April 2010

Thursday, 4/1

A poetry reading by Ted Greenwald

6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

introduced by: Charles Bernstein

co-sponsored by: the Creative Writing program

watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV

listen: to an audio recording of this event at Ted Greenwald's PennSound author page

Ted Greenwald was born in Brooklyn, raised in Queens, and has lived in New York City his entire life. During the course of a career that has spanned some 30 years, he has been the author of numerous books of poetry, including In Your Dreams (BlazeVOX, 2008), 3 (Cuneiform, 2008), Two Wrongs with painter Hal Saulson (Cuneiform 2007), The Up and Up (Atelos, 2004), Jumping the Line (Roof Books, 1999), Word of Mouth (Sun & Moon, 1986) Common Sense (L Publications, 1978), and You Bet (This, 1978).

Friday, 4/2

Marathon Reading of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby

3:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

On April 10, 1925, F. Scott Fitzgerald published The Great Gatsby, which has been lauded in the following decades as his masterpiece. Heralded as "the great American novel" and the seminal work on the fallacy of the American Dream, the book appears on TIME Magazine's list of Top 100 English-language Novels of All Time, and ranks #2 on the Modern Library's list of 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century. The story dances through the glitz and glamour of the Roaring Twenties, and exposes the superficiality of its values and the deceptiveness of its promise. 2010 will mark the 85th anniversary of the book's publication, and the 70th anniversary of the author's death. In honor of what T.S. Eliot famously called "the first step that American fiction [had] taken since Henry James", we have dedicated our annual marathon reading to celebrating this acclaimed novel.

The Writers House will be saturated by 1920s imagery and advertisements, full of food inspired by Gatsby's lavish parties, and swinging to the syncopation of early jazz. Readers will gather in the Arts Cafe to contribute to the performance of The Great Gatsby. Beginning at 3 PM, the volunteer readers will take turns reading the book aloud in ten-minute increments, well into the night. Feel free to stop by for just a minute, or stick around for the whole thing! Come, read, and be "borne back ceaselessly into the past!"

Saturday, 4/3

Sunday, 4/4

Monday, 4/5

A Reading with the 34th Street Poets

5:30 PM in the Arts Cafe

The 34th Street Poets, currently comprising six members, derives its name from the location of the group's first meeting place, Bennett Hall on 34th Street. When that building closed for renovations, the group moved to Kelly Writers' House. 34th Street Poets has been meeting continuously, with small variations in its numbers and members, since 1992. Today's members, drawing from the Philadelphia area and New Jersey, represent a wide range of voices. Two of the group's members have published books and the others have published chapbooks as well as appeared in a variety of journals.

Alyson Shore Adler is a clinical social worker and psychotherapist in private practice who has studied with many well respected poets over these past ten years. She loves to travel, to read and write poetry and to see live music. She has attended the New Orleans Jazz And Heritage Festival for the past 25 years.

Deidra Greenleaf Allan has been published in American Poetry Review, Poetry Miscellany, Puerto del Sol, West Branch, and Wind Magazine, among other printed and online journals. She received her undergraduate degree from Temple University and an MFA in creative writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. In 2001 she was selected as Montgomery County Poet Laureate in a competition judged by Robert Hass. Also that year, she received a Leeway Emerging Artist Award and was nominated by Vermont College for the Modern Poetry Association's Ruth Lily Fellowship. In 2002, she was a finalist for a Pew Fellowship in poetry.

Sandra Chaff enjoys writing poetry, has had poems published here and there early on (e.g., Poet Lore, Six), but basically writes more for herself than for publication. She is an Archivist & Lawyer who enjoys learning about and watching documentary film. Sandra is continuously grateful that she belongs to an on-going poetry group of such intelligent and accomplished women (and the occasional men who have been part of the group over the years).

