Center for the literary arts in New York State
LIBRARY OF AMERICA SPECIAL EVENT
William Kennedy: The Albany Trilogy
7 p.m. Tuesday, May 12, 2026
Recital Hall - UAlbany Performing Arts Center
1400 Washington Avenue, Albany NY 12222 Map
Free and open to the public
The NYS Writers Institute invites you to join special guests for a program on Tuesday, May 12, to celebrate William Kennedy and his Library of America edition.
There will be remarks by UAlbany President Havidan Rodriguez; a Library of America editor; Colum McCann, who wrote the introduction to the edition; Paul Grondahl and a reading by William Kennedy.
Books will be for sale. A book signing and reception with light refreshments will follow the event.
“We are elated that William Kennedy earns his place in the pantheon of American literature with this elegant Library of America edition,” said Paul Grondahl, Opalka Endowed Director of the Writers Institute.
“Bill is one of just a handful of living authors to receive this recognition since the Library of America was established in 1979 as a nonprofit organization that champions America’s great writers and timeless works in authoritative editions.”
“He joins an extraordinary roster that includes Edith Wharton, Walt Whitman, William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Joan Didion, Flannery O’Connor and a few hundred select authors who epitomize the most exceptional writing that reflects the nation’s history and culture.”
“This landmark trilogy – including the novels Legs, Billy Phelan’s Greatest Game and Ironweed – reminds readers how Kennedy put Albany on the literary map and imbued his hometown with the universality of James Joyce’s Dublin or Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County,” Grondahl said. “As McCann writes in his introduction: ‘Sooner or later, we will all find ourselves on the corner of State and Pearl.”
The Kennedy volume will be published on April 28.
Publication support for William Kennedy: The Albany Trilogy was provided by:
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Pernille Aegidius Dake
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Christine and George R. Hearst III
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Chet and Karen Opalka and the Opalka Family Donor Advised Fund
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Suzanne Lance and George Sloan
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Alice Green and Charles Touhey
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the New York State Writers Institute at the University at Albany,
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and the University at Albany Foundation.
Library of America, a nonprofit organization, publishes carefully curated editions of works by the greatest and most significant American writers and develops nationwide and international initiatives to help readers discover these timeless works.
Few living authors have ever been chosen for a Library of America edition.
Widely recognized as the definitive collection of American writing, Library of America editions encompass all periods and genres — including acknowledged classics, neglected masterpieces, and historically important documents and texts — and showcase the vitality and variety of America’s literary legacy.
Library of America’s first volumes, published in 1982, included works by Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Walt Whitman, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mark Twain, Jack London, and William Dean Howells.
The 2026 editions include William Kennedy, Jim Thompson, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Peter Straub.