PALA/CE Faculty News

CALA Instructor Cheryl Klein to Speak on Children’s and YA Publishing Panel

August 24, 2016 by Cayla Delardi

Cheryl Klein, a CALA Writing instructor and celebrated editor, will be speaking at a panel called “The Magic Words: A Panel on Children’s and Young Adult Publishing” at the Strand Bookstore on September 7th, 7-8PM.

Along with her fellow panelists, including best-selling author Kass Morgan and literary agent Brooks Sherman, Cheryl will be sharing her knowledge on all aspects of the children’s and young adult literature industry from writing to publishing to promotion.

The event is inspired by Cheryl’s upcoming book, The Magic Words: Writing Great Books for Children and Young Adults, which guides readers through the process of creating a children’s book or young adult novel, providing exercises, questions and other tools to help aspiring authors along the way. Purchase of the book through the Strand’s website or in-store grants admission to the panel.

See the Strand website for full details: http://www.strandbooks.com/event/the-magic-words-panel

Purchase the book for admission here: http://www.strandbooks.com/writing-technique/0907-event-the-magic-words-writing-great-books-for-children-and-young-adults-9111782730/
(Note: You must use the above link if you would like to attend the event. Copies of the book that are purchased without the “Admission” option will only be reserved and will ship 1-2 days after the event, pending availability.)

Want to learn more about the literary world? Sign up for our Writing and Publishing courses today!

Writing for Children: Picture Books and Chapter Books
Creative Writing for Beginners
The Elements of Fiction Writing
Book Editing Manuscript Workshop: Editing Children’s and YA Novels
From Writer to Reader: An Introduction to Publishing
How to Be a Book Editor
Publishing Children’s Novels

NYU SPS Students Win Places in Meryl Streep’s Writers Lab

August 15, 2016 by Anne Maguire

Congratulations to Christine Toy Johnson and Barbara Nunberg for their winning screenplays, Jumping the Third Rail and Willful Blindness, in the second annual Writers Lab competition which is funded by Meryl Streep. Twelve screenwriters were chosen from just under 1000 submissions, according to Katie Chambers at New York Women in Film and Television (NYWIFT). The Lab is a weekend-long screenwriting retreat open to women over 40, co-sponsored by NYWIFT and IRIS, a collective of women filmmakers. The program puts emerging screenwriters and women established in the movie industry together to work on refining and further developing the winning scripts.

Both writers studied screenwriting at NYU SPS. “When I decided I wanted to start learning how to write screenplays about 14 years ago, I was so happy to find NYU’s School of Professional Studies’ Certificate of Screenwriting Program,” said Christine Toy Johnson. “I was finding this particular part of my voice later in life than many others in the industry (in which I was already making a living as an actor), and graduate school was not an option as I was busy working. I actually started writing Jumping the Third Rail in one of my classes in the program, and got wonderful guidance from Michael Zam, in particular, as part of the final one-on-one advanced class.”

Barbara Nunberg completed the Masterclass in Screenwriting in spring 2015, and she too studied with CALA instructor, Michael Zam, in Rewriting a Screenplay in 10 Weeks: “Michael Zam’s excellent re-writing course really helped me get my script in shape to apply for the lab. Michael’s an amazing teacher and mentor. As an active writer, he’s current in the industry, so his guidance is practical. But he also offers an encyclopedic knowledge of film, TV and theater. Mainly, he’s a very insightful critic/reader who guides you towards smart solutions to writing problems. Working with him has been a great experience for me.”

IRIS founders: Kyle Ann Stokes, Nitza Wilon, and Elizabeth Kaiden

The mentors attached to the Lab, slated for September 22-25, 2016, include: Alexis Alexanian (Maggie’s Plan), Jessica Bendinger (Bring It On, Aquamarine), Susan Cartsonis (What Women Want, The Duff), Lisa Cortes (Precious, Shadowboxer), Caroline Kaplan (Time Out of Mind, Me and You and Everyone We Know ), Mary Jane Skalski (Win Win, The Station Agent ), and Kirsten Smith (Legally Blond, Ten Things I Hate About You ).