Barbara Daniels's Rose Fever: Poems was published by WordTech Press. She received two Individual Artist Fellowships from the New Jersey Council on the Arts, was awarded a full fellowship from the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation to the Vermont Studio Center, and earned an MFA in poetry at Vermont College. Her chapbook, The Woman Who Tries to Believe, won the Quentin R. Howard Prize. Her poems have appeared in The Louisville Review, Natural Bridge, Blueline, and many other journals.

B. E. Kahn is a recipient of Pennsylvania Council of the Arts and Pew Grants, along with other awards and prizes. Her poems have appeared in Harrisburg Review, Philadelphia Poets, Bridges: A Jewish Feminist Journal, Mad Poets Review, Schuylkill Valley Journal and The Tupelo Press Online Poetry Project among other publications. A retired speech therapist, she lives in Wynnewood and teaches poetry to intergenerational groups. Her chapbook, Spring Apples Silver Birch was published October, 2008 by Greenleaf Press. Another-- Landscapes of Light - is forthcoming in 2009 by Poets Wear Prada Press.

Cindy Savett teaches poetry workshops at psychiatric institutions in the Philadelphia area to both acute short-term and residential patients. Her book, Child in the Road, was released by Parlor Press in 2007. She is published in numerous print and on-line journals, including Margie, Heliotrope, LIT, The Marlboro Review, and Cutbank. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, Cindy has served on several school Boards and other non-profit agencies. She spent fifteen years in the retail business, traveling extensively overseas.

LIVE at the Writers House features Mighty Writers!

featuring Imani Kunle, Adoniyah Ben T'om, Raeese Nasir, Anthony Oliver, Tiaira Rodgers, Naur Collins, and musical guest Nicole Reynolds

8:00 PM on 88.5 WXPN

hosted by: Michaela Majoun

produced by: Erin Gautsche

For more information about this event, see the calendar entry for March 29, 2010.

Tuesday, 4/6

A Reading and Conversation with poets Jean Valentine and Cindy Savett

6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

co-sponsored by: Creative Writing

listen: to an audio recording of this event

watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV

Jean Valentine is the current state poet of New York (2008-2010). She won the Yale Younger Poets Award for her first book, Dream Barker, in 1965. Her tenth and most recent book of poetry is Little Boat (Wesleyan, 2007). Her previous collection, Door in the Mountain: New and Collected Poems 1965-2003, was the winner of the 2004 National Book Award for Poetry. Lucy, her new chapbook, is just out from Sarabande Books. She has taught at Sarah Lawrence College, the Graduate Writing Program of New York University, Columbia University, and the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan, among many other places. For more information and to hear Jean Valentine reading her work, visit jeanvalentine.com.

Cindy Savett teaches poetry workshops at psychiatric institutions in the Philadelphia area to both acute short-term and residential patients. Her book, Child in the Road, has recently been released. She is published in numerous print and on-line journals, including Margie, Heliotrope, LIT, The Marlboro Review, 26 Magazine, Cutbank, Free Verse, and Moria. Additionally, Cindy has served on several school Boards and other non-profit agencies. She spent fifteen years in the retail business, traveling extensively overseas. Born and raised in the Philadelphia area, she currently lives in Merion, Pennsylvania with her husband and children.

6:00 PM - 8:00 PM in Room 209: Suppose an Eyes Meeting. For more information, contact Pat Green: patricia78@aol.com.

Wednesday, 4/7

A lunch talk with Dick Polman

"Obama and the 24/7 Political News Cycle: Can He Govern?"

presented by the Sylvia Kauders lunch series

12:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

rsvp: to wh@writing.upenn.edu or call 215-746-POEM

listen: to an audio recording of this event

watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV

Dick Polman is the Maury Povich "writer in residence," a full-time member of the CPCW faculty, as well as a political columnist and daily blogger for The Philadelphia Inquirer. He spent 22 years on the Inquirer writing staff; most recently, as the national political writer from 1992 to 2006, he covered four presidential elections and dozens of Senate and House races nationwide. At other times, he was a foreign correspondent based in London; a baseball writer covering the Philadelphia Phillies; a general-assignment feature writer; and a longtime regular contributor to the newspaper's Sunday magazine, where he wrote long-form pieces about everything from Nazi war criminals to the comeback of the condom.

