For the last few years, we have hosted “An Evening with the Author” in the spring at Albany Public Library to highlight our newly chosen Literary Legends. They would come to meet each other, talk about their craft and connect with our donors and the community.
Recently, we presented a stay-at-home version called “An Afternoon with the Author” with our 2020 Literary Legend Elisa Albert and her friend, and local writer Jay Deitcher, who interviewed her.
More than two dozen people tuned in to hear Elisa talk about writing, literature, teaching and coping with motherhood and life. She even read from her work!
Elisa is the author of the novels After Birth and The Book of Dahlia, the short story collection How This Night Is Different, and editor of the anthology Freud’s Blind Spot. She is also working on a new novel. Albert grew up in Los Angeles and received an MFA from Columbia University, where she was a Lini Mazumdar Fellow. She has taught creative writing at Columbia’s School of the Arts, The College of Saint Rose, and is currently writer-in-residence at Bennington College. She lives in Albany, New York with her family.
Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Tin House, The New York Times, Post Road, The Guardian, Gulf Coast, Commentary, Salon, Tablet, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Believer, The Rumpus, Time Magazine, on NPR, and in many anthologies.
The purpose of Literary Legends is two-fold: to recognize outstanding local authors, illustrators and publishers for their extraordinary contributions to the art of letters; and to raise needed funds for special programs and services provided by the Albany Public Library.
This summer, we hope to do another event with Elisa, either online or in-person. And, save the date Saturday, October 17, for our virtual gala, #LiteraryLegendsAtHome.
