Center for the literary arts in New York State
THE ART OF PODCASTING
The Writers Institute Podcast
7:30 p.m. Monday, April 27, 2026
University at Albany
Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center
1400 Washington Avenue
Albany NY 12222 - See map.
Join the New York State Writers Institute for a lively conversation about The Writers Institute podcast, a show that guides writers and listeners through the ultimate literary treasure vault: the audio archives of the New York State Writers Institute.
Hosted and produced by writer and radio producer Adam Colman, the podcast pairs contemporary authors with archival recordings from Writers Institute events, creating surprising dialogues across generations.
At this event Adam Colman and Andrew Leland will share their experiences creating podcasts and play excerpts from the new season 2 podcasts.
Andrew Leland's Pulitzer-finalist book The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight (2023), will be for sale and a signing will follow the conversation.
Season 2:
Ingrid Rojas Contreras, author of Fruit of the Drunken Tree, talks about her fiction that deals with Colombian history, and listens to NYS Writers Institute conversations with Toni Morrison and Seamus Heaney), both recorded in the 1980s.
Rick Moody (The Ice Storm) listens to a 2019 archival tape of Francis Ford Coppola’s conversation with William Kennedy, and he talks about bringing his own work into the world through different media.
Catherine Lacey, author of The Biography of X and Pew, listens to archival tape of Lorrie Moore reading from her novel A Gate at the Stairs, and Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, author of Friday Black, who describes some of that strangeness experienced when taking a new book into the world.
Andrew Martin, author of the new novel Down Time, listens here to a 2015 conversation with Mary Gaitskill, reading from and speaking about her novel The Mare.
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Adam Colman, writer and radio producer, hosts and produces “The Writers Institute” show. He grew up in Albany, where NYS Writers Institute events were crucial for his own literary education. He also hosts and produces Lit Hub's “Cosmic Library” podcast, and has produced shows for public radio and McSweeney's “Organist.”
His writing has appeared in The Believer magazine and The Boston Globe, and he is the author of two books that, like “The Writers Institute” show, zoom across different eras of literary history.
Andrew Leland, writer and podcaster, hosted and produced McSweeney's “Organist,” an unconventional arts-and-culture podcast, for KCRW from 2013-2019. Leland, who is visually impaired, is also the author of The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight (2023), a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and one of the “Top 10 Books of 2023” in Publishers Weekly and The Atlantic.