Former New York State Author (2008-10), and one of the leading chroniclers of Catholic life in American fiction, Mary Gordon is the author of the memoir, The Shadow Man: A Daughter’s Search for Her Father (1996), about the secretive life of a troubled man— a father she idealized— who died when she was seven years old. A Jew who converted to Catholicism, David Gordon propagated lies about his past, embraced anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, and was a publisher of pornography. The Kirkus Review called the book, “Beautiful, painful, shocking, a profound exploration of love, memory, shame, recuperation—a remarkable work.”

Jennifer Haigh, bestselling novelist, is the author of Mercy Street (paperback 2023), a gritty novel about the life of an abortion clinic in urban Boston. Mercy Street was named a “Best Book of the Year” by The Washington Post, The New Yorker, and The Boston Globe. Writing in the New York Times, Janet Maslin said, “Ms. Haigh is an expertly nuanced storyteller long overdue for major attention…. Abortion, guns, vigilantism, drug dealing, white supremacy, bitter misogyny and online fetishism all figure in the tableau Haigh expertly details.”

Jimin Han, is the author of the new novel, The Apology (2023), a sweeping intergenerational saga told in the voice of the 105-year-old matriarch of a Korean family. Alexander Chee called the book, “an uncanny high wire act—arch, tender, mercurial,” and said, “This is a story unlike any other of Korea and America, and of a mother’s love— majestic, a deathless avenger, shrewd and wild….” Lit Hub named it a “Most Anticipated Book of 2023,” and Shondaland named it one of “the Best Books to Read for Summer.”

William Kennedy is the founder and executive director of the New York State Writers Institute. His novels include Changó’s Beads and Two-Tone Shoes (2011), Roscoe (2002), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award; and Ironweed (1983), which received the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Kennedy has also written as the screenplays for "The Cotton Club" (1986) and "Ironweed." In 1983 Kennedy was awarded the MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant. In 2017, he was elected to the New York State Writers Hall of Fame, and in 2018, he traveled to Dublin to receive the Presidential Distinguished Service Award for his writings about the Irish-American experience.

Patricia Spears Jones, a key figure and organizer of the New York City poetry community for more than four decades, is a Brooklyn-based poet and the author of five collections including The Beloved Community (2023) and A Lucent Fire: New and Selected Poems (2015). Her work has been anthologized in African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle and Song, and Angles of Ascent: A Norton Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry. She is also the co-editor of the groundbreaking 1978 anthology, Ordinary Women: An Anthology of New York City Women Poets.

Nell Irvin Painter, eminent historian, is the author of numerous books including Sojourner Truth (1997), Southern History Across the Color Line (2002), Creating Black Americans (2005), and The History of White People (2010). Her landmark history of the Progressive Era, Standing at Armageddon: The United States, 1877-1919 (1989), takes its title from a Teddy Roosevelt campaign speech, and traces the rapid transformation of the United States from an agrarian society to an industrialized power. Her 2018 memoir, Old in Art School, about studying the art of painting in her 60s, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Elizabeth Passarella, a self-described Southern Evangelical, has lived in New York City for more than 20 years. She’s the author of Good Apple: Tales of a Southern Evangelical in New York (2021), an account of her complicated love affair with her adopted city. Bestselling author Ada Calhoun said, "With sly humor, ecumenical warmth, and disarming frankness, Elizabeth Passarella builds bridges between red and blue and North and South. Good Apple makes a strong case for New York City as the kingdom of God— and for handwritten thank-you notes." Her new book is It Was an Ugly Couch Anyway: And Other Thoughts on Moving Forward (2023).

Bestselling author and eminent scholar of Eastern Europe history at Harvard, Serhii Plokhy’s new book is The Russo-Ukrainian War: The Return of History (2023), an authoritative history of Europe’s largest military conflict since World War II. Historian Simon Sebag Montefiore called it "the essential book about the Russia-Ukraine war—superb, accessible and erudite—by the world’s chief expert. The must-read work.” Plokhy also authored the New York Times bestseller The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine (2015), as well as Atoms and Ashes: A Global History of Nuclear Disaster (2022), Nuclear Folly: A History of the Cuban Missile Crisis (2021), and Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy (2018).

Event cosponsored by United University Professionals and the UAlbany History Department. 

Annie Proulx one of America’s leading fiction writers, is also an environmentalist and the author of a new book, Fen, Bog, and Swamp: A Short History of Peatland Destruction and Its Role in the Climate Crisis (2023). Bill McKibben called it, “an unforgettable and unflinching tour of past and present, fixed on a subject that could not be more important.” Proulx is the author of the short story “Brokeback Mountain,” which was adapted as an Oscar-winning motion picture by director Ang Lee and screenwriter Larry McMurtry. Her novels include the modern-day classics, The Shipping News (1993), winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award; Postcards (1992), winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction; and Barkskins (2016), a 300-year epic about the deforestation of North America.

Jeff Shaara is one of America’s biggest-selling authors of historical fiction about the nation’s wars. His fifteen New York Times bestsellers include the Civil War novels, Gods and Generals and The Last Full Measure— the prequel and sequel to The Killer Angels, the Pulitzer-winning novel about Gettysburg written by his late father, Michael Shaara. His new novel, The Old Lion: A Novel of Theodore Roosevelt  (2023), presents Roosevelt at the end of his life as he reflects on his storied past, from his boyhood in New York’s high society, to his adventures around the world, to his unlikely ascent to the American presidency.

Greg Steinmetz is the author of American Rascal: How Jay Gould Built Wall Street's Biggest Fortune (paperback, 2023), the gripping tale of an impoverished farmer’s son who became one of the most infamous robber barons of the Gilded Age. A former financial journalist for the The Wall Street Journal, Steinmetz served as bureau chief in both Berlin and London before becoming a partner at a New York money management firm. His first book, The Richest Man Who Ever Lived: The Life and Times of Jacob Fugger, was heralded by CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin as one of the best reads of 2015.