March 2020

Sunday, 3/1

Monday, 3/2

A reading by Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro

Charla/Lectura: Calle de la Resistencia: Narrative, Poetry and Perreo Combativo from an Afrolesbian Boricua

6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

Co-sponsored by: the Department of Romance Languages, the Center for Africana Studies, and the Latin American and Latino Studies Program
introduced by: Odette Casamayor-Cisneros, Associate Professor of Romance Languages
watch: a video recording via our YouTube Channel.

Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro is an award-winning Afro lesbian novelist, short story writer, essayist, and feminist activist from Puerto Rico, who addresses both racial and gender issues, and sexual identity in her combative, non-conformist, and creative works. She offers lectures about antiracist, decolonial feminism, LGBTTQ issues and how to be a black woman in today's society. She is also the Director of the Department of Afro-Puerto Rican Studies, a performative project of Creative Writing based in San Juan and has founded the Chair of Ancestral Black Women to respond to the invitation promulgated by UN and UNESCO to celebrate the International Decade of Afro-Descendants 2015−2024. Her book Las Negras, winner of the PEN Club Puerto Rico National Short Story Award in 2013, explores the limits of female characters during the slavery period that challenged hierarchies of power. She also won the Prize of the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture in 2015 and 2012, and the National Prize of the Institute of Puerto Rican Literature in 2008. Her work has been translated into German, French, Italian, English, Portuguese and Hungarian.

Tuesday, 3/3

An evening with Ottessa Moshfegh

Cheryl J. Family Fiction Program

6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

co-sponsored by: Department of Religious Studies
introduced by: Justin McDaniel
watch: a video recording via our YouTube channel

Acclaimed writer Ottessa Moshfegh reveals the craft and inspiration behind her diverse body of work which spans novellas, novels, and short stories. As forthright as a speaker as she is a writer, Moshfegh showcases the deliberation and care behind her writing process and invites audiences into a truly extraordinary literary mind.

Ottessa Moshfegh is a fiction writer from New England. Her first book, McGlue, a novella, won the Fence Modern Prize in Prose and the Believer Book Award. She is also the author of the short story collection Homesick for Another World. Her stories have been published in The Paris Review, The New Yorker, and Granta, and have earned her a Pushcart Prize, an O. Henry Award, the Plimpton Discovery Prize, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Eileen, her first novel, was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Man Booker Prize, and won the PEN/Hemingway Award for debut fiction; My Year of Rest and Relaxation, her second novel, was a New York Times bestseller.

Wednesday, 3/4

Lunch with Trish Hall

Povich Journalism Program

12:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

Hosted by: Dick Polman
rsvp: wh@writing.upenn.edu
watch: a video recording via our YouTube channel

Trish Hall was the "Op-Ed" editor of The New York Times for five years - tasked with deciding which guest submissions should get the green light to appear on the Times' commentary page (opposite the editorial page). Her new book, "Writing to Persuade," offers tips on how to write persuasive commentary, and recounts her experiences on the job. During her long Times career, she also wrote about food trends, ran the Sunday Business section, and reinvented real estate coverage.

Prior to The Times, she was a reporter at The Wall Street Journal, where she interviewed food company executives and wrote about the culture of eating. She also worked for The Associated Press, and for the Connecticut State News Bureau, covering state politics. Her website is trishhallbooks.com.

Speakeasy Open Mic Night

7:30 PM in the Arts Cafe

Our student-run open mic night welcomes all kinds of readings, performances, spectacles, and happenings. Bring your poetry, your guitar, your dance troupe, your award-winning essay, or your stand up comedy to share.

Thursday, 3/5

Friday, 3/6

Saturday, 3/7

Sunday, 3/8

Monday, 3/9

Tuesday, 3/10

Wednesday, 3/11

Thursday, 3/12

Friday, 3/13

Saturday, 3/14

Sunday, 3/15

Monday, 3/16

Tuesday, 3/17

Wednesday, 3/18

Thursday, 3/19

Friday, 3/20

Saturday, 3/21

Sunday, 3/22

Monday, 3/23

Erín Moure

Kelly Writers House Fellows Program

rsvp required: whfellow@writing.upenn.edu

Note: this event will be held virtually on 3/30.

Erín Moure is a poet and translator. In Canada, the USA, and the UK, she has published 18 books of poetry, a coauthored book of poetry, a volume of essays, a book of short articles on translation, a biopoetics (alongside the biopoetics of Chus Pato), and two memoirs. She is translator/co-translator of 19 books of poetry and two of creative non-fiction (biopoetics) from French, Galician, Portunhol, Portuguese, Spanish, and Ukrainian, by poets such as Nicole Brossard (with Robert Majzels), Andrés Ajens, Louise Dupré, Rosalía de Castro, Chus Pato, Uxío Novoneyra, Lupe Gómez (with Rebeca Lema Martínez), Fernando Pessoa, and Yuri Izdryk (with Roman Ivashkiv). Three of her own books have appeared in translation, one each in German, Galician, and French. Her work has received the Governor General's Award, Pat Lowther Memorial Award, A.M. Klein Prize twice, has been a three-time finalist for the Griffin Prize (twice for translations), and a two-time finalist for a Best Translated Book Award (USA-Poetry)—most recently for Paraguayan Sea (Nightboat 2017), her Frenglish translation of the Portuñol of Brazilian Wilson Bueno. A 40-year retrospective of her poetry, Planetary Noise: Selected Poetry of Erín Moure (Wesleyan University Press 2017, edited by Shannon Maguire) is a good introduction to her practice. Her own latest is The Elements (Anansi 2019), which she calls "a book of Dad." In March 2020, she will launch two new translations: a sequence from Argentinian poet Juan Gelman's "translations" of the English poet John Wendell, Sleepless Nights Under Capitalism (Eulalia Books) and, from the mountain Galician of Uxío Novoneyra, The Uplands, Book of the Courel and other poems (Veliz Books).

