned for more updates.
A CELEBRATION OF STORYTELLING ON SCREEN
27th ANNUAL BURIAN LECTURE
7:30 p.m. Monday, March 31
University at Albany
Studio Theatre, UAlbany Performing Arts Center
1400 Washington Avenue, Albany NY 12222
(Photo credit: Gregory Costanzo)
Lynn Nottage is one of the most celebrated playwrights of her generation. Her work focuses frequently on the struggles and everyday experiences of working-class people— particularly Black people seeking the American Dream. She is the only woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Drama twice: in 2009, for her play Ruined, and in 2017, for her play Sweat.
Nottage is the recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship and was included in TIME magazine's 2019 list of the 100 Most Influential People. NPR’s Michel Martin said, “Nottage has been called a modern-day Zora Neale Hurston, whose dialogue and ability to convey character have shed dramatic light on experiences across the African Diaspora.”
Presented by the UAlbany Theatre Program and the Jarka and Grayce Burian Endowment in collaboration with the NYS Writers Institute
THE BARD OF URBAN STREET LIFE
4:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 1
University at Albany
Multi-Purpose Room, Campus Center West
1400 Washington Avenue, Albany NY 12222
Richard Price, celebrated author of Clockers (adapted as a movie directed by Spike Lee), and a key screenwriter for HBO’s "The Wire," is a renowned author of gritty crime fiction set in the devastated neighborhoods of America’s cities.
His new novel, Lazarus Man (Nov. 2024), recounts the aftermath of a catastrophe in Harlem: a five-story tenement collapses into a hill of rubble, pancaking the cars parked in front and coating the street with a thick layer of ash. As the city’s rescue services and media outlets respond, the surrounding neighborhood descends into chaos. Publishers Weekly said, “Price once again proves he’s the bard of New York City street life.”
Cosponsored by UAlbany’s Writing & Critical Inquiry Program (WCI) and the English Department’s Creative Writing Program and Young Writers Project, and the School of Criminal Justice’s “Justice and Multiculturalism in the 21st Century Project.”
(Photo credit: Lorraine Adams)
(Photo credit: Jesse Sutton-Hough)
THE ARTS OF TRANSLATION AND POETRY
Wednesday, April 2
Noon – Living in Languages 7th Annual Colloquium Keynote Address
Lecture Center 06
Register: https://forms.gle/VG7gGZxN6t3DoFVr7
7:30 p.m. – Poetry reading, Conversation / Q&A
Multi-Purpose Room, Campus Center West
University at Albany
1400 Washington Avenue Albany NY 12222
Kazim Ali, UAlbany alum (B.A. ‘93, M.A. ’95), is an award-winning poet, translator, novelist, essayist, founder of the nonprofit press Nightboat Books, and Professor of Creative Writing at UC San Diego. The title of his keynote address is “Making America Monstrous Again: Queerness, Community, and the Problems of Translation in Frankenstein.”
At 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 2, Ali will present his most recent collection, Sukun: New and Selected Poems (2023). The Publishers Weekly reviewer said, “This dazzling retrospective showcases Ali’s multifaceted voice in poems of lyric daring. Ali's linguistic interests are seemingly infinite― from the Vedas to the roots of English and Arabic― but common threads reach across the poems, including migration, prayer, and the creative act itself.”
Cosponsored by Living in Languages, a collaboration of the Departments of English, and Languages, Literatures and Cultures.
FILM SCREENING AND DISCUSSION
5 p.m. Friday, April 4
Lecture Center 5 - University at Albany
1400 Washington Avenue, Albany NY 12222
(Algeria, 2024, 1 hour 30 minutes, black and white)
Directed by Abdenour Zahzah
The first feature film about Frantz Fanon, the French Afro-Caribbean writer -- author of Les Damnés de la Terre (The Wretched of the Earth) -- from the island of Martinique, a psychiatrist, civil rights activist, and one of the most influential postcolonial thinkers.
Students introduce the screening. A Q&A via Zoom with the director Abdenour Zahzah will follow.
Sponsored by The Postcolonial Lab, part of the Albany Institute for Advanced Study (College of Arts and Sciences), the Department of History, the Department of Languages, Literatures and Culture, and the NYS Writers Institute.
2025 ANNUAL MCKINNEY CONTEST GUEST SPEAKER
7 p.m. Wednesday, April 9
Reading and McKinney Writing Contest Awards,The Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies (CBIS),
Rensselaer (RPI), 110 8th Street, Troy NY 12180
Lan Samantha Chang is a prize-winning fiction writer and director of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
Her most recent novel is The Family Chao (2022), about a noisy, bickering Chinese-American family, the owners of a restaurant in a fictional Wisconsin town. When patriarch Leo Chao is found dead― presumably murdered― the family attracts a great deal of unwanted attention. Winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the novel was named a “Best Book of the Year” by Vogue and NPR. The Guardian said, "One of the many pleasures of The Family Chao is the way the novel dramatises the gap between how a family wants to be seen, and its messier inner realities.”
