Humanities and Sciences

Author and Screenwriter William Kennedy Inaugurates Distinguished Writers Series

Fiction and literature: general; 1930s; Great Depression; family and friend- ship — crises; family and friendship — death of child; human qualities and behavior — guilt; human qualities and behavior — redemption.

History: United States — state and local; conflicts and dualities; history: myth.

Those are just some of the categories you’d pull up if you were to do an on-line search for William Kennedy’s written works. You may know Kennedy as the author of the 1984 Pulitzer Prize–winning novel Ironweed and screenwriter of the film of the same name, which starred Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep. Kennedy is also known as the writer who put Albany, New York, on the map — he’s brought his native city to literary life in the way, say, Anne Rice has for New Orleans or James Joyce has for Dublin. There are now seven novels in Kennedy’s "Albany cycle," including Legs, Billy Phelan’s Greatest Game, and Ironweed.

The versatile Kennedy also cowrote the screenplay for the 1984 film The Cotton Club with Francis Ford Coppola and wrote the nonfiction O Albany! and Riding the Yellow Trolley Car, and a play, Grand View, set in his hometown.

Kennedy is a professor in the English department at the State University of New York at Albany. He taught writing at Cornell University during the 1982–83 academic year. The founding director of the New York State Writers Institute, he was elected in 1993 to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has received numerous literary awards, including the Literary Lions Award from the New York Public Library, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow- ship, and a Governor’s Arts Award. Kennedy was also named Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters in France and a member of the board of directors of the New York State Council for the Humanities.

This semester the writing program brought Kennedy to campus as the first guest in its Distinguished Writers Series. He gave two public presentations — a reading of selections from his Albany cycle and a screening of Ironweed followed by a question-and-answer session. Kennedy also spent five days conducting master classes (photo, with Marian McCurdy at left) with a group of faculty-recommended writing students.

"The week of classes with William Kennedy was great," said Dave Tyler ’00, a planned studies/creative writing major. "It not only gave me an opportunity to learn from an amazing writer, it also let me learn with other students who share the same passion for the art of words as I do. I enjoyed the relaxed structure of the class. The classes seemed more like gatherings than lectures. The writing styles of each student led to a variety of discussions about William Kennedy’s work."

Being around such a respected writer was intimidating at first, according to some of the students. But Kennedy quickly put them at ease, thanks to his approachable manner and obvious interest in working with them. He gave criticism and advice — some of which they’d heard before from their writing professors: "Write about a theme, not just a plot. Write what you know. Write every day."

Says Tyler, "I think that advice meant more to me coming from William Kennedy. I never really wrote every day, even though I’d been told to do so for some time. However, since the class, I have been writing every day. My writing seems to be easier now. It is not such a challenge anymore — and if it is, it is more enjoyable."

The Distinguished Writers Series was programmed by associate professor and writing program chair Marian MacCurdy and associate professor Kathryn Howd Machan. The next visitor will be novelist and short story, magazine, and travel guide writer Joy Williams, author of Breaking and Entering and Taking Care, among other works. Williams, whose visit is scheduled for February 14–18, will run workshops on creative nonfiction. Judy Grahn, feminist poet, essayist, and historian of gay literature and culture whose books include The Work of a Common Woman and Another Mother Tongue: Gay Words, Gay Worlds, will wrap up the first year’s series from March 20 to 24. Her master classes will focus on "writing from myth and ritual" in many genres. Each writer will give a public reading from her works on the Monday evening during her visit.

A scene from the opening show of the Ithaca College Theatre 1999–2000 season, Eric Overmyer's Dark Rapture, directed by Norm Johnson Jr. The season continued with the Rodgers and Hart musical Babes in Arms and John Guare's comedy House of Blue Leaves; the spring productions are Benjamin Britten's opera Albert Herring (one week in February only), Beyond Words: A Celebration of Dance (March 30 - April 1), and Tennessee Williams's masterpiece Summer and Smoke (April 13-22).