Frequency North: The Visiting Writers Reading Series at The College of Saint Rose

Frequency North, the Visiting Writers Reading Series at the College of Saint Rose, calls itself "aggressively eclectic." Events at Frequency North feature fiction writers, memoirists, graphic novelists, poets, slam performers, singer-songwriters, even game shows. All readings are free and are open to the public.

Announcing: The 2011-2012 season!

Thursday, November 10, 2011, 7:30pm
Megan Abbott
Location: Standish Rooms, second floor of the Events and Activities Center, Standish Rooms, 420 Western Avenue, Albany, NY.

Edgar-winning author Megan Abbott’s latest novel is The End of Everything (Regan Arthur), published this past July. She is also the author of Die a Little (Simon & Schuster, 2005), The Song is You (Simon & Schuster, 2007), Queenpin (Simon & Schuster, 2007), and Bury Me Deep (Simon & Schuster, 2009). Abbott has been nominated for three Edgar® awards, the Hammett Prize, the Macavity, Anthony and Barry Awards and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and was the winner of the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Allan Poe Award in 2008 for Queenpin. In 2008, she won the Barry Award (Deadly Pleasures and Mystery News award) and has been nominated three times for the Anthony Award (Bouchercon World Mystery Convention award). Her nonfiction book, The Street Was Mine: White Masculinity in Hardboiled Fiction and Film Noir, was published in 2003. She is also the editor of the Edgar-nominated A Hell of a Woman: An Anthology of Female Noir, featuring original tales by 25 mystery and crime authors. Website: http://www.meganabbott.com.

NOTE: DUE TO A SCHEDULING CONFLICT, THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED
Thursday, February 9, 2012, 7:30pm
Darin Strauss 


Thursday, March 29, 2012, 7:30pm
Georgia A. Popoff and Quraysh Ali Lansana
Location: Saint Joseph Auditorium, 985 Madison Avenue, Albany, NY

It has been 30 years since the last publication of a book suitable for K-12 classrooms that explores poetry as a vehicle for social justice. With the publication Our Difficult Sunlight: A Guide to Poetry, Literacy, and Social Justice in Classroom and Community (Teachers and Writers Collaborative, 2011) Lansana and Popoff share the results of nearly two decades in classrooms and community-based settings across the country: from K-12 to graduate schools, working with students and teachers in developing best practices for reading and writing poetry as a means to greater understanding of the human experience, cultural diversity, and pop culture, as well as language arts/reading comprehension constructs. Our Difficult Sunlight is intended to support both teachers and teaching artists with the aim to aid them in recognizing the value of poetry as a vehicle to access meaning/inference, cross-curricular applications, acceptance of others, and self-identity, and includes best practices, exercises, and anecdotes rooted in the authors’ diverse experiences as a Chicago-based, African American poet/professor and a Caucasian poet/educator from upstate New York. With a foreword by Dr. Carol D. Lee (Safisha Madhubuti), the book includes a series of essays that share poignant tales of specific classroom/workshop experiences, effective instructional processes in both reading and creating poetry, and comprehensive lesson plans to support the pedagogy presented throughout the book. Book website: http://www.twc.org/publications.

Quraysh Ali Lansana is author of five poetry books, a children’s book, and editor of seven anthologies. He is Director of the Gwendolyn Brooks Center for Black Literature and Creative Writing at Chicago State University, where he is also Associate Professor of English/Creative Writing. A former faculty member of the Drama Division of The Juilliard School and a former Reading/Language Arts editor for three of the nation’s largest educational publishers, Lansana has been a literary teaching artist and curriculum developer for two decades. Link: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/quraysh-ali-lansana.

Georgia A. Popoff is author of two collections of poetry, a teaching artist, arts-in-education professional development specialist, managing editor of Comstock Review, a Syracuse Downtown Writer’s Center faculty member, and former board member of the Association of Teaching Artists. Georgia is Poet-in-Residence in numerous school districts and teaches adult writing workshops. Website: http://gappoet.blogspot.com/.

Past Visitors to Frequency North

2011-2012
Thursday, October 27, 2011, 7:30pm
Dana Spiotta + Tobias Seamon

Dana Spiotta’s third novel, Stone Arabia (Scribner) was just published this past July. Ron Charles of the Washington Post calls the book “fascinating,” and writes that “her reflections on the precarious nature of modern life are witty until they’re really unsettling.” Her second novel, Eat the Document (2006, Scribner) was a finalist for the 2006 National Book Award and a recipient of the Rosenthal Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Michiko Kakutani in the New York Times called Eat The Document “stunning” and described it as “a book that possesses the staccato ferocity of a Joan Didion essay and the razzle-dazzle language and the historical resonance of a Don DeLillo novel.” The New York Times called her first novel, Lightning Field (2001), a “the debut of a wonderfully gifted writer with an uncanny feel for the absurdities and sadnesses of contemporary life, and an unerring ear for how people talk and try to cope today.” It was a New York Times Notable Book of the year, and a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the West. Website: http://www.danaspiotta.com.

Tobias Seamon’s latest fiction collection, The Emperor's Toy Chest (PS Publishing, 2011) explores history, mythology, fantasy, and the magical borderlands between. He is author of the novel The Magician's Study (Turtle Point Press, 2011), which Booklist described as having “stylistic inventiveness and skill with memorable characterizations are nothing short of breathtaking.” The author of a poetry chapbook, Loosestrife Along the River Styx (Foothills Publishing), Seamon also wrote and directed the short mockumentary Amerikan Partizan, which premiered at the 2007 EdWood Filmfest. A contributing writer with the online magazine The Morning News, Seamon lives in Albany, NY. Website: http://www.tobiasseamon.com.



2010-2011 season
Alexander Chee
Kathleen Rooney
Scott Rosenberg
Meghan Daum
Stephen Elliott
Melissa Broder
Aaron Belz
Eboni Hogan
Jeanann Verlee

2009-2010 season
Darcey Steinke
Jessica Anthony
Peter Conners
Jericho Brown
Ernest Hilbert
CLMP's Capital Lit Festival
Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz
Derrick Brown
“Mighty” Mike McGee

2008-2009 season
Marilin Nelson
Deborah Ager
Taylor Mali
Alice Fulton
David Rees
Rachel Shukert

2007-2008 season
Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz
Shappy Seasholtz
Darcey Steinke
Gregory Pardlo
Wayne Koestenbaum
Nalini Jones
David Lehman

2006-2007 season
Patricia Smith
Janice Erlbaum
Jordan Davis
Jason Spiro
Tara Emelye of The Reverse
Drew Gardner
Joanna Fuhrman
Hal Niedzviecki
Nelly Reifler

2005-2006 season
Jenny Boully
Regie Cabico
Sparrow
Matt Madden