January February 2000 March
All events take place at the Writers House, 3805 Locust Walk, Philadelphia (U of P).
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Tuesday, 2/1
- 7:00 PM: The Alumni Writers Series presents novelist James Morrow
James Morrow will be reading from his most recently published novel, The Eternal Footman, as well as a work in progress, The Last Witchfinder. He will also talk with students about the relationship between his academic studies as a Penn student and his career as a full-time novelist.A Philadelphia native, James Morrow was born in 1947. He holds a BA in English (Creative Writing) from the University of Pennsylvania and an MAT in Visual Studies from Harvard University. His novels blend satire, science fiction, and philosophy. This Is the Way the World Ends (1986), a nuclear war comedy, was the BBC's choice as best science fiction novel of the year. Only Begotten Daughter (1990), a sequel to the New Testament, won the World Fantasy Award. Towing Jehovah (1994), a Nietzschean nautical adventure about the death of God, also won the World Fantasy Award. Blameless in Abaddon (1996), a modern-dress retelling of the Book of Job, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. The Eternal Footman, the final volume in the Godhead Trilogy, has just been released in hardcover. Morrow's novel-in-progress is The Last Witchfinder, which chronicles the birth of the scientific worldview. He writes full time in State College, Pennsylvania, sharing accommodations with his wife, Kathryn, his ten-year-old son, Christopher, and two enigmatic dogs: Pooka, an SPCA Border Collie, and Amtrak, a Doberman mix that he and Kathy rescued from a train station in Orlando.
- 7:00-9:00 PM in Room 202: Meeting of The Hollywood Club
Wednesday, 2/2
- (3:00-5:00 PM in the Arts Cafe: XPN meeting)
- 9:00 PM in Room 202: Sangria: An Artists' Group
Thursday, 2/3
- 4:30 PM in Room 202: The Twentieth Century Reading Group hosts a presentation by Jean-Michel Rabate, followed by discussion
- 7:00 PM: Julian Stallabrass, co-sponsored by The House of Our Own.
Julian Stallabrass is a writer and art critic. He teaches history and theory of art at the Ruskin School of Fine Art and Drawing, University of Oxford. His most recent book, High Art Lite (Verso, 2000), about the young British art scene, has just been released. He is also the author of Gargantua: Manufactured Mass Culture (Verso) and the co-editor of Occupational Hazard: Critical Writing on Recent British Art.
Friday, 2/4
Saturday, 2/5
Sunday, 2/6
- 6:00 PM in Room 202: Manuck! Manuck! a fiction writing group
Monday, 2/7
- (2:00-5:00 PM: Engl 285 in the Arts Cafe)
- 5:15 PM in Room 202: Penn and Pencil Club: a creative writing workshop for Penn and Health Systems staff
- 7:00 PM: Two Writers, Two Cities, Two New Books: A Reading by poets Tom Devaney and Greg Fuchs To listen to a recording of the reading, click here.
Tom Devaney is author of The American Pragmatist Fell In Love (Banshee Press 1999). His poems are included American Poetry: The Next Generation and in the catalogue for "Greater New York" at the P.S. 1 art space. His prose has appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Poetry Project Newsletter, Poetry Flash and Poets & Writers Magazine.
Greg Fuchs is the author of Came Like It Went (Buck Downs Books, Washington, D.C. 1999) and Uma Ternura (Canvas and Companhia, Porto, 1998). He has work in Thus Spake The Corpse: An Exquisite Corpse Reader 1988-1998 (Black Sparrow Press, California, 1999). He is a member of subpress, a collective of writers, dedicated to publishing poetry. Currently, he is editing a forthcoming volume of poetry, After School Session, by Brett Evans. He coordinates, with Kyle Connor, the Highwire Gallery Reading Series (Philadelphia). The series has featured local and nationally known poets biweekly for almost two years. Recently, Ixnay Magazine (Philadelphia), The Poetry Project Newsletter (New York), and The Washington Review (Washington, D.C.) have published reviews of Fuchs' Came Like It Went. Fuchs works as an editor, writer, and photographer in New York. He was commissioned to photograph the Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church in the Bowery Marathon reading benefit. He earned a Master of Fine Arts degree at The Mason Gross School of The Arts, Rutgers University. While studying he worked as a photographer and writer at The Community Focus, Earshot, The Philadelphia City Paper, and The Philadelphia Weekly. While an undergraduate at San Francisco State University he worked at Small Press Traffic, a bookstore and foundation, dedicated to selling small press work, exhibiting art, and sponsoring reading series and writing workshops.
