February March 2000 April

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

All events take place at the Writers House, 3805 Locust Walk, Philadelphia (U of P).

---

Wednesday, 3/1

• 12:00-2:00pm: Lunch with Lan Samantha Chang. RSVP required to Karen Su at ksu@sas.upenn.edu.
  Lan Samantha Chang's first collection, Hunger, was published in paperback last month by Penguin. Hunger was short-listed for the Los Angeles Times Book Award, the PEN Center USA West Literature Prize, the PEN/Hemingway Award, and the Asian American Book Award. Samantha has taught at Stanford University and the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. Currently, she is using her time as Hodder Fellow at Princeton to work on a novel.
  Following the lunch, Chang will be giving a reading at the Greenfield Intercultural Center at 4:30pm, with a discussion and reception to follow. Presented by the Asian American Studies Program, the Greenfield Intercultural Center, and the Kelly Writers House.
• 5:00 PM: The Play's the Thing presents playwright Michael Hollinger. Three plays written by Michael Hollinger are currently being produced in Philadelphia, Chicago, and New York's off-Broadway theater scene. He will be discussing contemporary play writing and the producing process in the context of his new play, Red Herring, currently being produced at the Arden Theater Company.
  Michael Hollinger is the author of Incorruptible, An Empty Plate in the Cafe Du Grand Boeuf and Tiny Island, all of which premiered at Arden Theatre Company and have together enjoyed over two dozen productions around the country, in New York City, and in London. An Empty Plate in the Cafe Du Grand Boeuf will debut off-Broadway in March, 2000 at Primary Stages, starring George Wendt. Michael has written three short films for PBS, the latest of which won a Mid-Atlantic Emmy Award for Outstanding Feature Presentation. He co-authored the feature-length film Philadelphia Diary, which had its broadcast premiere on PBS in December. Other awards include the Roger L. Stevens Award from the Kennedy Center's Fund for New American Plays, the F. Otto Haas Award for an Emerging Theatre Artist, and multiple playwright fellowships from Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Michael teaches playwriting for the University of Pennsylvania, Villanova University and La Salle University, and he lives in Philadelphia with his wife, actress Megan Bellwoar, and their son Jam.
• 9:00 PM in Room 202: Sangria: An Artists' Group

---

Thursday, 3/2

• 5:00 PM: Ralph Wiley, hosted by the Creative Writing Department
  Ralph Wiley is an essayist, journalist, sportwriter, sceenwriter, book reviewer and has been on-air correspondent for NBC Sports, and a senior writer at Sports Illustrated for which he wrote numerous articles including 20 cover stories. He has been, as well, a consultant for film director Spike Lee, attorney Johnnie Cochran, NFL football coach Dexter Green, and Dexter Scott King. He has written seven books, among which are Why Black People Tend to Shout, What Black People Should Do Now, Dark Witness (A Homage to Mark Twain), and with Spike Lee, Best Seat in the House. He lives in Washington, D.C.