The Writers Lab will take place in the Connecticut River Valley. The 12 writers and eight mentors will meet for intensive one-on-one discussions to develop and refine their scripts. In addition, they will participate in group panel discussions to explore universal themes and concepts.

“After the overwhelming support we received from last year’s inaugural launch, it is clear The Writers Lab is a vital step in shaping a new landscape for women,” said Terry Lawler, Executive Director of NYWIFT.

At CALA we are thrilled for both women and send our congratulations. The last words are reserved for them.

Barbara Nunberg: “I’m thrilled to participate in the writers lab in September!”

Christine Toy Johnson, “I am grateful to NYU’s SPS Certificate of Screenwriting Program for giving me the foundation I needed to learn to write from my heart, but also with sound structure.” Click on Toy Johnson for full text.

Fall Courses in Screenwriting at CALA

The Screenwriter’s Craft

Writing a Screenplay in 10 Weeks

Rewriting a Screenplay in 10 Weeks

and at SPS Professional Studies

Writing for Television Diploma

Free Talk on “Hitchcock’s Blondes” This Monday

August 12, 2016 by Cayla Delardi

Stephen Whitty, one of CALA’s accomplished film studies instructors, will be hosting a free talk on “Hitchcock’s Blondes” this Monday, August 15th at 12:30pm in Bryant Park. He will discuss the director’s iconic cast of leading ladies, his longstanding battle with censorship, and much more.

The material derives from the extensive research Whitty conducted for his most recent book, The Alfred Hitchcock Encyclopedia, which was published this past June by Rowman and Littlefield.

For more information on the event, visit his Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/stephen.whitty.film/posts/663410550476215

The World According to the Coen Brothers’ Films: From Blood Simple to A Serious Man
More Great British Cinema
Espionage on Film: From the 39 Steps to Zero Dark Thirty
The Cinema and the City
International Politics and Film
Italian Cinema: Envisioning a Country’s Complex Identity
Superheroes: A Mythic Battle of History, Media, and Culture

‘Unflattening’ Our Ways of Seeing, Reading, and Writing: A Review

August 12, 2016 by Cayla Delardi

New technologies and digital media have altered the way we read, write, make connections and communicate in our everyday lives. According to Kristine Rodriguez Kerr, Academic Director of CALA’s M.S. in Professional Writing program, that makes this a very exciting time for writers, communication specialists, and anyone interested in understanding the multimodal ways modern narratives are consumed and produced.

In their recently published review “Unflattening” Our Ways of Seeing, Reading, and Writing, Kristine and co-writer Lalitha Vasudevan review Nick Sousanis’ graphic novel Unflattening—a theoretically ground text that takes seriously the blending of visual images and written words. Written and drawn entirely as a graphic novel, Sousanis’ text embodies and validates the stance it advocates for. The unconventional format seeks to literally unflatten conceptions of meaning, reading, and writing through an active embrace of multimodality in its integration of images, design, and various genres of written text.

Going forward, Kristine and Lalitha will continue to co-edit the Professional Resources column for the Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, inviting the journal’s readers to consider the impact of new and emerging communication practices on their pedagogical practices. To that end, they have lined up a mix of resources for review over the next year, including written texts, graphic novels, documentaries, and mixed-media pieces.

Read an excerpt from the review and check out some of our favorite pages from Unflattening below.

Inviting his readers to challenge “what Marcuse called ‘a pattern of one-dimensional thought and behavior’” (Sousanis, [6], p. 6), Sousanis encourages us to “step out and look anew” (pp. 25–26). In selecting this book as the inaugural text under our editorship of this column, we would like to encourage practitioners to engage Unflattening with the goal that Sousanis describes within the first chapter: “to discover new ways of seeing, to open spaces for possibilities, and to find ‘fresh methods’ for animating and awakening” (p. 27).
[… ] In reviewing Unflattening for this column, we echo Sousanis’s ([6]) statement that “to prepare good thinkers we need to cultivate good seers” (p. 81). Without being prescriptive, this text does the work of both advocating for and being an example of taking seriously image in concert with other modes of expression to open spaces of understanding and seeing differently.