Recordings of the individual poems from the reading have been made available as part of the PENNsound project.
Tom Devaney's poems can be found here. Greg Fuchs poems can be found here.
Tuesday, 2/8
Wednesday, 2/9
- (6:00-7:30 PM: Mellon Writing Group in the Arts Cafe)
- 8:00 PM: Speakeasy: Poetry, Prose and Anything Goes, an open mic performance night
- 9:00 PM in Room 202: Sangria: An Artists' Group
Thursday, 2/10
- 7:00 PM: The Play's the Thing: a monthly play reading and thinking group presents: a reading and discussion of Euripedes' Andromache, currently being translated by Professors Susan Stewart and Wesley Smith. Other participants included Rose Malague.
Friday, 2/11
- 2:00-3:30 PM: Reading/talk with Martin Cruz Smith, as part of the University of Pennsylvania Library's 250th Anniversary Celebration, and the Alumni/Library Friends Book Club. Reading followed by a brief Q&A, and refreshments.
Born in Reading, Pennsylvania in 1942 to John Calhoun Smith, a jazz saxophonist, and Louise Lopez Smith, a big band singer, Martin Cruz Smith chose to follow a different creative pursuit from that of his parents: creative writing. Along the difficult road to his first best seller, Gorky Park, in 1981, Smith held various jobs - from a newspaper writer for the Philadelphia Daily News to a Camden ice cream vendor to a cheesecake men's magazine editor and a Madrid salesman. Martin Cruz Smith entered the University of Pennsylvania with the intention of becoming a sociologist but switched to creative writing after failing statistics. Inspired by a trip to Russia in 1973, Martin Cruz Smith spent nine years researching and writing Gorky Park. Slowed by a false start with the publishing house that first bought the rights to the book, Smith was able to buy the book rights back and sell it to Random House to be published in 1981. Gorky Park was followed by Polar Star in 1989, Red Square in 1992 and now Havana Bay in 1999. Smith has also written Rose, a book about nineteenth century female mining workers in the town of Wigan in England and Stallion Gate, about the birth of the atomic bomb in New Mexico. He currently resides in California with his wife and three children. For the full text of this bio, click here.
Saturday, 2/12
Sunday, 2/13
Monday, 2/14
- (2:00-5:00 PM: Engl 285 in the Arts Cafe)
- 7:00 PM: Writers House Fellows program presents Grace Paley
Grace Paley, the first recipient of the Edith Wharton Citation of Merit, was born in the Bronx in 1922. She is the author of three highly acclaimed collections of short fiction--The Little Disturbances of Man (1959), Enormous Changes at the Last Minute (1974), and Later the Same Day (1985)--as well as three collections of poetry, including Leaning Forward, also published in 1985. Ms. Paley has taught at Columbia and Syracuse Universitites, and currently teaches at both City College of New York, where she is writer-in-residence, and Sarah Lawrence College, where she has taught creative writing and literature for 18 years. She received a Guggenheim fellowhsip in 1961, a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1966, and an award from the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1970. She is a member of the Executive Board of P.E.N. Actively involved in anti-war, feminist and anti-nuclear movements, Ms. Paley has been a member of the War Resisters' League, Resist, and Women's Pentagon Action, and was one of the founders of the Greenwich Village Peace Center in 1961; she regards herself as a "somewhat combative pacifist and cooperative anarchist." Ms. Paley has two children and one grandchild, and divides her time between New York City and Thetford Hill, Vermont. In Spring 1987, Ms. Paley was awarded a Senior Fellowship by the National Endowment for the Arts, in recognition of her lifetime contribution to literature.Grace Paley's reading and conversation were both recorded and are now available in realvideo format on the web. Click here to view both programs.
Grace Paley was featured in Kelly Writers House Podcast #21. Click here to download an mp3 of this recording.
Tuesday, 2/15
- 8:00 PM: This Valentine's Day ... Stand Up for Failed Romances.
