4:150pm – Conversation at Opalka Gallery

7:30pm – Presentation, UAlbany Downtown, Page Hall, 135 Western Ave., Albany

Samuel Delany is a one-of-a-kind giant of American literature, a disruptive practitioner of “outsider art,” an explorer of African-American and Gay identities, and one of the most influential and innovative science fiction writers of the last half century. In The Daily Beast, cultural critic Mark Dery called him, “the Grand Old Man of polymorphously perverse science fiction.” The winner of four Nebulas and two Hugos, Delany was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America in 2013. Since 1962, he has written dozens of books, including the sci-fi classics, Babel-17 (1966), The Einstein Intersection (1967), Nova (1968), Dhalgren (1975), and the Return to Nevèrÿon series (1979-1987). Recent books include Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders(2012) and The Atheist in the Attic (2018). Delany served as Writer-in-Residence at the University at Albany in 1978.