Community Calendar

Join us for our season kickoff event: A conversation with Manuel Gonzales, author of The Regional Office is Under Attack! (2017) and the short story collection The Miniature Wife and Other Stories (2013).

The book explores comic book and movie tropes, and weaves them into a profound and thoughtful meditation on human nature, cherished institutions, and narrative convention. Lit Hub said, “With this debut novel, Gonzales… proves himself to be both a wonderful addition to a proud literary tradition (that of Vonnegut, Borges, Saunders, Bender, and Barthelme, et al) and a true original.”

4:30 p.m. Tuesday, September 2
University at Albany
Multi-Purpose Room - Campus Center West
1400 Washington Avenue, Albany NY 12222

Free and open to the public
Books will be for sale and a signing will follow the conversation.

More information -- including a campus map -- at https://www.nyswritersinstitute.org/manuelgonzalez-2025

Liza Bennett, author of four novels set in the Berkshires, turns to creative nonfiction in Georgia & Anita: The Lifelong Friendship of Georgia O’Keeffe and Anita Pollitzer (University of Nebraska Press, 2025) to tell the fascinating, little-known story of the enduring friendship between America’s first great woman artist and a charismatic leader of the suffragist movement. It was Anita Pollitzer who first showed Georgia O’Keeffe’s work to family friend and mentor Alfred Stieglitz, the world-famous photographer whose 291 gallery in New York City was the epicenter of the modern art world. While O’Keeffe, Stieglitz, and their circle of friends were at the forefront of American modernism, Pollitzer became a leader of the National Woman’s Party and was instrumental in the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, guaranteeing women the right to vote.

Of local interest, the book explores the many decades that O’Keeffe spent at Stieglitz’s home on Lake George, a period that started with great creative output for the artist and ended in personal turmoil. Based on extensive research, including their fifty-year correspondence, Georgia & Anita casts light on the friendship of these two women who, in different ways, helped to modernize the world and women’s roles in it.

Liza Bennett is a full-time writer and former advertising executive. She has published ten novels, including Local Knowledge, So Near, A Place for Us, and Bleeding Heart under her maiden name Liza Gyllenhaal. Georgia & Anita is her first work of nonfiction. She is the past Board Chair and long-time board member of the Academy of American Poets, currently serving on the Emeritus board, and is the Secretary of the West Stockbridge Historical Society. She divides her time between New York City and the Berkshire Hills in Massachusetts.

Book will be for sale via Cash or Check.

Edward Hirsch is a major American poet, advocate for the art of poetry, and president of the Guggenheim Foundation. His new memoir is My Childhood in Pieces: A Stand-Up Comedy, a Skokie Elegy (2025).

His 1999 book, How to Read a Poem: And Fall in Love with Poetry, was a national bestseller.

7:30 p.m. Thursday, September 4, 2025
Page Hall - University at Albany Downtown Campus
135 Western Avenue, Albany NY 12203

Free and open to the public.

Books will be available. A signing will follow the conversation.

In its review of My Childhood in Pieces, Kirkus Reviews said, “Hirsch channels the voices and personalities of his Chicagoland Jewish childhood to create a memoir composed of jokes and short vignettes, one setup-and-punchline after another… sometimes silly, sometimes off-color, often Yiddish-flavored, with a penchant for puns and dad jokes that never quits…. A unique recreation of a great life in a largely vanished world.”

More about this event at https://www.nyswritersinstitute.org/edwardhirsch

Cosponsored by the Jewish Federation of Northeastern New York.

Join us for a lively conversation with Peter Wolf, legendary lead singer of The J. Geils Band and author of the current New York Times bestseller, "Waiting on the Moon: Artists, Poets, Drifters, Grifters, and Goddesses" (2025), a memoir of his eventful life, musical career, marriage to Faye Dunaway, and encounters with Muddy Waters, Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, Marilyn Monroe, David Lynch, and many others.

Elvis Costello said, “This is the book I’ve been hoping Peter would write since we walked the streets of Paris together, back in the 20th Century. [It’s] a true account of his life, love and music told with unique humor and rare humility.”

A Creative Life Series conversation hosted by WAMC's Joe Donahue.
7:30 p.m. Friday, September 5, 2025
University at Albany
Main Theatre, UAlbany Performing Arts Center
1400 Washington Avenue, Albany NY 12222
Free and open to the public. No registration required.