---

Friday, 3/3

---

Saturday, 3/4

---

Sunday, 3/5

• 6:00 PM in Room 202: Manuck! Manuck! a fiction writing group

---

Monday, 3/6

• (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
• 6:30-10:30 PM: Poetry Today: French/American Connection, featuring visiting poets Jacques Roubaud, Emmanuel Hocquard, Bob Perelman, and Ray DiPalma. The translators will be Philippe Met, Serge Gavronsky, Jean-Michel Rabate, Louis Cabri, and Richard Sieburth. Hosted by the French Institute for Culture and Technology and the Kelly Writers House. Click here for samples of the poets' work.
  Jacques Roubaud, born in 1932, has been a professor of mathematics at the University of Paris X Nanterre since 1970 and is one of the most accomplished members of Oulipo, the workshop for experimental literature founded by Raymond Queneau and François Le Lionnais. He is president of l'Association George Perec. He has published in all genres : prose, theater and poetry. He has also translated Lewis Carroll's Hunting of the Snark and contemporary poetry into French. Roubaud is best known in this country as the author of the delightful Hortense novels : Our beautiful heroine (Overlook, 1987), Hortense is abducted (Dalkey Archive, 1989), and Hortense in Exile (Dalkey Archive, 1992). His latest collections of poems available in English are The plurality of Worlds of Lewis (Dalkey Archive Press, 1995) translated by Rosmarie Waldrop, Some Thing Black translated by Rosmarie Waldrop (Dalkey Archive Press, 1999).
  Emmanuel Hocquard is a poet and a novelist. Born in 1940 in Cannes, he belonged to the Orange Export Ltd "group" from 1965 to 1986. Orange Export Ltd was a publishing house in the 1970's which has published a great variety of literary works and has brought to the front a few names previously unknown to the public. Emmanuel Hocquard's literary kinships range from the Greek and Latin classics to the Objectivists : his poetry introduces us to a very fluid language in which the event, the anecdote is recorded in the most neutral manner. His poems constantly probe the world, in quest of answers to our haunting questions. His latest books in English are A Test of Solitude translated by Rosmarie Waldrop ( Burning Deck, February 2000), This Story is Mine translated by Norma Cole and published by Instress (1999), Codicil & Plan for Pond 4 : Two works by Emmanuel Hocquard translated by Ray DiPalma and Juliette Valéry, to be published by the Post-Apollo Press. His other books in English are Aeras in the Forest of Manhattan (1992) translated by Lydia Davis, A Day in the Strait (1985) translated by Jane Staw and Maryann Dejulio published by Red Dust, and The Theory of Tables translated by Michael Palmer and published by o-blek editions (1994).
  Bob Perelman recently published The Future of Memory, a new book of verse, and his selected poems, Ten to One.. For many years Bob lived in San Francisco where he edited Hills magazine and was central to the development of the language poetry movement. From 1977 to 1981 he coordinated the San Francisco Talks Series and edited Writing/Talks (1985) gathered from the series. His books of poetry include Braille (Ithaca House, 1975), Face Value (Roof Books, 1988), and Virtual Reality (Roof Books, 1993). He is also the author of two books of theory and criticism, The Trouble with Genius (University of California, 1994), and The Marginalization of Poetry (Princeton, 1996). Now of course he lives in Philadelphia, where he is an Associate Professor of English at Penn. Bob is a member of the Writers House "hub" or planning committee.
  Ray DiPalma is the author of more than thirty collections of poetry and visual work. His recent books include The Jukebox of Memnon (Potes & Poets, 1988), Provocations (Potes & Poets, 1994), and Motion of the Cypher (Roof Press, 1995). His work has been praised by such notable poets as Jackson MacLow and Robert Creeley. Of Motion of the Cypher, critic Marjorie Perloff has written, "These chiselled lyric meditations recall Wallace Stevens in their density, but they are written under the sign of Dada - appropriate for the late twentieth century, that casts a cold eye on the margins, the spaces between, where we live."

---

Tuesday, 3/7

• 4:30 PM: "Why Should I Teach?" Ellen Braffman, Coordinator of Secondary Education at Penn's Graduate School of Education, gives a talk about opportunities in high school teaching and the submatriculant masters program at Grad Ed. Hear how you can get your teaching certificate and earn a masters in education while you're here at Penn.

---

Wednesday, 3/8

• 4:00 PM: Hub discussion of Ngai & Child's work
• 6:00 PM: Theorizing in Particular presents Dennis Schmidt, speaking on "On Words and Images: Some reflections on Twombly, Homer and Nietzsche"
  Dennis Schmidt is professor of philosophy at Villanova University. He is the author of The Ubiquity of the Finite: Hegel, Heidegger and the Entitlements of Philosophy and the translator of Ernst Bloch's Natural Law and Human Dignity.
• 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, 3/9

• 5:00-7:00 PM: Philadelphia Views: Photography by Robin Hiteshew
  Robin M. Hiteshew has degrees from Temple and Case Western Reserve Universities. He has studied photography with Karen Fromson and Charles Metzger, and has had numerous exhibitions. His work has been shown at the Philadelphia Sketch Club, Swarthmore College, Perkins Art Center, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University and Case Western Reserve University. In addition to the current show, Philadelphia Views, at the Kelly Writers House, he has an upcoming exhibition of his work at the Library of Congress American Folklife Center. His work has been published extensively, including in The New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Sing Out! The Folk Song Magazine, and The Irish Echo.

---

Friday, 3/10

• 1:00 PM in the Arts Cafe: The Twentieth Century Reading Group hosts presentations by Joe Valente and Bill Maxwell, followed by discussion

---

Saturday, 3/11

• Spring Break begins

---

Sunday, 3/12

---

Monday, 3/20

• Spring Break Ends
• 2:00-5:00 PM: Engl 285 in the Arts Cafe
• Monday through Saturday, on campus: Penn Humanities Forum celebration on "Style"
• 8:00 PM: Live at the Writers House a one-hour word and music radio show, guest produced this month by and Shawn Walker around the theme of Translation.