A reading by fiction writer Lydia Davis

Second Annual Bob Lucid Memorial Program in Fiction

6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV

listen: to an audio recording of this event at Lydia Davis' PennSound author page.

Lydia Davis is the author of, most recently, The Collected Stories (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2009). She is also the translator of the latest Swann's Way, by Marcel Proust, and her translation of Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert, will be appearing this Fall as a Penguin Classic. She lives in upstate New York and is on the faculty of SUNY Albany and a Fellow of the New York State Writers Institute.

Thursday, 4/8

A poetry reading and book party with Charles Bernstein

celebrating the release of All the Whiskey in Heaven

6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

All the Whiskey in Heaven brings together some of Charles Bernstein's best work from the past thirty years, an astonishing assortment of different types of poems. Yet, despite the distinctive differences from poem to poem, Bernstein's characteristic explorations of how language both limits and liberates thought are present throughout. Modulating the comic and the dark, structural invention with buoyant sound play, these challenging works give way to poems of lyric excess and striking emotional range. This is poetry for poetry's sake, as formally radical as it is socially engaged, providing equal measures of aesthetic pleasure, hilarity, and philosophical reflection. Long considered one of America's most inventive and influential contemporary poets, Bernstein reveals himself to be both trickster and charmer.

"Charles Bernstein's poems resemble each other only in being unexpected. Simultaneously mad, tragic and hilarious, they seem written to illustrate the truth of his lines: 'things are / solid; we stumble, unglue, recombine.' All the Whiskey in Heaven is a vast department store of the imagination." —John Ashbery

"Charles Bernstein uses words as a surgeon uses a scalpel. He strips away the skin and cuts to the bone to reveal reality and—ultimately—to heal. This essential collection from 30 years of cutting edge work will confirm Bernstein as our true poet laureate—the voice of a new generation." —John Zorn

"For more than thirty years Charles Bernstein has been America's most ardent literary provocateur. This long-needed selection of his poetry gives us a new perspective on his work, for it shows us that the many forms he has worked in over the years are in fact a single form, the Bernstein form, and it is unique, the product of an imagination unlike that of any other contemporary writer. His poems challenge you to think in unaccustomed ways. They address public matters, private matters, poetic matters—in other words, all that matters most. And, good Lord, can they ever make you laugh" —Paul Auster

"Charles Bernstein is our ultimate connoisseur of chaos, the chronicler, in poems of devastating satire, chilling and complex irony, exuberant wit, and, above all, profound passion, of the contradictions and absurdities of everyday life in urban America at the turn of the twenty-first century. From such early underground classics as "The Klupzy Girl," to the mordant verbal play of "The Lives of the Toll Takers," to the great meditation on 9/11 called "Report from Liberty Street" and the deeply personal ballads and elegies of recent years, Bernstein's much awaited Selected Poems displays a formal range, performative urgency, and verbal dexterity unmatched by other poets of his generation." —Marjorie Perloff

Nicole Peyrafitte gave a review of this event featuring images and video on her blog, Collectages.

Friday, 4/9

Saturday, 4/10

Sunday, 4/11

Monday, 4/12

A meeting of the Writers House Planning Committee (the "Hub")

5:30 PM in the Arts Cafe

RSVP: to gautsche@writing.upenn.edu

From the time of its founding in 1995-1996, the Kelly Writers House has been run more or less collectively by members of its community. Our original team of intrepid founders — the group of students, faculty, alumni, and staff who wanted to create an independent haven for writers and supporters of contemporary writing in any genre — took for themselves the name "the hub." "Hub" was the generic term given by Penn's Provost, President, and other planners who hoped that something very innovative would be done at 3805 Locust Walk to prove the viability of the idea that students, working with others, could create an extracurricular learning community around common intellectual and creative passions. To this day, the Writers House Planning Committee refers to itself as "the hub" — the core of engaged faculty, student, staff, and alumni volunteers from whom the House's creative energy and vitality radiates. Go here to get a sense of what we do; go here for sound clips and photos from our end-of-year party; go here for a list of campus publications.