Sponsored by Rensselaer’s Annual McKinney Writing Contest and Reading in partnership with the NYS Writers Institute.
For more information, contact McKinney@rpi.edu
(Photo credit:
Ife Oluwa Nihinlola)
YOUNG VOTERS: WHERE WILL THEY TAKE US?
4:30 p.m. Thursday, April 10
University at Albany
Multi-Purpose Room, Campus Center West
1400 Washington Avenue, Albany NY 12222
(Photo credit: Brad Farwell)
Raina Lipsitz is the author of The Rise of a New Left: How Young Radicals Are Shaping the Future of American Politics (2022), the first book to examine the leading role of young Americans in the progressive movement. Publishers Weekly called it, “An insider's account of how young progressives are influencing American politics and culture.” Kirkus called it, “A well-reported introduction to a growing, controversial movement among the younger electorate.”
A journalist who writes about politics and culture, Lipsitz contributes articles to The Atlantic, Nation, New Republic, and other publications.
(Photo credit: Rachel Hine)
Tina Nguyen is the author of The Maga Diaries: My Surreal Adventures Inside the Right-Wing (And How I Got Out) (2024), about her early adventures with right-wing student activists, young Breitbart writers, COVID deniers, the apocalyptic Patriot Church, and the MAGA movement’s recruiting machine. Brian Stelter called it, “a must-read.”
A former employee of rising journalist Tucker Carlson, Nguyen is currently a senior reporter for The Verge specifically covering the collision between technology and MAGA. She was previously a national correspondent for Puck.
Cosponsored by the Writing and Critical Inquiry Program (WCI) and the Honors College.
A.I. AND SOCIETY CONVERSATION SERIES:
THE RACE TO CASH IN ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
4:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 15
University at Albany
Multi-Purpose Room, Campus Center West
1400 Washington Avenue, Albany NY 12222
Gary Rivlin is the author of AI Valley: Microsoft, Google, and the Trillion-Dollar Race to Cash In on Artificial Intelligence (March 2025), an exclusive, behind-the-scenes account of the world of AI development in Silicon Valley.
Over the course of more than a year, Rivlin shadowed LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, whom the Wall Street Journal once called, “the most connected person in Silicon Valley.” Through Hoffman, Reid enjoyed access to numerous founders and venture capitalists during this pivotal moment in the evolution of AI technology. A Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative reporter, Rivlin has been writing about technology since the mid-1990s and the rise of the Internet.
Cosponsored by the UAlbany Honors College and the AI Plus Institute, UAlbany's hub for interdisciplinary AI research. For more events, visit www.albany.edu/ai-plus/institute.
(Photo credit: Kathy Ryan)
AUTHORS THEATRE: AN ADAPTATION-IN-PROGRESS
7:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 16
University at Albany
Arena Theatre, UAlbany Performing Arts Center
1400 Washington Avenue, Albany NY 12222
Note: Marcus Gardley, previously scheduled for Authors Theatre, is unable to attend due to to a scheduling conflict.
What happens in Naples, stays in Naples. It’s Carnival time in the Italian port town, and two sisters from Spain hit the streets: one hoping to marry her true love, and the other looking for a man (any man) and a way out of the nunnery. Enter a band of roving English cavaliers and let the games begin, in this Restoration comedy by Aphra Behn, the first female professional writer of the English language.
Join us for a staged reading of The Rover -- a new adaptation-in-progress -- by Kathryn Walat, directed by Ryan Garbayo, and featuring performers from the UAlbany Theatre Program. A Q&A will follow, led by Richard Barney of UAlbany’s English Department.
THE TRIAL OF THE CENTURY
7:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 23
NYS Museum -- Huxley Theatre
222 Madison Avenue
Albany NY 12230
Join us for a conversation with acclaimed historian Brenda Wineapple about her new examination of the Scopes “Monkey” Trial, Keeping the Faith: God, Democracy, and the Trial That Riveted a Nation (Aug. 2024).
“No subject possesses the minds of men like religious bigotry and hate, and these fires are being lighted today in America.” So said legendary attorney Clarence Darrow in 1925 as hundreds of people descended on the sleepy town of Dayton, Tennessee, for the trial of schoolteacher John T. Scopes, who was charged with breaking the law by teaching evolution to his biology class in a public school. Ken Burns called it, “Propulsive . . . a terrific story about a pivotal moment in our history.”
