NYS Writers Institute

Writers, Poets, Artists, Filmmakers, Students, Professors and People who enjoy great literature.

The Writers Institute’s central aim is to enhance and celebrate literature, writing, and performance, and to recognize the position of writers as a community within the larger community. Books, films, plays, and their creators can provide portals through which the most personal or complex issues of human understanding can be explored. Each year the Writers Institute brings 40-60 writers to Albany to conduct informal seminars, writing workshops, and readings as part of its Visiting Writers Series. 

We also host two large-scale annual festivals - the Albany Book Festival each fall, and the Albany Film Festival each spring - that utilize a large number of volunteers including UAlbany students/faculty/staff and community members. 

The annual Albany Book Festival began in 2018 and has featured: Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Ayad Akhtar, Ishmael Beah, Douglas Brinkley, Elizabeth Brundage, Susan Choi, Noam Chomsky, Kristen Ciccarelli, Edwidge Danticat, Sylvia Day, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Annette Gordon-Reed, Rob Hart, Harold Holzer, Gish Jen, Khizr Khan, Jamaica Kincaid, Mark Kurlansky, Laura Lippman, Gregory Maguire, Colum McCann, Wayetu Moore, Bethany Morrow, Walter Mosley, Joyce Carol Oates, Willie Perdomo, Robert Pinsky, Francine Prose, Jonathan Santlofer, Dani Shapiro, J. Courtney Sullivan, Garry Trudeau, Michael Twitty, Colson Whitehead, and Simon Winchester, among others. For more information on the Albany Book Festival, visit: https://www.albanybookfestival.com/

The Albany Film Festival launched as a hybrid festival in Spring 2021, featuring an immersive projection mapping light show, “Passages,” celebrating the Capital Region’s rich literary and filmmaking history. The hybrid festival also featured online workshops for aspiring filmmakers, a drive-in movie night, and recorded interviews with the Ironweed Award winners for Exemplary Achievement in Film: James Ivory, Kasi Lemmons, Darnell Martin, Rosie Perez, Samuel Pollard. Our 3rd annual Albany Film Festival, held in April 2023, featured screenings of full-length films, a short film contest, panel discussions with industry professionals, and the presentation of the Ironweed Award for Exemplary Achievement in Film to actor Stephen Lang, screenwriter/producer Keith Beauchamp, film editor Amy Carey Linton, and screenwriter/director James Schamus. For more information on the Albany Film Festival, visit: https://www.albanyfilmfestival.org/