Tuesday, 3/24

Brunch with Erín Moure

Kelly Writers House Fellows Program

rsvp required: whfellow@writing.upenn.edu

Note: this event has been combined with the reading event above, and moved to 3/30.

Erín Moure is a poet and translator. In Canada, the USA, and the UK, she has published 18 books of poetry, a coauthored book of poetry, a volume of essays, a book of short articles on translation, a biopoetics (alongside the biopoetics of Chus Pato), and two memoirs. She is translator/co-translator of 19 books of poetry and two of creative non-fiction (biopoetics) from French, Galician, Portunhol, Portuguese, Spanish, and Ukrainian, by poets such as Nicole Brossard (with Robert Majzels), Andrés Ajens, Louise Dupré, Rosalía de Castro, Chus Pato, Uxío Novoneyra, Lupe Gómez (with Rebeca Lema Martínez), Fernando Pessoa, and Yuri Izdryk (with Roman Ivashkiv). Three of her own books have appeared in translation, one each in German, Galician, and French. Her work has received the Governor General's Award, Pat Lowther Memorial Award, A.M. Klein Prize twice, has been a three-time finalist for the Griffin Prize (twice for translations), and a two-time finalist for a Best Translated Book Award (USA-Poetry)—most recently for Paraguayan Sea (Nightboat 2017), her Frenglish translation of the Portuñol of Brazilian Wilson Bueno. A 40-year retrospective of her poetry, Planetary Noise: Selected Poetry of Erín Moure (Wesleyan University Press 2017, edited by Shannon Maguire) is a good introduction to her practice. Her own latest is The Elements (Anansi 2019), which she calls "a book of Dad." In March 2020, she will launch two new translations: a sequence from Argentinian poet Juan Gelman's "translations" of the English poet John Wendell, Sleepless Nights Under Capitalism (Eulalia Books) and, from the mountain Galician of Uxío Novoneyra, The Uplands, Book of the Courel and other poems (Veliz Books).

Wednesday, 3/25

Thursday, 3/26

Friday, 3/27

Saturday, 3/28

Sunday, 3/29

Monday, 3/30

Erín Moure

a virtual reading and discussion

Kelly Writers House Fellows Program

5:30 PM streaming live via KWH-TV and YouTube

introduced by: Julia Bloch
watch: a video recording via our YouTube Channel.

Erín Moure is a poet and translator. In Canada, the USA, and the UK, she has published 18 books of poetry, a coauthored book of poetry, a volume of essays, a book of short articles on translation, a biopoetics (alongside the biopoetics of Chus Pato), and two memoirs. She is translator/co-translator of 19 books of poetry and two of creative non-fiction (biopoetics) from French, Galician, Portunhol, Portuguese, Spanish, and Ukrainian, by poets such as Nicole Brossard (with Robert Majzels), Andrés Ajens, Louise Dupré, Rosalía de Castro, Chus Pato, Uxío Novoneyra, Lupe Gómez (with Rebeca Lema Martínez), Fernando Pessoa, and Yuri Izdryk (with Roman Ivashkiv). Three of her own books have appeared in translation, one each in German, Galician, and French. Her work has received the Governor General's Award, Pat Lowther Memorial Award, A.M. Klein Prize twice, has been a three-time finalist for the Griffin Prize (twice for translations), and a two-time finalist for a Best Translated Book Award (USA-Poetry)—most recently for Paraguayan Sea (Nightboat 2017), her Frenglish translation of the Portuñol of Brazilian Wilson Bueno. A 40-year retrospective of her poetry, Planetary Noise: Selected Poetry of Erín Moure (Wesleyan University Press 2017, edited by Shannon Maguire) is a good introduction to her practice. Her own latest is The Elements (Anansi 2019), which she calls "a book of Dad." In March 2020, she will launch two new translations: a sequence from Argentinian poet Juan Gelman's "translations" of the English poet John Wendell, Sleepless Nights Under Capitalism (Eulalia Books) and, from the mountain Galician of Uxío Novoneyra, The Uplands, Book of the Courel and other poems (Veliz Books).

LIVE at the Writers House

WXPN radio show

Event rescheduling TBD.

LIVE at the Writers House is a long-standing collaboration of the people of the Kelly Writers House and of WXPN (88.5 FM). Six times annually between September and April, the Writers House records a one-hour show of poetry, music, and other spoken-word art for broadcast by WXPN. "LIVE" is made possible through the generous support of BigRoc and is produced by Alli Katz.


Tuesday, 3/31