Novelist Rick Moody to read on campus - 2009-04-07

Novelist Rick Moody to read on campus; to be introduced by Russell Banks

Contact: Nathalie Thill, 518-327-6278 

Paul Smiths, NY – Paul Smith’s College and the Adirondack Center for Writing are pleased to welcome best-selling novelist and memoirist Rick Moody to the College for a reading as part of their Visiting Author Series on Thursday, April 16. Scheduled for 7 p.m. in the Pine Room of the Joan Weill Student Center at Paul Smith’s College, the event is free and open to the public. Novelist Russell Banks will introduce Rick Moody, making this evening twice the pleasure. 

The Boston Globe calls Moody “Funny, fierce, and generous, [his] maximalist prose gives the writer leeway, and the reader pleasure. Sometimes swashbuckling, sometimes laserlike, he can spin out the absurdity of human behavior in giddy syntactic arabesques, or nail it with a single noun.” 

Rick Moody’s first novel, Garden State, published in 1992, was the winner of the 1991 Editor’s Choice Award from the Pushcart Press. The Ice Storm was published in May 1994 by Little, Brown & Co., and a film version, directed by Ang Lee, was released by Fox Searchlight in 1997. Right Livelihoods, a novella and his eighth book, was published in 2007. His newest novel is entitled The Diviners. In May of 2002, Little, Brown & Co issued The Black Veil: A Memoir with Digressions, which was a winner of the NAMI/Ken Book Award, and the PEN Martha Albrand prize for excellence in the memoir. In 1998, Moody received the Addison Metcalf Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2000, he received a Guggenheim fellowship. His short fiction and journalism have been anthologized in Best American Stories 2001, Best American Essays 2004, Year's Best Science Fiction #9, and in the Pushcart Prize anthology. 


Moody is a member of the board of directors of the Corporation of Yaddo. He is the secretary of the PEN American Center, and he co-founded the Young Lions Book Award at the New York Public Library. He has taught at the State University of New York at Purchase, the Bennington College Writing Seminars, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and the New School for Social Research. Born in New York City, Moody lives in Brooklyn, New York. 


Past authors featured in the Visiting Author Series sponsored by Paul Smith’s College and Adirondack Center for Writing have included Andrea Barret, Terry Tempest Williams, William Kennedy, and Alistair McLeod. The Adirondack Center for Writing is an independent non-profit, 501(c)3 organization dedicated to promoting literature and providing educational opportunities and support to both aspiring and established writers in the Adirondack region. They provide workshops, conferences, and readings throughout the year in locations all around the Adirondack Park. Paul Smiths College also generously donates office space and in-kind office services to the Adirondack Center for Writing. Books by Rick Moody will be made available at this event, which the author will sign. Author photo attached. “Photo © Emma Dodge Hanson,” must appear with image when used.