Tuesday, 4/13

Bob Perelman's The Alps

a celebration of poets theater

6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

produced by: Sarah Arkebauer and Michelle Taransky

listen: to an audio recording of this event at Bob Perelman's Pennsound author page

watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV

Bob Perelman's play The Alps is a psychological fairy tale of desire, fame, love, and power. A 98-pound weakling of a narrator eventually takes the overdeveloped plot, which includes the rise and fall of a literary pedant, a student with no use for books, scenes of pastoral love, and Freud's problematic sex life.

Bob Perelman teaches at the University of Pennsylvania. He has published 19 books of poems, including: IFLIFE (2006, N.Y: Roof); Playing Bodies, in collaboration with painter Francie Shaw (2004, N. Y.: Granary); and Ten to One: Selected Poems (1999, Middletown, Conn.:Wesleyan University Press). His critical books are The Marginalization of Poetry: Language Writing and Literary History (1996, Princeton University) and The Trouble with Genius: Reading Pound, Joyce, Stein, and Zukofsky (1994, University of California). His work can be accessed on Penn Sound; his website is http://writing.upenn.edu/pepc/authors/perelman/; a feature on his work appears in Jacket 39.

Poets Theatre defies the boundaries of genre. Our production of The Alps marks the release of an important new reference for students of postwar American poetry and avant-garde theater. The Kenning Anthology of Poet's Theater: 1945-1985 (2010, Kenning), edited by Kevin Killian and David Brazil, is a collection of poets theater classics, rarities long out of print, and texts from unpublished manuscripts and archives.

Wednesday, 4/14

The Pennds: An Academic Approach to Radiohead

a lunch talk with Jared Rosenberg (C'10), Steve Waye (C'10), Charlie Isaacs (C'10), and Andrew Bielen (C'10)

12:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

Listen: to an audio recording of this event

Watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV

RSVP: to wh@writing.upenn.edu or call (215)746-POEM

Penn seniors Jared Rosenberg, Steve Waye, Charlie Isaacs, and Andrew Bielen lead an open discussion on the work of Radiohead, one of our generation's most influential and innovative bands. Lunch will be served—so reserve your seat!

Speakeasy: Poetry, Prose, and Anything Goes!

8:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

Listen: to an audio recording of this event

Watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV

Speakeasy is an open mic night held at the Kelly Writers House every other Wednesday evening. It's an opportunity for writers to share their work, or the work of others, in a friendly setting. Speakeasy was founded in 1997 and continues to be an important part of the regular Writers House programming series. We welcome poets, storytellers, singers, musicians, and anything in between to share their voices with us in the Arts Cafe twice a month. As always: Poetry, prose, anything goes!

Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)

Lacanians Meeting. Contact Patricia Gherovici at pgherovici@aol.com
7:00 PM - 9:00 PM in Room 209: Writers Workshop. For more information, contact Martha Turner at m-turner@verizon.net.

Thursday, 4/15

Live Paper Dolls: Re-visioning 'Woman'

a book arts project and panel with Sadie Stein, Allison Harris, Katie L. Price and Julia Bloch

6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

listen: to an audio recording of this event

watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV

KWH presents a book arts project that attempts to collaboratively challenge normative notions and representations of 'woman' over the ages through art and writing by hub members. Drawing on the aesthetic of Riot Grrrl zines and pinups, we apprehend the broad and oft paradoxical question 'what does it mean to be a woman?', translating the academic discourse of feminism into our own vernacular. The book will be on display and discussed with an interactive panel. This program includes writings by: Erin Gautsche, Michelle Taransky, Cecilia Corrigan, Lee Huttner, Rivka Fogel, Violette Carb, Arielle Brousse, Lindsey Todd, Allyson Even, and Trisha Low.