Books will be available for sale. A signing will follow the conversation.

Major support for The Creative Life is provided by the University at Albany Foundation.

“A stirring tale of survival, thanks to man's best friend.” Honor the 100th anniversary of the epic 1925 Serum Run by which Alaskan sled dogs and their drivers brought diphtheria antitoxin serum to Nome, AK, to suppress a raging epidemic. The heroic 647-mile dash of dog teams across the Alaskan wilderness inspired the annual Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. Hike to the Coliseum in Elka Park while discussing the book with author Laney Salisbury of Woodstock.
Limited to 12 hikers: Hikers are encouraged to read the book to get the most from the hike with Ms. Salisbury. Copies may be obtained through local libraries, the Mid-Hudson Library System and at Amazon. The Mountain Top Library and the Hunter Library are members of the Mid-Hudson System. Dogs are not permitted on this hike which is on private property.
Meet: at the MTHS parking lot at 5132 Rt 23A, Haines Falls for carpooling and directions. Bring lunch, snacks, and water. Return at approximately 2:30 P.M. Registration is required. For more information or to register, please email mthsdirector@mths.org or call 518-589-6657.
This hike will be led by Nancy Allen and Adrienne Larys
Difficulty level is moderate.

THAT TIME OF YEAR, a quarterly-ish reading series at Spotty Dog Books
Featuring writers Jennifer Kabat, Ric Royer, Aatish Taseer on the theme, “Place”

JENNIFER KABAT is the author of the twinned memoirs The Eighth Moon and Nightshining. Her writing has appeared in The Best American Essays, Granta, Frieze, 4Columns, New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, BOMB, and many others.

RIC ROYER is a writer, performer, performer of writings, and writer of performances. His most recent book, Niagara Falls, NY, spent two months as the best-selling Niagara Falls travel guide after Amazon mistakenly categorized it as a travel guide.

AATISH TASEER is the author of the memoir Stranger to History: A Son’s Journey Through Islamic Lands and the acclaimed novels The Way Things Were, a finalist for the 2016 Jan Michalski Prize, The Temple-Goers, short-listed for the Costa First Novel Award, and Noon; and the memoir and travelog The Twice-Born.

Hosted by Andrea Kleine

This will be an informal talk with Melanie Delgado discussing her artistic practice regarding the works in her exhibition ‘I’m in the Studio Tonight Because of You’ at The Sketchbook Gallery. The talk will provide insights into her work and offer a chance for questions and engagement with the artist. It will take place on Sunday, Sept 7, at 1pm in the gallery alongside her works.

Exhibition Dates: Aug 9 - Sept 13, 2025
Gallery Hours: Thurs/Sun - 12-5pm, Fri/Sat - 12-6pm

Keach Hagey, Wall Street Journal reporter, is the author of The Optimist: Sam Altman, OpenAI, and the Race to Invent the Future (2025), the first biography of the enigmatic leader of the AI revolution, charting his ascent within the tech world as well as his ambitions for this powerful new technology.

Pulitzer-winning journalist Steve Coll said, “The Optimist is a wonder of fair-minded investigation and page-turning storytelling. It reveals Sam Altman―our self-styled messiah of the age of artificial intelligence―in all his charismatic self-contradiction. A must-read for anyone worried that AI will alter or even end human society.”

Keach Hagey
4:30 p.m. Thursday, September 11, 2025
University at Albany
Recital Hall, UAlbany Performing Arts Center
1400 Washington Avenue, Albany NY 12222

Free and open to the public
Books will be sold. A signing will follow the conversation.

Hagey's first book is the The King of Content: Sumner Redstone’s Battle for Viacom, CBS and Everlasting Control of His Media Empire (2018). Before joining the Wall Street Journal, Keach covered media for Politico, The National in Abu Dhabi, CBS News and the Village Voice.

Cosponsored by the New York State Writers Institute and UAlbany's AI & Society College and Research Center.

Nature's Ghosts: The World We Lost and How to Bring it Back by Sophie Yeo

Come and discuss themes of ecology and humanity’s relationship with nature with other book and nature lovers in our reading and hiking club! Each month we will go on a leisurely hike with stopping points for book discussion. Some months will have guest lecturers.

Registration is encouraged.

Author Henry H. Sapoznik shares his examination of over a century of Yiddish popular culture in NYC, from theater and music to crime and journalism, drawing on thousands of historical newspaper articles and new research.