2020 Virtual Book Club Starts on May 13th!

After the phenomenal success of last year’s Moby Dick Book Club, Historic Albany Foundation is once again partnering with Discover Albany and the New York State Writers Institute to offer an Albany-connected Book Club.

We’re excited to announce that 2020’s book will be ‘The Turn of the Screw’ by Henry James. This canonical piece of Gothic literature will be explored over 3 meetings virtually, and we invite everyone to join!

We will be conducting the meetings via Zoom from 5.30pm-6.30pm on Wednesday May 13th, May 27th, and June 3rd, and will be featuring expert speakers Krysta Dennis and Lara Whelan with each session being led once again by the wonderful Maeve Mceneny.

These will be free events - we just ask people to let us know if they're attending so we can email them the link to the meeting. If you’d like to donate to the book club in support of HAF, please use the button below.

Reading Schedule

Wednesday May 13th, 5.30pm-6.30pm

First half of the book discussion

Wednesday May 27th, 5.30pm-6.30pm

Second half of the book discussion

Wednesday June 10th, 5.30pm-6.30pm: Adaptations

We will discuss different screen & stage adaptations of the novella

• Read the book online using Project Gutenberg or Page by Page

• Listen to the book on Youtube

• Borrow the book on your e-reader or download the audio book from Albany Public Library

Meet our Experts!

Krysta Dennis

Dr. Krysta Dennis, Producer of Creative Arts at Siena College, works as a theatre director and playwright in the US and internationally. Krysta holds a dual PhD from the University of Kent in the UK and the Sorbonne in Paris, and trained as a performer at L’Ecole Jacques Lecoq. She is the author of three plays, Votes for Women, The Burden of the Ballot, and Dutch. Krysta enjoys experimenting with theatre technology in her work including video mapping, augmented reality and virtual reality. Recent directing credits include: The Turn of the Screw (Creative License), An Ideal Husband (NorthEast Theatre Ensemble), A Streetcar Named Desire (NETE), Marjorie Prime (Theatre Voices), Aleda (chamber opera premiere, Musicians of Ma'alwyck), Arcadia (Siena College), The Little Foxes (NETE), Blithe Spirit (Theatre Voices), Through the Grapevine, A Performed Wine Tasting (Lumley Theatre and Canterbury Festival). She has published with Contemporary Theatre Review, Interdisciplinary Network, Routledge, and the Pirandello Society of America. Krysta is also involved in a number of theatre for social change projects, including the Siena College Upstander program. She is currently working on a new play in collaboration with the Damietta Center.

Lara Whelan

Since June 2017, Dr. Lara Whelan has served as Dean of the School of Liberal Arts at Siena College, where she is also an Associate Professor of English. Prior to that, she was a faculty member in the English Department at Berry College, in northwest Georgia, for 20 years, where she also served as Director of the Center for Teaching Enhancement and the Director of the Honors Program. She received her B.A. in English from Dartmouth College; her M.A. in Victorian Literature and Culture from King’s College, London; and her Ph.D. in English from University of Delaware. She has published articles and one book on Victorian ghost stories and sensation fiction viewed from the lens of class identity, in addition to work on 19th and early-20th-century Irish literature. Lara, a Chicago native, is married and has one adult daughter who still lives in Georgia. In her spare time, she plays a lot of video games and listens to a lot of podcasts about creepy weird stuff.

Join us in Creating a Cocktail!

Are you a cocktail connoisseur or enjoy experimenting with an aperitif? In honor of our virtual book club and the current social distancing measure in place, we will be creating cocktails with the ingredients we have in kitchen cupboards. Now is the time to be inventive and we’re excited to see what you will come up with.

We will be providing some inspiration, however if you’re all out of ideas we encourage you to take advantage of some of the local bars curbside cocktail and drinks services!

#boozeandbooks