(Click images to view full size)

CALA’s M.S. in Professional Writing program encourages our students to develop multidimentional ways of thinking, seeing, and writing. Our program prepares students for critical, active, and engaging professional writing careers across industries.

For more information on the program, please visit our website:http://www.scps.nyu.edu/academics/departments/humanities-arts-and-writing/academics/ms-in-professional-writing.html

Applications for the Fall semester are currently under review, so don’t delay!

Rio de Janeiro Blues

August 5, 2016 by Anne Maguire

In the lead up to the opening ceremony of the 2016 Olympic Games in Brazil this evening, Jenny McPhee’s post, Vidigal, Rio de Janeiro celebrates the vibrant creativity of a city in trouble. “There was much to admire in Rio–the range, number, and quality of their neighborhoods, museums, bookstores (they even sell books in vending machines in the subway), and restaurants was beyond impressive; and much to regret–the pollution, the crime, the political morass–shared by too many global cities. But the best part of our short stay in Rio was getting to know just a little bit the neighborhood where we were staying.” Jenny includes lots of great photographs of street art in her post.

For more public art, the French artist known as JR, returned to work in Rio de Janeiro prior to the Olympics. His work feels right at home there. In this excerpt from the Widewalls Artist of the Week slot, Natalija Paunić remarks that, “His latest project consists of two huge installations in Rio de Janeiro, completed as part of the Inside Out project, but executed in a completely fresh manner. Instead of pasting his photographs onto buildings or walls, JR decided to install his huge canvases across construction scaffolds, one of which is placed on top of a building, and the other one is facing the ocean. Having the spirit of the Olympic Games in mind, the fact that JR is currently in Rio, working and collaborating with the locals on his Inside Out project, does not come as a surprise.”

If we can’t be in Rio painting murals, or collaborating on public art projects, there’s always learning Portuguese or taking art classes at CALA.

Courses of Interest this Fall

Portuguese 1

Conversational Portuguese

English-Portuguese & Portuguese to English Translation Courses

Drawing & Painting Portraits & Self-Portraits

Painting

Printmaking

Still-Life Drawing

Art of the Afro-Atlantic

Analyze This! Hillary Clinton’s Emails

August 4, 2016 by Anne Maguire

With all the hoopla surrounding the general election, with insults and hair flying, liars calling liars liars, and Vice-President Joe Biden’s proclamation that, “… that’s a bunch of malarkey!”, here is a very interesting and level-headed perspective on one big election topic; Hillary Clinton’s emails. The authors Helen Cunningham and Brenda Greene move from the controversial private server issues at the beginning of their article, What No One Has Said about Hillary’s Emails, to the guts of the piece – what Clinton’s emails reveal about her writing and communication skills, her manners, and her grasp of English grammar. With subtopics including Language, Tone, Proofreading, and Dashes there are examples of best practices, clear language, and perfect punctuation. Then there’s Cherie Blair’s poor spelling and syntax: “Hilary can you give me a telephone number for the Qatar Crown Prince can ring you on and he will get in touch.” I beg your pardon! Almost worse is her misspelling of Hillary by forgetting one “l.” Beyond rude.

On Language the authors write, “Hillary is a master of plain English and clarity in email. Her readers will never need a dictionary, nor will they need to re-read a message. She writes tightly, avoiding extra words and using simple, direct sentences. To Jacob Lew, then-budget director: “Let’s talk tomorrow. I’ll call you in the morning about two subjects: Haiti and Af-Pak. Is there anything else you want to raise?” To aide Robert Russo: “Pls make 4 copies of the Sept. 21 revised summary document you prepared for me for tomorrow. Thx.”