Cosponsored by the New York State Education Department’s Office of Cultural Education, the New York State Museum, UAlbany’s School of Criminal Justice’s “Justice and Multiculturalism in the 21st Century Project”, and The518.com
(Photo credit: Elena Seibert)
EARTH DAY CONVERSATION: THE NEW AGE OF SUPERSTORMS!
4:30 p.m. Thursday, April 24
University at Albany
Assembly Hall - Campus Center (2nd floor)
1400 Washington Avenue, Albany NY 12222
Porter Fox, climate and travel writer, is the author of the new book, Category Five: Superstorms and the Warming Oceans That Feed Them (Sept. 2024).
The book follows sailors and scientists around the world as they track and study sudden warming in our planet’s oceans and resulting amplification of hurricanes, typhoons, cyclones, and freak weather on a scale never seen before.
Publishers Weekly said, “By combining gripping accounts of sailing voyages through raging storms with fascinating background on how climate scientists are studying extreme weather, Fox delivers a report that’s as entertaining as it is informative.” His previous books include The Last Winter (2021) and Northland (2018).
Cosponsored by UAlbany’s Office of Sustainability, Department of Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences, the New York State Mesonet, and the Honors College in observance of Earth Day.
(Photo credit: Sara Fox)
FILM SCREENING AND DISCUSSION
7 p.m. Tuesday, April 29
Page Hall - University at Albany Downtown Campus
135 Western Avenue, Albany NY 12203
(United States, 2024, 52 minutes, color)
Post-film Q&A with "Ultimate Citizens" director Francine Strickwerda (additional speakers to be determined)
Jamshid is an Iranian who came to study in 1970’s America, and due to the Revolution, never went “home.” As a guidance counselor in Seattle Public Schools, Jamshid’s best work takes place on the playing field with “his kids,” the children of refugees and immigrants. Their parents are in the grips of their own struggles to make a living and a home in a strange land. Mr. Jamshid is the charismatic, fiery, funny human with a Frisbee in hand, who shows that love wins on the field, off the field, at home with family, or boldly forging a new community, in a new country - one kid, chicken, ultra-endurance race, and friend at a time.
Organized and sponsored by Albany Ultimate Disc Association, RISSE (Refugee & Immigrant Support Services of Emmaus, Inc.), and the NYS Writers Institute.
Co-sponsored by UAlbany’s Rockefeller College of Public Affairs & Policy, Department of Political Science, Department of Public Administration and Policy, Center for Women in Government & Civil Society, School of Social Welfare, College of Integrated Health Sciences, Center for International Education & Global Strategy, and The Institute on Immigrant Integration Research and Policy.
7:30 p.m. Saturday, May 3
LITERATURE IN PERFORMANCE
Main Theatre, UAlbany Performing Arts Center
Advance tickets: $15 general public • $10 students, seniors & UAlbany faculty-staff.
Day of show tickets: $20 general public • $15 students, seniors & UAlbany faculty-staff. For tickets, visit the UAlbany PAC box office.
See map.
The hit public radio series Selected Shorts returns to UAlbany for an evening of captivating fiction that explores precious things that appear and disappear from our lives. Host Jill Eikenberry ("L.A. Law") is joined by actors Brandon J. Dirden ("The Americans"), and Campbell Scott ("Billions") to perform stories that weave together moments of longing, discovery, and the magic that happens when what is lost finds its way back.
Our greatest actors transport us through the magic of fiction, one short story at a time. Sometimes funny. Always moving. Selected Shorts connects you to the world with a rich diversity of voices from literature, film, theater, and comedy. Actors subject to change.
A MOTHER’S DAY SPECIAL:
SEEKING WORK-LIFE BALANCE IN SCIENCE AND MOTHERHOOD
4:30 p.m. Thursday, May 8
University at Albany
Multi-Purpose Room, Campus Center West
1400 Washington Avenue, Albany NY 12222
Marlene Belfort, renowned biochemist and UAlbany professor, is the author of a new memoir, Mommy, Can Boys Also be Doctors? A Message to Young Scientists and Other Humans (May 2025).
The memoir explores the often-daunting struggle to find happiness, meaning, and simply enough minutes in the day to be a leader in scientific research and — at the same time — a loving mother to three sons. She is extremely candid about her difficulties, including two lengthy bouts of major, late-onset depression, one in her fifties, the other in her seventies.
Belfort is a pioneer in the study of introns— non-coding segments that make up 25% of the human genome. Once dismissed as “junk” DNA, introns have been discovered to have a wide range of important functions. Belfort is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
Cosponsored by UAlbany’s RNA Institute and the Department of Biological Sciences.
