Carlton Wells: Writers Institute’s Ironman

Carlton Wells, third from left, with his team at our Literary Trivia Night event held Wednesday, Dec. 3, at Across the Street Pub in Albany. (Michael Huber / NYSWI)

There’s nothing like a literary challenge to get the competitive juices flowing for Carlton Wells, a 66-year-old retired state Health Department computer programmer who has earned a place in the annals of the NYS Writers Institute.

In fact, he made a case for calling himself the single-season attendee G.O.A.T. (Greatest of All-Time).

When Wells heard about our Passport game – a fun, new initiative for the Writers Institute that tracks and rewards loyal attendees – he pounced.

“I’ve got a competitive streak,” said Wells, of Slingerlands, who graduated from Ohio University in 1982 with a degree in English literature after switching from a mathematics major.

Our Writers Institute 2025 Passport.

In the just-completed fall season, Wells stamped his passport 31 times and missed just one event between September 2 and December 3. He had attended Writers Institute events for several years, but at a less frenetic pace.

The bar for winning was set at 10 passport stamps. The first five attendees to hit that number received a $50 gift card to Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza, the indie bookstore that has been selling books at Writers Institute events for decades.

Congratulations to the other winners who attended at least 10 events: Beth Bechand, Ben Chadabe and Alek Brusgul.

Carlton Wells hit 10 first and just kept going and going. Nobody else came close. He only stopped at 31 because he reached the semester’s final event, Literary Trivia Night. As the grand prize winner for attendance, he’ll also be the guest at a special upcoming luncheon hosted by Paul Grondahl.

“I missed one event early on because it was the same night as my book club,” said Wells, who belongs to two book clubs, The Hopeless Romantics (they meet at Guilderland Public Library) and Laugh Out Loud (they meet at the Colonie town library).

“I don’t always finish every book, but I make a good effort,” said Wells, who is single and spends two hours each Wednesday afternoon in a lively Seniors Connect! discussion group at the Guilderland library.

He is a Writers Institute proselytizer and often brings guests from his book clubs or seniors’ group to author events.

“I’m always telling people to come to Writers Institute events. There is great variety and the writers expose you to so many different ideas,” said Wells, who prefers literary fiction, but likes to branch out into a variety of genres rather than sticking to a narrow lane of reading.

Wells grew up in Angola, Erie County, where his family ran a general store. Some in his family are voracious readers, while others are not. In college, Wells and a buddy started a small literary magazine called Wax. He’s published poetry in small journals and is working on a novel.

His favorite writer is William Saroyan, the novelist and playwright who won a Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1940 and died in 1981. Kurt Vonnegut called Saroyan “the first and still the greatest of all American minimalists.” Wells read Saroyan’s acclaimed The Human Comedy in college and has re-read it eight or nine times.

Wells looks forward to using the gift card at Book House and adding to his collection of hundreds of books. “I’ve got too many books, but it’s hard to whittle them down. I have an emotional connection to my books,” he said.

Wells is proud of his setting an attendance mark that’s hard to imagine anyone can beat.

Still, his greatest feat of all came two decades ago when the state Health Department put out a wellness challenge to see who could climb the most flights of stairs in February inside the 42-floor Corning Tower at the Empire State Plaza.

It’s 809 steps and 42 flights to the top of the 589-foot Corning Tower.

Wells kept a detailed log sheet and climbed stairs before and after work, on breaks, and took a day off for a final marathon push when he climbed the stairs for eight straight hours after he thought a coworker was gaining on him.

Final tally for Wells: 10,000 flights of stairs climbed. That’s 238 times up and down the full height of Corning Tower.

“It’s a record that I don’t think will ever be broken,” Wells said.

It’s too early to say if the same can be said of Wells’ 31-of-32 event tally of Writers Institute events in fall 2025. Only time will tell.

We plan to bring back the Passport. Do we have any challengers to Wells and his G.O.A.T. status?