Sadie Stein is a writer and editor on the website Jezebel.com - for, by and about women. She lives in New York and has written extensively on women's issues, history, lit and anything else that's needed.

Allison Harris is a sexual health educator and social worker in training. Her fierce commitment to emotional activism and the authenticity theory of (r)evolution, have aided in the production of works in various media including A Dolphin Tavern (2009), x's x's (2002, CollisionCollider) and Smudging Eyeliner (2000, Death Star). Her interests include the privatization of water, female cultural production of the 1990s, archetypes as expressed through Western astrology, and the helping instinct.

Katie L. Price is a third year in the English PhD program at the University of Pennsylvania. Her primary reserach interests are Contemporary North American Poetry, Formalism and 'Pataphysics. She focuses on conceptual and procedural poetry, and authors that prefer excessive precision over emotional overflow. Next Fall she will be teaching a course entitled, "Writing and Modern Technology," which investigates the role the typewriter, the computer and the internet have upon poetic forms.

Before moving to Philadelphia, Julia Bloch worked for nearly ten years in feminist and queer media in the San Francisco Bay Area. Most recently, she covered lesbian pop culture and politics at Curve; current women's writing at Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture; and youth activism at Wiretap. A poet and PhD candidate in English at Penn, Julia is writing a dissertation on gender and literary form in innovative poetry.

Friday, 4/16

Saturday, 4/17

Sunday, 4/18

Monday, 4/19

7-up on Space

6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

listen: to an audio recording of this event

watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV

7-up on Space features Grace Ambrose (C'11), Mark Devlin, Thomson Guster (C'10), Chris Mustazza, Greg Romero, Harris Steinberg and Kate Watson-Wallace speaking for seven minutes each about "space" (personal space, the space bar, astronomy, astrology, choreography, outer space, inner space, virtual space, MySpace, Star Trek, architecture, urban planning, public space & private space, the parking authority, contested space, territories, bandwidth, parkour, storage space, forgotten space, Feng Shui, and voids, for example).

Tuesday, 4/20

A lunch talk with Andy Robinson (C'80)

"Writing for Social Change"

12:00 PM in the Dining Room and the Arts Cafe

rsvp: to wh@writing.upenn.edu or call 215-573-9749

listen: to an audio recording of this event

watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV

Since graduating from Penn in 1980, Andy Robinson has worked with a variety of nonprofits as a fundraiser, publicist, grantwriter, editor, and community organizer. A consultant for the last 15 years, he's provided support and training to thousands of nonprofit staff and volunteers in 47 US states and Canada. Andy specializes in the needs of organizations working for human rights, social justice, and environmental conservation.

Andy is the author of four books, including Selling Social Change (Without Selling Out) and Grassroots Grants, both published by Jossey-Bass. His latest book will be published in May. When he's not on the road, he lives in Plainfield, Vermont with his spouse Jan, a woodlot filled with wildlife, and a garden that is completely out of control.

A reading by Swedish poets Jorgen Gassilewski and Anna Hallberg

presented by Writers Without Borders

CANCELED

introduced by: Charles Bernstein

This event has been CANCELED

Jorgen Gassilewski (born in 1961) is a Swedish writer, translator, cultural journalist and critic. His literary debut was the collection of poetry Du ("You", 1987). All in all he has published nine books, most recently the novel Goteborgshandelserna ("The Gothenburg Events", 2006). Next February a new book of poetry with the classic title Karleksdikter ("Love Poems") will appear. His poetry has been translated into Mandarin, Russian, French, English, Spanish, Polish, Hindi, Danish, Norwegian and German.

Anna Hallberg (born in 1975) is a Swedish poet and critic. Her first book was the collection of poetry Friktion ("Friction", 2001). Three years later it was followed by pa era platser ("on your marks", 2004), and she has been nominated for The Nordic Council's Literature Prize and other awards. This spring her third volume Mil ("Mile", 2008) was published. Hallberg also works with visual poetry, and has had several exhibitions at Nordic galleries. She writes literary criticism for the largest Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter, and regularly publishes essays and articles in literary magazines.

