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Four of America's leading nonfiction writers discuss feature writing, commercialism, censorship, and editorial standards in a wide-ranging panel discussion moderated by Donald Faulkner, the Writers Institute's Associate Director. This panel discussion will include leading nonfiction writers: Joel Achenbach The Washington Post, Susan Orlean The New Yorker , Lawrence Weschler The New Yorker and JoAnn Wypijewski The Nation

NYS Writers Institute, October 21, 1999
8:00 p.m. Discussion |Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center, Uptown Campus

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achenbachwhy.gif - 5462 BytesJoel Achenbach is a staff writer for The Washington Post and a regular commentator for National Public Radio. He is the author of three books based on his well-known newspaper column: Why Things Are, Why Things Are: The Big Picture, and Why Things Are & Why Things Aren't. His most recent book Captured by Aliens: The Search for Life and Truth in a Very Large Universe is scheduled to be released in November 1999. Christopher Buckley praised the book as "Brilliant, funny, and like everything else he writes, a joy to read. He is one of the best writers working today." Achenbach has also written for GQ, National Georgraphic, Smithsonian, George, and Esquire among others.
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orleanorchidt.gif - 11964 BytesSusan Orlean, staff writer for The New Yorker, is the author of The Orchid Thief (1999), and Saturday Night, named a New York Times Notable Book of 1990. The Orchid Thief explores the bizarre underworld of passionate orchid collectors, and follows the real-life misadventures of rare plant dealer and poacher, John Larooche. The New York Times called it, "Stylishly written, whimsical yet sophisticated, [and] quirkily detailed. The Orchid Thief shows [Orlean's] gifts in full bloom."

 


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weschlerboggs.gif - 11403 BytesLawrence Weschler, long-time writer for The New Yorker, chronicles the work andantics of currency artist and the accused counterfeiter J. S. G. Boggs in Boggs: A Comedy of Values.Toby Lester, writing in The Atlantic Monthly, says, ". . .the book, like the artist, challenges people to pause and consider the extent to which the economic bedrock of everyday life is in part a confusing welter of artistic abstractions. It's a work that is at once informative, entertaining, and provocative--a reading experience, one may say, of rather good values." Weschler is also the author of Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder: Pronged Ants, Horned Humans, Mice on Toast and Other Mavels. . . (1995), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.
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wypijewskipbn.gif - 22466 BytesJoAnn Wypijewski, is the senior editor at The Nation. She has alsowritten for Harper's, New Left Review, Il Manifesto and Counter-Punch. She wrote the text for Triptychs: Buffalo's Lower West Side, by the photographer Milton Rogovin (Norton, 1994), is editor of The Thirty Years' War: Dispatches and Diversions of a Radical Journalist, 1965-1994, the collected work of Andrew Kopkind (Verso, 1995). Her book Painting by Numbers: Komar and Melamid's Scientific Guide to Art (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1997), was issued in paperback this year by University of California Press.

Cosponsored by Greater Capital Region Teacher Center

Related Links:
Albany Times Union Article
Writers Online Magazine Articles on Joel Achenbach, Susan Orlean, Lawrence Weschler, JoAnn Wypijewski
Lawrence Weschler & J. S. G. Boggs discussion 10/20/99

For additional information, visit the New York State Writers Institute on Facebook, online at https://www.albany.edu/writers-inst, or email [email protected], or call 518-442-5620.