---

Tuesday, 3/21

• 5:00 PM: Planning Committee Meeting and Gathering
• 8:00 PM: Join us for a talk by writer Michael Bamberger
  Michael Bamberger is a Senior Writer for Sports Illustrated, which he joined in September 1995. Previously he worked for nine years as a general assignment reporter and sportswriter for the Philadelphia Inquirer and before that wrote for the (Martha's) Vineyard Gazette . His versatility as a writer and lucid, open style have quickly become the hallmark of his work. Before coming to Sports Illustrated, Bamberger published two books about golf: The Green Road Home (1986), about his experience as a caddie on the PGA tour, and To the Linksland (1992), about golf on the European tour and in Scotland. In March 1996, his play, Bart & Fay (based on the longtime friendship of Bart Giamatti and Fay Vincent), made its debut in Philadelphia. Bamberger was born and raised in Patchogue, New York, and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1982. He enjoys skiing and body-surfing and lives in the West Mount Airy section of Philadelphia with his wife Christine and their two children, Ian and Alina.

---

Wednesday, 3/22

• 4:30 PM in semimar room 202: Al Filreis leads a discussion on video testimonies of Holocaust survivors (co-sponsored by the Penn Humanities Forum as part of its March symposia: Human Nature - Human Rights: A Civic Dialogue on Unfinished Revolutions. RSVP to wh@writing.upenn.edu.
  This informal discussion, led by Al Filreis, Class of 1942 Professor of English and Faculty Director of the Kelly Writers House, will take up the vexed questions raised by video testimonies of Holocaust survivors. Can the story be told "well" in this medium--told to the "satisfaction" of the survivor witness and/or to the viewer who wants to understand the experience, the history and/or the contemporary feelings associated with reliving the pain? For more, click here. (All are invited to a program on holocaust films at 6:30 PM in Meyerson Hall, room B-1.)

• 6:00 PM: Reading by poet Thalia Field
  Thalia Field's first collection, Point and Line, is forthcoming from New Directions in March, 1999. Her work has appeared in Conjunctions, Central Park, Avec, Chain, and LanguageAlive (UK). Thalia was a senior editor at Conjunctions from 1995 until 1999, and guest-edited a special issue on experimental music theater. Thalia's plays and essays on poetry in american theater have been published by Theater magazine, and she performed an evening on poetry and theater at the Brooklyn Academy of Music with Suzan-Lori Parks. Thalia received a 1992 NEA commission for her opera, The Pompeii Exhibit. Thalia has taught through Teachers and Writers Collaborative, Theater for a New Audience and at Brown University, Bard College (where she is also an associate with the Institute for Writing and Thinking) and is currently on the faculty of Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado.
  You can find out more about the program and view a webcast recording of it here.

• 8:00 PM: Speakeasy: Poetry, Prose and Anything Goes, an open mic performance night

---

Thursday, 3/23

• 6:00 PM: Readings by poets Fanny Howe and Norman Fischer, hosted by the Creative Writing Department. RSVP to wh@writing.upenn.edu for dinner to follow.
  Fanny Howe is a widely-published poet and well-known novelist whose writing is infused with ethical and spiritual concerns allied with those of Simone Weil and liberation theology. Her books include The End (Littoral Books, 1992); Robeson Street (Alice James, 1985); O'Clock (Reality Street, 1995); The Vineyard (Lost Roads Publishers, 1988); Introduction to the World (The Figures, 1986). California is about to issue her Selected Poems.
  Norman Fischer is a poet and the spiritual director of the San Francisco Zen Center. He has traveled and taught throughout the world, emphasizing dialogue across religions, most recently with the Dalai Lama. Fischer's books include Success (Singing Horse Press, 2000); Precisely the Point Being Made (O Books, 1993); On Whether or Not to Believe in Your Mind (The Figures, 1987); and a prose account of a recent trip to Israel, Jerusalem Moonlight (Clear Glass, 1995).
  
  This program was recorded and is available through PENNsound. For Norman Fischer's recording click here and for Fanny Howe's recording click here.
  
  
• 7:00 PM in Room 202: Screening of Schindler's List

---

Friday, 3/24

• 4:00 PM: Suppose An Eyes: A Poetry Working Group
  Suppose An Eyes meets once a month on a Friday afternoon to share and discuss poetry written by group members.
• 7:00 PM: "What's Wrong with Schindler's List" a Shabbat dinner and discussion with Writers House Faculty Director Al Filreis, hosted by the Jewish Renaissance Project and the Kelly Writers House. RSVP required to wh@writing.upenn.edu.