6:00 PM - 8:00 PM in Room 209: Suppose an Eyes Meeting. For more information, contact Pat Green: patricia78@aol.com.

Wednesday, 4/21

Edit presents Tan Lin

An On-the-Spot Republication Event around Seven Controlled Vocabularies (Wesleyan, 2010)

6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

"Edit: Performing Networked Publishing," organized by Danny Snelson, focuses on editorial strategies and textual conditions in contemporary writing. It is a roving events series exploring innovative performances, critical archiving, and live editing toward an exploration of editorial activity in contemporary writing and the arts.

Featuring a team of poet-editors including Chris Alexander, Alejandro Crawford, Kareem Estefan, J. Gordon Faylor, Kristen Gallagher, Lawrence Giffin, Diana Hamilton, Eddie Hopely, Sueyeun Juliette Lee, Patrick Lovelace, Jeremy Thompson, Sara Wintz, and Al Filreis accompanying Tan Lin in the republishing of SCV on the spot in a variety of formats. The event will begin at 1pm, with a reception and Q&A scheduled for 6pm. The works to be published include "Handmade book, PDF, lulu.com, Appendix, Powerpoint, Kanban Board/Post-Its, Blurbs, Dual Language (Chinese/English) Edition, micro lecture, Selectric II interview, wine/cheese reception, Q&A (xerox) and a film.

Tan Lin is the author of Lotion Bullwhip Giraffe, BlipSoak01, Ambience is a Novel with a Logo, Heath (Plagiarism/Outsource) and 7 Controlled Vocabularies and Obituary 2004. The Joy of Cooking (2010). His work has appeared in numerous journals including Conjunctions, Artforum, Cabinet, New York Times Book Review, Art in America, and Purple. His video, theatrical and LCD work have been shown at the Marianne Boesky Gallery, Yale Art Museum, Sophienholm Museum (Copenhagen), Ontological Hysterical Theatre, and as part of the Whitney Museum of American Art's Soundcheck Series. Lin is the recipient of a Getty Distinguished Scholar Grant for 2004-2005 and a Warhol Foundation/Creative Capital Arts Writing Grant to complete a book-length study of the writings of Andy Warhol. He has taught at the University of Virginia and Cal Arts, and currently teaches creative writing at New Jersey City University. He has just completed a sampled novel, entitled Our Feelings Were Made by Hand.

Thursday, 4/22

A lunch talk with Maira Kalman

CANCELED

co-sponsored by: the Institute of Contemporary Art

This event has been CANCELED

Maira Kalman is an award-winning artist, illustrator, and product designer. She has illustrated numerous covers for The New Yorker magazine and has written and illustrated more than a dozen children's books. Her articles and illustrations have appeared in The New York Times, Newsweek, Interview, and many other publications. Kalman also illustrated a special edition of Strunk & White's The Elements of Style (Penguin, 2005). Kalman has designed products for the Museum of Modern Art under the M&Co. label, fabric for Isaac Mizrahi, accessories for Kate Spade, and sets for Mark Morris Dance Group. A teacher of graduate design at the School of Visual Arts, she lives in New York with her two children and a dog.

Young Philly Open Mic

readings and performances by students from local schools

6:00 in the Arts Cafe

hosted by: Allyson Even

Creativity is alive and well among Philadelphia's youth! "Young Philly" will feature an evening of readings and performances by local elementary, middle, and high school students, who will share their work as members of the Writers House community. The featured readers will include workshop students from Mighty Writers and Spells Writing Center, participants in "Write-on!" (a Writers House literacy project), kids who write for their school literary journals, and others who write just for fun in their free time. Readings will take place in the Writers House Arts Cafe with a reception to follow in the dining room. Come support Philly's young talent and help us celebrate the launch of KWH's new online journal for local students, The Blacktop! Friends, family, and teachers are more than welcome.