One-man comedy written and performed by Penn undergraduate Jonathan London. Join us in the Arts Cafe (seating cafe-style).
Jonathan London, a Junior in the College, has grown up with his eyes on a life in comedy and entertainment. His one man show, premiering at Writers House, documents his hilarious trials and tribulations in today's adult dating scene. A DJ for Penn's student station WQHS and student DJ for WXPN Philadelphia, Jonathan is manager of WQHS as well as it's advertising director. This newfound workaholic also has plans to shoot a documentary on his relationship with his two brothers in March.
Wednesday, 2/16
- 6:00 PM: Tentative: Women's Long Poems meeting
- 6:00-7:30 PM: Theorizing in Particular presents Charlie Winquist, speaking on "Postmodern Secular Theology."
Charles E. Winquist (Ph.D. University of Chicago, 1970) joined the Syracuse faculty as Thomas J. Watson Professor of Religion in 1986. His research and teaching specialities are philosophical theology, critical theory, and hermeneutics. Among his publications are Desiring Theology (1995), Theology at the End of the Century (1990), Epiphanies of Darkness (1986), Practical Hermeneutics (1980), Homecoming (1978), Communion of Possibility (1975), and The Transcendental Imagination (1972). Professionally active at the national level, he has held several offices in the American Academy of Religion and served as executive director from 1979-82.- 9:00 PM in Room 202: Sangria: An Artists' Group
Thursday, 2/17
- 5:00 PM: Planning Committee meeting & gathering
Friday, 2/18
- 3:00 PM: Suppose an Eyes: A Poetry Working Group
This new group will meet once a month on a Friday afternoon to share and discuss poetry written by group members.
Saturday, 2/19
- 2:00-3:00 PM: Laughing Hermit Reading Series presents poets Josie Foo and Lisa Sewell
Josie Foo was born and raised in Malaysia and currently lives in Philadelphia. She is the author of Endou: Poems, Prose and A Little Beagle Story (Lost Roads Press, 1995). Her new manuscript, Literal Mountain, was named as a finalist in the 1998 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition. She won the Eve of St. Agnes Award in 1994. She graduated from Vassar College and Brown University. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and an anthology of new Asian writers titled Premonitions (Kaya Press, 1995).
Lisa Sewell studied Genetics and Marine Biology at the University of California at Berkeley. After working as a research associate in the Zoology Department there for two years, she moved to New York to study in the graduate Creative Writing Program at New York University. She continued her studies at Tufts University where she earned her doctorate in English and American Liteature. Her book The Way Out was published by Alice James Books in the Spring of 1998 and her poems have appeared in many journals including Indiana Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Passages North, Pequod, Massachusetts Review, third coast, and the Philly edition of the American Poetry Review and are forthcoming in Shenandoah, and Gulf Coast. She has received grants and awards from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, the Breadloaf Writers Conference, and most recently, the National Endowment for the Arts. She has been a resident at the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She lives in Philadelphia and teaches English Literature and Creative Writing at Villanova University.
Sunday, 2/20
- 6:00 PM in Room 202: Manuck! Manuck! a fiction writing group
Monday, 2/21
- (2:00-5:00 PM: Engl 285 in the Arts Cafe)
- 8:00 PM: Live at the Writers House: a one-hour word and music radio show. Join us in the live audience at 8:00 PM! This show's theme is "Inspiring Exercises, Freeing Forms," and features readings and performances by Laura Goldstein, Renee Balthrop, Randall Couch, Marilyn Piety (read by Cassie MacDonald), Rebekah Grossman, Ellen Slack, KD Morris, Laura Pyle, Lynn Levin, Melissa Duclos, James Tisdall, Lauren Rile Smith, Haadiya Starkey, Yasinah Mobley, John Shea, and musical guest Simon.
Tuesday, 2/22
- Talking Film
- 6:30-9:00 PM: Alpha Kappa Alpha Poetry Jazz Night; Listen to a recording.
