Welcome to the Virtual Writers Institute at the University at Albany! We look forward to staying connected with you during these strange days of closures, cancellations and quarantines.
We encourage you to submit your short reflections on life in a world disrupted by COVID-19 to our new online community bulletin board, The Conversation. We will also conduct a parallel conversation on our Facebook page.
We'll start The Conversation by posing the following question,
“If you are put under quarantine, which book are you most looking forward to reading?”
We would also like you to begin thinking in terms of a personal essay or creative work reflecting on coronavirus that you will have ready to submit when we have a call for submissions for the next edition of our online community journal, Trolley, later this Spring.
For your reading pleasure and reflection, we will be sending weekly emails featuring excellent pieces of writing by NYS Writers Institute visiting authors, past and present, as well as compelling clips from past Writers Institute events preserved in our extensive archive.
I’m looking forward to reading Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes in Edith Grossman’s 976-page English translation. It’s supposed to be a masterpiece of translation, accessible and full of helpful footnotes. Grossman visited the NYS Writers Institute in 2014: https://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/grossman_edith14.html. A memorable guest, she was clear, forthright and minced no words—desirable qualities in a translator. I’m encouraged by Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s endorsement of Grossman’s abilities: he said he preferred his own works in her English translations (and Gregory Rabassa’s) to the Spanish originals.