SUNY Adirondack's Writers Project receives Ian Fleming Foundation grant

QUEENSBURY, New York (Oct. 7, 2025) — SUNY Adirondack is proud to announce the college’s Writers Project has received a $2,500 literacy grant from the Ian Fleming Foundation.

“The Ian Fleming Foundation is proud to support The Writers' Project,” said Frieda Toth, vice president of the foundation, which is dedicated to study and preservation of Fleming’s creative works. “Their dedication to the craft of writing reflects IFF's mission to encourage the next generation of writers and, since a James Bond thriller, ‘The Spy Who Loved Me,’ takes place in the Adirondacks, this is an ideal alliance.”

The Writers Project at SUNY Adirondack offers a series of talks on campus by authors, poets, journalists, editors, publishers, songwriters, playwrights and other literary figures. The events are free and open to the public.

The Fall 2025 Writers Project events started this week, with a virtual talk with poet Karen Rigby. The series continues with the following events:

• Oct. 13: Memoirist and novelist Richard Robison Jr. recounts his nomadic 1960s upbringing in “The Boy From Nowhere.”
• Oct. 27: Photographer MaryEllen Hendricks shares images from her “The Thin Places” project. Retired SUNY Adirondack Distinguished Professor of English Kathleen McCoy will discuss her poems inspired by the project.
• Nov. 10: Glens Falls-based playwright and musician Neal Herr will talk about the arts industry, grant funding and his musical “Drag Queen Story Hour: The Musical.”
• Nov. 24: Educator and writer Kathy Fish shares insights on “flash” fiction.
• Dec. 8: Novelist Wendy Chin-Tanner reads from her award-winning novel, “King of the Armadillos,” an imagined retelling of her father’s 1950s struggle with leprosy.

The grant from Ian Fleming Foundation is available Jan. 1, 2026, and was awarded because of the college’s “dedication to the craft of writing and Adirondack connection,” an announcement from the foundation stated.

According to Peter Fernbach, director of the Writers Project and an associate professor of English at SUNY Adirondack, the grant will help secure writers for the spring lineup, including Leif Weatherby, author of “Language Mechanics: Cultural AI and the End of Remainder Humanism.”

Weatherby is an associate professor of German at New York University, where he runs a Digital Theory Lab in which he pursues theoretical insights in digital. He is recipient of the Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship for Experienced Researchers; a National Endowment for the Humanities, Summer Stipend; a Fulbright Research Grant, Visiting Scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science; and a DAAD Re-Invitation Grant.

“We are deeply grateful to the Ian Fleming Foundation for their support of the Writers Project,” Fernbach said. “This grant allows us to continue bringing diverse, accomplished voices to our campus — writers, poets, songwriters and editors who inspire our students and community to see the world in new ways and to value the power of storytelling.”

About Ian Fleming Foundation
The Ian Fleming Foundation is dedicated to archiving, preserving and celebrating the legacy of author, adventurer and intelligence agent Ian Fleming and his creation of James Bond. For more than 30 years, The Ian Fleming Foundation has worked with universities, museums, libraries, publishers, James Bond filmmakers, the Fleming family and institutions around the globe to preserve and present this history.