Wednesday, 2/23
- 7:00 PM in Room 202: The Play's the Thing: a play reading and writing group
We will be reading from Harold Pinter's One-Act Play, "The Dumb Waiter." If you've heard of Pinter before or read his work, then you'll probably be coming. If you are not familiar with Pinter's work, then you need to come. We have copies of The Dumb Waiter in the hub office of the Writers House. Look in The Play's the Thing box and pick up a copy. Read the script if you can so that we can discuss the play on Wednesday, February 23 at 7:00. If you would like, we can also have a mini-reading of the play (or excerpts thereof) at the meeting that night.- 8:00 PM: Speakeasy: Poetry, Prose and Anything Goes, an open mic performance night
- 9:00 PM in Room 202: Sangria: An Artists' Group
Thursday, 2/24
- 4:30 PM in Room 202: Twentieth Century Reading Group: a presentation by Mike Barsanti, followed by discussion
- Bill Ivey, Chair of the National Endowment for the Arts, visits the Kelly Writers House to meet with Penn and Philadelphia-area artists and arts supporters and share news about the N.E.A. today.
1:00 PM: Lunch and gathering for interested students. (Email wh@writing for more information.)
5:00-7:00 PM: Buffet Reception for Mr. Ivey and the many Phila. arts organizers, artists, university affiliates and students who have collaborated with the Kelly Writers House over the past three years. By invitation.
7:30 PM: Public interview and "town meeting," featuring Bill Ivey, at the Institute of Contemporary Art, 118 South 36th Street.
Bill Ivey was nominated by President William Clinton as the seventh Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts and unanimously confirmed by the United States Senate in May, 1998. Ivey is an experienced leader who understands both the arts and business and has forged strong and productive relationships between the nonprofit and commercial arts during his 25-year professional career in the private and public sectors. A folklorist and musician, he is a staunch protector of America's living cultural heritage and a forceful voice on arts policy. Through more than two decades as an Endowment panelist and consultant, Ivey has gained a strong working knowledge of the NEA's mission, programs, and policies. Since becoming Chairman, Ivey has led the Endowment into the future by spearheading the development of a new strategic plan for the years 1999 to 2004 and articulating the national need for government support of the arts. From 1971 to 1998, he was Director of the Country Music Foundation in Nashville, Tennessee, an accredited nonprofit education and research center. He is the first Endowment Chairman who has developed and run a nonprofit cultural organization. In 1994, Ivey was appointed to the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities, where he was a major contributor to "Creative America," an analysis of American cultural life. Ivey also served two terms as Chairman of the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences. A teacher and writer, Ivey was a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Studies in American Music of Brooklyn College and taught at Vanderbilt University's Blair School of Music. Ivey was born in Detroit in 1944 and grew up in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. He was educated at the University of Michigan and at Indiana University and holds degrees in history, folklore, and ethnomusicology.
- 7:00-8:30 PM in Room 209: Philadelphia Lacan Study Group and Seminar
Friday, 2/25
- 3:00-5:00 PM: Irish Studies Group Gathering: On Beckett
Commemorating the tenth anniversary of Beckett's death, which was 22 December. Short readings by Vicki Mahaffey, Jean-Michel Rabate, Laura Heffernan, and Damien Keane that respond to Beckett and his work. Bring along a favorite passage from or about Beckett to share!
Saturday, 2/26
Sunday, 2/27
- 11:00 PM: Live at the Writers House airs on 88.5 FM WXPN. Tune in to an hour of Philly-based writing and music. This show's theme is "Inspiring Exercises, Freeing Forms," and features readings and performances by Laura Goldstein, Renee Balthrop, Randall Couch, Marilyn Piety (read by Cassie MacDonald), Rebekah Grossman, Ellen Slack, KD Morris, Laura Pyle, Lynn Levin, Melissa Duclos, James Tisdall, Lauren Rile Smith, Haadiya Starkey, Yasinah Mobley, John Shea, and musical guest Simon.
Monday, 2/28
- (2:00-5:00 PM: Engl 285 in the Arts Cafe)
Tuesday, 2/29
- 6:00 PM: Reading by poet Marie Howe, hosted by the Creative Writing Department
Marie Howe is the author of two collections of poetry, The Good Thief, which was selected by Margaret Atwood for the National Poetry Series, and What the Living Do, a cycle of poems centered on the death of her brother. She is also the co-editor of In the Company of My Solitude: American Writing from the Aids Pandemic. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Agni, Harvard Review and The New England Review, among others, and she has received both Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships. She teaches at Sarah Lawrence College.
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