The New York State Writers Institute at UAlbany has announced its Spring 2025 schedule of events. The schedule includes plenty of events with writers, plus film screenings, this year’s edition of Selected Shorts and the annual Albany Film Festival.
The full Writers Institute Spring 2025 Schedule of Events with complete event information can be found at www.nyswritersinstitute.org.
FILM SCREENING
“Smithereens” Directed by Susan Seidelman (“Desperately Seeking Susan”), who will be a featured guest at the Albany Film Festival on March 29.
7 p.m. Friday, Jan. 24
THE CREATIVE LIFE
Jay McInerney – Bright Lights, Big City — in conversation with WAMC Northeast Public Radio’s Joe Donahue
7 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 29
SMALL TOWN HORROR
Acclaimed horror authors Erin E. Adams — Jackal (2022) — and Dennis Mahoney — Our Winter Monster, set in a ski village in Upstate New York (Jan. 2025)
4:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 30
THE EXTRAORDINARY LIFE AND “AFTERLIFE” OF ANNE FRANK
Ruth Franklin, The Many Lives of Anne Frank (Jan. 2025)
4:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 4
BALANCING ON THE BRINK OF CHAOS: AMERICA’S FOREIGN POLICY FUTURE
Robert D. Kaplan — Waste Land: A World in Permanent Crisis (Jan. 2025) – and Bartle Bull — Land Between the Rivers: A 5,000-Year History of Iraq (2024)
7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 5
FILM SCREENING
“Becoming Frederick Douglass” Co-directed by Nicole London, a featured guest at the Albany Film Festival.
7 p.m. Friday, Feb. 7
LANDMARK OF LATINO POETRY
Rigoberto González, editor of Latino Poetry: The Library of America Anthology (Sept. 2024)
4:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 11
A VALENTINE’S DAY SPECIAL
Tony Tulathimutte, fiction writer and humorist, author of Rejection (2024) and Private Citizens (2016)
4:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 13
FILM SCREENING
“The Peasants” – An extraordinary, hand-painted animated film. Poland’s official entry at the 2024 Academy Awards. The film’s producer, Sean M. Bobbitt, will join for a virtual conversation at our Albany Film Festival.
7 p.m. Friday, Feb. 14
FILM SCREENING
“Swimming with Sharks” – 1995 film starring Frank Whaley and Kevin Spacey. Whaley, a UAlbany alum, will be a featured guest at our Albany Film Festival on March 29.
7 p.m. Friday, Feb. 21
WHAT WOULD FRIDA DO?
Arianna Davis, TV executive and author of What Would Frida Do? A Guide to Living Boldly (2020)
4:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 27
UALBANY’S NEW GAME DESIGN MAJOR PRESENTS
Nathan Grayson, video gaming journalist and author of Stream Big (Feb. 2025), the definitive story of Twitch, Amazon’s livestream platform.
4:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 5
FILM SCREENING
“Clockers” 1995 film directed by Spike Lee based on the influential urban crime novel by Richard Price. There will also be an event with Richard Price on Tuesday, April 1.
7 p.m. Friday, March 7
THE VIEW FROM CENTER-RIGHT
Governor George Pataki and Max Boot
A conversation between three-term New York Governor George Pataki and Max Boot, influential conservative thinker and author of the new biography, Reagan: His Life and Legend (2024)
7:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 11
SEEKING THE NEXT LIONEL MESSI
Acclaimed Irish novelist Joseph O’Neill. His new novel, Godwin (2024), recounts the odyssey of two brothers crossing the world in search of an African soccer prodigy who might change their fortunes.
4:30 p.m. Thursday, March 13
FILM SCREENING
“A Star Is Born” (1976) Starring Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson. Screenplay by Joan Didion and her husband John Gregory Dunne.
New York Times film critic Alissa Wilkinson will present her 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.
7 p.m. Friday, March 14
FROM “FRESH PRINCE” TO SWEET BLACKBERRY PRESS
Karyn Parsons, actress (“The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air”), children’s author and founder of Sweet Blackberry Press.
7 p.m. Wednesday, March 19
A.I. AND SOCIETY CONVERSATION SERIES: SPYING ON PEOPLE’S DREAMS
Laila Lalami, author of the 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.
4:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 25, in conversation with UAlbany Political Science Professor Virginia Eubanks, author of Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor (2018)
ALBANY FILM FESTIVAL
Visit albanyfilmfestival.org for more details.
Saturday, March 29
PREEMINENT PLAYWRIGHT OF THE WORKING CLASS
27th Annual Burian Lecture presented by Lynn Nottage, the only woman to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama twice: in 2009, for her play Ruined, and in 2017, for her play Sweat.
7:30 p.m. Monday, March 31
THE BARD OF URBAN STREET LIFE
Richard Price, celebrated author of Clockers and a key screenwriter for HBO’s “The Wire.” His new novel is Lazarus Man (Nov. 2024), about the aftermath of the collapse of a tenement building in Harlem.
4:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 1
THE ARTS OF TRANSLATION AND POETRY
Kazim Ali, UAlbany alum, poet, translator, novelist, essayist and founder of the nonprofit press Nightboat Books. His most recent collection: Sukun: New and Selected Poems (2023).
Two events on Wednesday, April 2
2025 ANNUAL MCKINNEY CONTEST GUEST SPEAKER
Lan Samantha Chang, prize-winning fiction writer and director of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her most recent novel is The Family Chao (2022),
7 p.m. Wednesday, April 9
YOUNG VOTERS: WHERE WILL THEY TAKE US?
Raina Lipsitz — The Rise of a New Left: How Young Radicals Are Shaping the Future of American Politics (2022) — and Tina Nguyen — The Maga Diaries: My Surreal Adventures Inside the Right-Wing (And How I Got Out) (2024).
4:30 p.m. Thursday, April 10
A.I. AND SOCIETY CONVERSATION SERIES: THE RACE TO CASH IN ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gary Rivlin, author of AI Valley: Microsoft, Google, and the Trillion-Dollar Race to Cash In on Artificial Intelligence (March 2025).
4:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 15
AUTHORS THEATRE
Presenting a play-in-progress – a reimagining of Shakespeare’s King Lear – by playwright, poet, and screenwriter Marcus Gardley
7:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 16
THE TRIAL OF THE CENTURY
Brenda Wineapple, author of a new examination of the Scopes “Monkey” Trial, Keeping the Faith: God, Democracy, and the Trial That Riveted a Nation (Aug. 2024).
7:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 23
EARTH DAY CONVERSATION: THE NEW AGE OF SUPERSTORMS!
Porter Fox, climate and travel writer, is the author of CATEGORY FIVE: Superstorms and the Warming Oceans That Feed Them (Sept. 2024).
4:30 p.m. Thursday, April 24
SELECTED SHORTS: A LIVE PERFORMANCE
7:30 p.m. Saturday, May 3
SEEKING WORK-LIFE BALANCE IN SCIENCE AND MOTHERHOOD
Marlene Belfort, renowned biochemist, UAlbany professor, and author of a new memoir Mommy, Can Boys Also Be Doctors? A Message to Young Scientists and Other Humans (May 2025).
4:30 p.m. Thursday, May 8
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