---

Saturday, 3/25

• 2:00-3:00 PM: Laughing Hermit Reading Series presents Julia Kasdorf and George O'Brien
  Julia Kasdorf is the author of Sleeping Preacher, which won the Angus Lynch Starret Prize and the Great Lakes Colleges Association Award for New Writing, and Eve's Striptease, both from the University of Pittsburgh Press. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, The New Yorker, and are forthcoming in The Paris Review.
  George O'Brien is a scholar of Irish literature as well as a biographer and novelist. He received his B.A. and Ph. D. from the University of Warwick, and has taught at the University of Birmingham, Clare College, the University of Warwick, Vassar College, Trinity College, and is currently a Professor of English at Georgetown University. Works he has edited or authored include three editions of The Village of Longing, Brian Friel: A Reference Guide, and The Ireland Anthology. His new book, A Book of Matches, is forthcoming this year from New Island. Professor O'Brien has received the John Eddeyrn Hughes Prize and the Irish Book Awards Silver Medal for The Village of Longing.

---

Sunday, 3/26

• 3:00-5:00 PM in the Arts Cafe: Rehearsal for Alex Minnaar's Noh drama
• 6:00 PM in Room 202: Manuck! Manuck! a fiction writing group
• 11:00 PM: Live at the Writers House airs on 88.5 WXPN FM

---

Monday, 3/27

• (2:00-5:00 PM: Engl 285 in the Arts Cafe)
• 7:00 PM: Writers House and the LGBT Center host, in celebration of BGLAD (Bisexual Gay Lesbian Awareness Transgender Days), a reading and conversation with author and journalist Jesse Green.
  Jesse Green is the author, most recently, of The Velveteen Father: An Unexpected Journey to Parenthood (Villard/Random House, 1999), which was named one of the best nonfiction books of the year by The Los Angeles Times Book Review, one of the ten best memoirs or biographies of the year by amazon.com and one of the best parenting books of the year by Child magazine. His first novel, O Beautiful, was published by the Available Press imprint of Ballantine Books in 1992 and will be reissued by Ballantine, along with the paperback of The Velveteen Father, in June 2000. Green is also a much-anthologized, award-winning journalist, whose articles appear regularly in The New York Times Magazine and in such other publications as The Washington Post, The New Yorker, New York, Premiere, GQ, Philadelphia, Out, and Mirabella. Born in Philadelphia, Green has lived in New York City since 1980, where he is now at work on a second novel.

---

Tuesday, 3/28

• 8:00 PM: Music from Toronto based singer-songwriter Emm Gryner.
  Organized and introduced by Penn undergrad Dana Wagner, '00.
  Emm Gryner is driven. Always searching, exploring and discovering, her songs stem from the darkest depths and seek to solve the unexplainable. With a keen ear for melody, and a lyrical twist that brings calm delivery to songs with an unyielding and unpredictable undertow, Gryner delivers her third album in as many years. Anchored by the deep resonance of her bass-playing and buoyed by her grace on piano, as well as guitar and keyboard, this recording may have begun as a musical lab test and ended up a success. "Science Fair - from the onset - was always intended to be an experiment - to record with no expectations - and to see if I could complete it almost all on my own and be happy with the outcome. I've been inspired by all sorts of music this past 12 months, records by people like Nick Drake, Mercury Rev, Sonic Youth, Beck, Mazzy Star, Transistor Sound and Lighting Co., Creeper Lagoon and Ron Sexsmith have all driven me to create like mad this year." Emm had plenty of experience to draw from for inspiration. Eighteen months of solid touring with such acts as Bernard Butler, The Cardigans, Ron Sexsmith, Lilith Fair, Big Wreck, The Philosopher Kings, Tom Cochrane, Alanis Morrisette, Rufus Wainwright, Chantal Kreviazuk and Spirit of the West, won acclaim and friends for the gifted native of Forest, Ontario. For more about Emm Gryner, check out her website at www.emmgryner.com. And come hear her songs, Tuesday night at Writers House!

---

Wednesday, 3/29

• 5:00 PM: Reading & book-signing with Diane McKinney-Whetstone hosted by African American Studies. To listen to a recording of the reading, click here.
  