As the authors note, “You’d be lucky to have a boss like Hillary.” Here they address Etiquette: “Hillary’s emails are noteworthy for the generally polite and respectful manner towards staff. The abbreviations “Pls” and “Thx” (“please” and “thanks”) are ubiquitous. “Pls come see me tomorrow about redesigning and updating the format. Thx.” “Thanks for all your hard work on this difficult speech to get it as right as possible.”

Finally, down to brass tacks – “Proofreading: Hillary leads by example with exacting standards for writing and a sharp eye. She often reminds staff to give documents a rigorous review before releasing them to the public, and does so with a surprisingly gentle tone. “Ok but be sure it’s proofread. ” “Also, pls be sure the text is carefully proofread since there are a number of typos and missing words.” “I think it is ready to go w one question: when you say in the 4th para, “last July”, do you mean 09 or 10? I thought we started in 09.”

So, email servers and elections aside – if you get hacked, don’t be a Cherie Blair, be a Hillary Clinton! Here are some Fall 2016 courses that will help:

Fall Courses at CALA:

Professional Writing with Power

Writing on the Job

Grammar Review Crash Course

Improving Writing Skills

Writing and Grammar: The Basics

High Impact Communication

Grammar Intensive for Publishing Professionals

From ALI (American Language Institute)

Effective Emailing

Helen Cunningham will teach:

Effective Business Writing

Workplace Oral Communications

Young Translators’ Road Trip to Boston

August 1, 2016 by dak7

This past weekend, 14 students from the Center for Applied Liberal Arts’ Young Translators Institute joined Prof. Julie Tay on a trip to Boston, Massachusetts. From a campus tour of Harvard University to lobster rolls at Quincy Market, students had a number of quintessential Boston experiences. Other highlights included a meeting with Martin Roberts, the founder of Linguistics Systems, Inc., a multi-million dollar translation services company that employs over 7,000 translators.

The Young Translators Institute is a three-week course of study that introduces students to the business and practice of translation and interpreting. Besides going to Boston, students also visited the language service divisions at the United Nations in New York City as well as other major translation agencies and client organizations. The program culminates in a full-day symposium of panels and student presentations.

Here is a full account of the Boston trip by By Zirui Zhou, a student from Beijing:

“At the thought of a trip to Boston, the first thing that came to my mind was lobster. Personally, I had starved myself before the trip so that I could enjoy more tasty dishes when we got there!

Around 8 am, we set off from 7 E 12th Street with much curiosity. The bus was freezing but not so much as to cool our excitement. After a tedious four-hour ride, we arrived in Downtown Boston and headed straight for Quincy Market – a gourmet paradise: Steamed lobsters, lobster rolls, shrimp rolls, all of which shocked us at first sight. We had never seen lobsters that huge before. Juicy and natural, a pure taste of Boston, the lobsters seemed to translate the story of the deep Atlantic Ocean, revealing the character of the northeast itself.

East Coast United States is of course famous for prestigious universities as well. The next morning, we toured Harvard with a very tall student guide, Ramsey, who turned out to be a football star! According to Ramsey, hidden in the peace and comfort of Harvard yard are three lies concerning John Harvard: The first is that the John Harvard statue is actually not of John Harvard himself; the second is that John Harvard was not the founder of Harvard University, which is astonishing; finally, the time tag carved on the statue is incorrect. We also learned that Harvard freshmen are entitled to limitless ice cream in the dinning halls everyday.

Next, we stopped briefly on Massachusetts Ave, long enough to admire the majestic MIT building and take more pictures. Then it was off to visit Linguistics Systems, Inc., situated on a quiet street also named Broadway but this one was in Cambridge. Here we learned a lot from the company founder Martin Roberts. Apparently, to keep pace with globalization which has penetrated different Industries, the process of translation has become more than a linguistic issue. Many machine translation tools are used nowadays to deal with the massive volume of text to be translated in different directions back and forth in many different languages. Mr. Roberts told us his company has over 7000 translators in their database! It was amazing how he turned a tiny outfit started in 1967 into a million dollar business.”