Friday, 4/23

Saturday, 4/24

Sunday, 4/25

Monday, 4/26

A reading by David Milch

Kelly Writers House Fellows Program

6:30 PM in the Arts Cafe

rsvp: SEATING STRICTLY LIMITED; please RSVP to whfellow@writing.upenn.edu or call 215-573-9749

watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV

listen: to an audio recording of this event

Funded by a grant from Paul Kelly, the Kelly Writers House Fellows program enables us to realize two unusual goals. We want to make it possible for the youngest writers and writer-critics to have sustained contact with authors of great accomplishment in an informal atmosphere. We also want to resist the time-honored distinction — more honored in practice than in theory — between working with eminent writers on the one hand and studying literature on the other.

Screenwriter and producer David Milch is known for complex, rich characters and drama that is at once beautiful, profane, complex and sublime; modern and Elizabethan; low and high; comic and tragic. Mr. Milch is the creator (and, often, the main writer) of the television series NYPD Blue, Deadwood, and John From Cincinnati and has worked as executive producer on those shows and others. His joining the writing team at Hill Street Blues (in season 3) many credit as the turning point in that long-running drama.

He is currently developing Last of the Ninth, a drama set in the New York Police Department during the 1970s, with collaborator and friend Bill Clark.

Mr. Milch won the "Outstanding Writing in a Drama Series" Emmy in 1983 for Hill Street Blues and in 1995, 1997 and 1998 for NYPD Blue, among many nominations. He has also won three Humanitas Prizes and two Edgar Allan Poe Awards, which honor mystery writers of all kinds. In 1994, Mr. Milch was named Television Producer of the Year by the Producers Guild of America and in 1999 he was the recipient of the Laurel Award from the Writers Guild of America for Television Writing Achievement. A star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame was dedicated to Mr. Milch in 2006.

Before making his way to Hollywood, Mr. Milch attended Yale and earned an MFA from the Iowa Writers Workshop. Mr. Milch's fiction and poetry have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly and The Southern Review. There is no doubt that Mr. Milch's writerly strength and wild imagination have been the keys to his and his shows' success. The Washington Post has written that in its "beautifully ugly glory," Deadwood is, "magnificently gritty in appearance and poetically obscene in language."

Tuesday, 4/27

A brunch conversation with David Milch

Kelly Writers House Fellows Program

10:00 AM in the Arts Cafe

rsvp: SEATING STRICTLY LIMITED; please RSVP to whfellow@writing.upenn.edu or call 215-573-9749

watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV

listen: to an audio recording of this event

A Reading by Greg Djanikian's Poetry Class

5:30 PM in the Arts Cafe

listen: to an audio recording of this event

watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV

Come celebrate the end of the semester with students in Greg Djanikian's Poetry class. After listening to readings by students in the class, we'll convene in the Writers House dining room for a reception. Everyone is welcome!

Wednesday, 4/28

A Reading with Lorene Cary's creative writing classes

2:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV

Non-fiction writing students share excerpts from their memoirs, profiles, and teaching experience. You'll laugh; you'll cry. Plus a reception with the authors. It's the best Reading Days break you could hope for.

Creative Writing Contest Winners Reading

5:30 in the Arts Cafe

hosted by: Greg Djanikian, Director of the Creative Writing Program

listen: to an audio recording of this event

watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV

For deadlines and more information about CPCW contests, prizes and fellowships, please see: http://writing.upenn.edu/awards/.

7:00 PM - 9:00 PM in Room 209: Writers Workshop. For more information, contact Martha Turner at m-turner@verizon.net.

Thursday, 4/29

End of year Hub party

5:00 PM throughout the house and garden

Each spring, at the end of the semester, the Writers House Planning Committee comes together to celebrate another year gone by. We toast and roast old friends and recognize the contributions of various Hub members to this incredible project. To see and hear more about the Hub party, go here.