  Diane McKinney-Whetstone is the author of Tempest Rising and the national bestseller Tumbling. A native of Philadelphia whose father served two terms as a Pennsylvania state senator, she grew up in a close-knit family with five sisters and one brother, attending public schools and graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in 1975 with a bachelor's degree in English. She is a regular contributor to Philadelphia Magazine and her work has appeared in Essence and the Sunday Philadelphia Inquirer Magazine. She has received numerous awards, including a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant, Discipline Winner in the Pew Fellowship on the Arts, The Zora Neale Hurston Society Award for creative contribution to literature, a Citation from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania for her portrayal of urban family life as presented in Tumbling.
• 6:00 PM: Women's Long Poems Group meets to discuss two long works by Bernadette Mayer
• 8:00 PM: A Texan and a New Yorker: Two Young Poets Come to Penn. Tom Yuill and Aviya Kushner. Reading followed by dessert reception. Co-sponsored by SPEC Connaissance, Hillel Social Committee, Jewish Studies Department, and the Kelly Writers House.
  Tom Yuill teaches literature and writing at Boston University. He received an M.A. from B.U.'s acclaimed graduate writing program in poetry, where he studied with Robert Pinsky, Derek Walcott and Rosanna Warren. He also holds an MFA from Old Dominion University. Born and raised in Dallas, Texas, he now lives in Boston.
  Aviya Kushner is the Contributing Editor in poetry for BarnesandNoble.com, and she writes a monthly column on poetry for the site. She received an M.A. from B.U'.s acclaimed graduate writing program in poetry, where she studied with Robert Pinsky, Derek Walcott and Rosanna Warren. She holds a bachelor's degree from The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins, where she studied with poets Mark Strand and Peter Sacks. Her reviews have appeared in Harvard Review and The Boston Phoenix, and several of her essays on individual poems have been included in Poetry for Students, a college textbook on poetry. She won a Robert Fitzgerald award in translation of poetry in 1998, and she teaches essay writing at the college level.
• 9:00 PM in Room 202: Sangria: An Artists' Group

---

Thursday, 3/30

• Cancelled! 4:30 PM: The Twentieth Century Reading Group hosts a presentation by on "William Carlos Williams and the Aesthetics of the New World" Jane Penner, followed by discussion
• 8:00 PM: "I Do Not Want To Know Anything About It: The Negative Therapeutic Reaction. Lacanian Aspects of Freud's Clinical Observation," a talk by Suzanne Yang, hosted by the Philadelphia Lacan Study Group and Seminar.
  Suzanne Yang, M.D. is Resident Physician at Columbia University and the New York State Psychiatric Institute. She first encountered Lacan's work while studying comparative literature at Yale, and this interest continued as she pursued graduate studies in the history of science and medicine at Johns Hopkins. While completing her medical degree at the University of California San Francisco, she participated in activities at the Lacanian School of Psychoanalysis in Berkeley, where she served as chair of the Scientific and Research Committee. She is the editor (with Juliet Flower MacCannell) of ANaMORPHOSIS: Journal of the San Francisco Society for Lacanian Studies. One may find her most recent essays in JPCS Journal for the Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society, The Psychoanalysis of Race (Columbia Press, 1998), and Homosexuality and Psychoanalysis (Macmillan, forthcoming).

---

Friday, 3/31

• 11:00 AM-1:00 PM: Conversation and writing workshop with writer Dana Sachs
  Dana Sachs has been writing about Vietnam since 1990. Her memoir, The House on Dream Street: An American Woman's Life in Hanoi, will be published by Algonquin Books this fall. Her magazine and newspaper articles have been published widely, including in The Far Eastern Economic Review, Sierra, Parenting, The San Francisco Examiner, and The Philadelphia Inquirer. She has also translated a great deal of contemporary Vietnamese literature into English, including Le Minh Khue's collection of short stories, The Stars, the Earth, the River (Curbstone Press, 1996), which she co-translated with Bac Hoai Tran. With her sister, filmmaker Lynne Sachs, she made the award-winning documentary about contemporary Vietnam, "Which Way is East." She currently teaches courses in journalism and in Vietnamese literature and society at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington.
  
• 4:00-5:30 PM: The Transparency Machine Series presents poet Cecilia Vicuna, in collaboration with the Temple University Creative Writing Program. Cecilia Vicuna will be giving a reading the previous evening, Thursday, March 30, at the Temple Gallery, 45 N. 2nd Street (free and open to the public).
  Graywolf Press writes: Chilean poet, filmmaker, performance artist, and sculptor Cecilia Vicuna is, according to the Spanish magazine Quimera, "one of the most vivid and creative personalities of the Latin American scene." Working in the tradition of the oral poetry of the High Andes, she brings forth a poetic universe of ancient resonance and new forms. The sacred wordplay practiced in the pre-Columbian Americas meets modern linguistics, and the wisdom of the Andean women shamans with whom she has studied is used to confront the contemporary realities of ecological disaster. Vicuna is also the author of Ul: Four Maupche Poets (1998), The Precarious/Quipoem (1998), and Palabra E Hilo/word & Thread (1996).

---