Fatigued and filled with memories, I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who fell asleep on the ride back to New York, dreaming of limitless ice cream.”

CALA offers a variety of courses and programs in Foreign Languages, Translation, and Interpreting including:

Non-credit courses:

Translation

Interpreting

Foreign Languages

Diplomas:

Medical Interpreting- Spanish/English

Medical Interpreting- Mandarin/English

Legal Interpreting- Mandarin/English

Legal Interpreting- Spanish/English

Translating for the Globalized Market- English/Portuguese

Translating for the Globalized Market- English/Arabic

Digital Media Translation and Localization

and the M.S. in Translation

Faculty Blog Feature: Françoise Herrmann

July 29, 2016 by Cayla Delardi

Blogs are a versatile digital tool used by millions of people across the world to share aspects of their personal lives and work, disseminate news, and even sell products. They’ve also become an increasingly popular way for our faculty to communicate with students and outside audiences alike. In an effort to continue promoting their endeavors and strengthen our community, we’ve decided to create a network of CALA faculty blogs on our homepage and coordinate an ongoing series of guest posts to further showcase their writing.

To start off the series, we are featuring the work of Françoise Herrmann, a CALA faculty member who teaches French to English Patents Translation and English to French Medical Translation in our Foreign Languages, Translation, and Interpreting department. In addition to her dedication to these courses, she also has two blogs which she updates regularly. The first, called Patents on the Soles of Your Shoes, is where she explores the history of patents on everything from Louboutin heels to 19th century fountain pens. Tradmed, written entirely in French, is based on her Medical Translation course materials and class discussions.

Here’s an excerpt of her most recent Patents post on robotic agricultural machinery from Naïo Technologies:

Aloha!* It’s time for farmers to Rumba! The French startup Naïo Technologies is designing agricultural robots!

Do you have any idea how hard it is to till soil…? High tide for automating the year-in, year-out, back-breaking tasks of weeding, plowing, hoeing, sowing, mowing, spraying and clipping.

The prior art of agricultural machinery is significant. All sorts of tractor or rototiller machines assist farmers in toiling the land; machines equipped to sow, to hoe, to weed, to harvest and to apply pesticides. But all of this machinery requires a user/driver, and the machines are often too big to navigate narrow rows of fruit and vegetable crops. Besides, this heavy machinery is also well-known and criticized for its large fossil fuel footprint, with designs supporting extensive use of pesticides and herbicides, in turn also contributing to greenhouse gas effects.

In comes the Naïo Technologies automated autonomous agricultural device… an agricultural robot (and farming companion) which no longer requires a driver, and is small enough to navigate narrow rows of crops, in particular fruits and vegetables. The Naïo agricultural robot is also optimized to perform non-randomly in a field of obstacle geometry with a delimited perimeter.

Read More →

Be sure to follow both of Françoise’s blogs, and check out her CALA translation courses!

English to French Medical Translation (Fall 2016)
French to English Patents Translation (Spring 2017-link coming soon)
More Fall 2016 Translation courses

Note: If you’ve never taken one of our translation course before, you’ll need to pass a written admissions test before registering. Please email sps.translation@nyu.edu for more details.

CALL FOR FACULTY BLOGS

We are currently in the process of compiling the list of recommended faculty blogs to feature on our homepage. If you would like to have your blog(s) included, send us a link to sps.cala.blog@gmail.com along with a brief description of the content.

The Business of Writing for Television- A Panel Discussion

July 19, 2016 by dak7

In recent years television, unlike nearly every other creative industry, hasn’t just grown—it has exploded. Competition among Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, YouTube, and Google as well as traditional television networks has ushered us into the new golden age of television. Join Ken Levine (Frasier, Cheers, The Simpsons, M*A*S*H), Lara Shapiro (The Americans), and Michael Zam (Ryan Murphy’s forthcoming series Feud) for a discussion of the business of writing for television, hosted by the NYU SPS Center for Applied Liberal Arts (CALA).