, a highly acclaimed novelist and an associate professor in the M.F.A. Program in Creative Writing, will present a reading on Friday, Sept. 30, as part of the . The free event is at 7 p.m. at the 黑料不打烊 YMCA, 340 Montgomery St.
Dana Spiotta
For more information, call the Arts Branch of the YMCA at 315.474.6851, ext. 328.
Spiotta鈥檚 鈥淪tone Arabia鈥� (Scribner, 2011) won the 2012 CNY Book Award for fiction. The award is sponsored by the DWC. 鈥淪tone Arabia鈥� also was a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist in fiction.
Her most recent novel, 鈥淚nnocents and Others鈥� (Scribner, 2016), was released in March to critical praise. She 鈥渉as created a new kind of great American novel … [she] writes radiant, concentrated books that, as she has put it, consider 鈥榯he way things external to us shape us: money, technology, art, place, history,鈥欌€� The New York Times Magazine says in a February 21, 2016, story. 鈥淪he has been compared with Don DeLillo and Joan Didion,鈥� the magazine continues, 鈥渂ut her tone and mood are distinctly her own: She鈥檚 fascinated, not alienated.鈥�
“Innocents and Others” has drawn praise from countless other publications: 鈥淎 brilliant, riddling clip-montage of a friendship鈥� (The New York Times Book Review); 鈥渁n original and strangely moving book鈥� (The Los Angeles Times); and an 鈥渁stute novel about fame, power, and alienation steeped in a dark eroticism鈥� (Vanity Fair).
George Saunders G鈥�88, professor of English, considers Spiotta a wonder. 鈥淸Her novel] is a daring and beautiful meditation about selfishness and selflessness, and how to be in the world,鈥� he writes. 鈥淎 powerful book that will stay with me and continue to speak to me for a long time.鈥�
Adds Mary Karr, the Peck Professor of Literature: 鈥淪piotta is emerging as perhaps the major contender for fiction’s next generation. Her aim is nothing less than redemption, and she delivers.鈥�
Spiotta鈥檚 鈥淓at the Document鈥� (Scribner, 2006) was a finalist for the National Book Award and a recipient of the Rosenthal Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her debut novel is 鈥淟ightning Field鈥� (Scribner, 2001). She was a Guggenheim Fellow and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow, and won the 2008-09 Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome.
Spiotta discussed the kinds of characters that inhabit her novels with the online literary magazine The Millions: 鈥淚 am interested, broadly, in how people respond to the enormities of the wider world, or even the harsh realities of a local, quiet life,鈥� she says. 鈥淚鈥檓 not so interested in truly 鈥榖ad鈥� characters. I鈥檓 interested in bruised idealists.鈥�
Founded in 1999, the Arts Branch of the YMCA serves thousands of residents each year through a variety of programs, including the YMCA After School Arts Program; private music lessons; the East and Northwest YMCA Arts Studios; the Y-Arts Scholars Program; and the DWC, which provides adult and teen creative writing workshops, free literary readings, the CNY Book Awards and the journal Stone Canoe.
