April 2014

Tuesday, 4/1

Brunch with T.C. Boyle

Kelly Writers House Fellows Program

10:00 AM in the Arts Cafe

RSVP required: whfellow@writing.upenn.edu
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen: to an audio recording of this event

T.C. Boyle, often referred to as a "maximalist" writer for the way his rich prose stands in contrast to a more fashionable minimalism, is an author unafraid to explore. His short stories and novels bring readers to both coasts of the United States, to Mexico, to rural inland settings, to Alaska, to small islands, to the year 2036. Boyle himself has lived and written in some of these places, as he started his writing career as an undergrad at SUNY Potsdam, then completed an MFA at the University of Iowa Writers Workshop and a PhD in nineteenth-century British literature at the same institution, finally moving to California where he is now professor of creative writing and English at the University of Southern California.

The "maximalist" label is fitting not just at the level of a Boyle sentence, but for the scope of what his short stories and novels might contain. Astronomy, math, culinary expertise, a chimpanzee hiding in the back bedroom, one never quite knows what elements one of Boyle's narrators might be faced with. On this topic, Boyle says in a 2000 Paris Review interview: "When you're a kid in school and you wonder, Jesus, why do I have to take trigonometry, why do I have to take this or that? and your teacher says, Well, everything you know will be good for you in future life—it's true. But only if you're a writer." Boyle's work such as Tortilla Curtain also uses fiction to explore social activism, on issues of immigration, race, environmentalism and others. He has received many awards for his writing: several of his stories have been selected for Best American Stories; his novel World's End was a National Book Award finalist and the PEN/Faulkner Award for best novel of the year. Boyle was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2009.

A poetry reading by Matt Zapruder

6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

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

Matthew Zapruder is the author of four collections of poetry, including Sun Bear, forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press in spring 2014. His most recent book, Come On All You Ghosts (Copper Canyon, 2010), was selected as one of the year's top 5 poetry books by Publishers Weekly, as well as the 2010 Booklist Editors' Choice for poetry, and the 2010 Northern California Independent Booksellers Association poetry book of the year. His second collection, The Pajamaist, was chosen by Tony Hoagland as the winner of the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America, and by Library Journal as one of the top ten poetry volumes of 2006. The recipient of a 2011 Guggenheim Fellowship, he lives in Oakland, where he is an editor at Wave Books and a new member of the Core Faculty at the MFA in creative writing at St. Mary's College of California.

Wednesday, 4/2

Karen Finley: Written in Sand

Collected AIDS Writings

with musical accompaniment by Paul Nebenzahl

6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

presented by: the Feminism/s series
rsvp: wh@writing.upenn.edu or call 215-746-POEM

For Visual AIDS 25th anniversary, curated by Sur Rodney Sur in New York City, Karen Finley was invited to participate in the exhibit. While looking over and revisiting her writing on the subject Finley gathered the writing and realized that it became its own narrative, its own body of work. Sections of performance texts, poetry, letters and fragments express the loss and magnitude of personal suffering and compassion within a larger world of homophobia, denial and injustice. Some of these writings were the work that was considered indecent that would bring her and 3 other artists (Fleck, Hughes, Miller) to the Supreme Court. Finley then performed an excerpt at Participant Gallery as part of a tribute to the artist Gordon Kutti who died of AIDS.

Karen Finley is an artist, performer, and author. Born in Chicago, she attended the Chicago Art Institute growing up and received her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. Author of eight books including her latest work of creative nonfiction, Reality Shows, published by Feminist Press 2011, Finley works in a variety of media, including installation, video, performance, public art, visual art, music, and literature. She has performed and exhibited internationally — and lectures on a wide variety of topics. Her interests and topical concerns include freedom of expression, visual culture, and art education. Finley works in ink as a way to refresh and examine more closely ideas and concepts from page to stage and back. She is the recipient of many awards and grants including a Guggenheim Fellowship. She is an arts professor in art and public policy at New York University.

Finley performed her collected pieces about AIDS under the overall title "Written in Sand." Click here for a copy of the program, which includes the titles of each piece.

Thursday, 4/3

A conversation with Jesse Malin

Hosted by Anthony DeCurtis

5:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

supported by: Creative Ventures
rsvp: wh@writing.upenn.edu

Born in Queens, New York, Jesse Malin's passion for music began at an early age. Upon receiving his first nylon stringed acoustic guitar, Jesse taped an old 1950's reel-to-reel recorder with a beat-up attached microphone to its body and the soon-to-be songwriter began his musical career.

Malin began playing live the age of twelve years old in the seminal hardcore band Heart Attack. After the group's disbandment in 1984, Jesse and his childhood pals formed the rock and roll band D Generation and released three albums, touring the globe several times over before parting ways in 1999. Following several in-between bridge bands, including PCP Highway and Bellvue, Jesse Malin embarked on a solo career and has released five acclaimed records. Over the years Malin has also worked in both film and radio, currently co-hosting a monthly radio show on Sirius XM alongside John Varvatos, and is now completing production on a new album set to be released in 2014.


Friday, 4/4

Saturday, 4/5

Sunday, 4/6

Monday, 4/7

A Meeting of the Writers House Planning Committee (The "Hub")

5:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

rsvp: jalowent@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.

Tuesday, 4/8

Fibber

6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

hosted by: Hillary Rea
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen: to an audio recording of this event

Fibber is a touring storytelling and comedy game show where every one gets to play a part. The set up: four storytellers, one fibber. After swearing to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, Philly's most talented storytellers share their own personal, awkward, outrageous, gripping, and twisted experiences with the audience – but someone has made it all up. It's the audience's job to hear the stories, interrogate the performers with help from host Hillary Rea, and vote for the person whose pants they think are on fire. After a secret audience ballot, the fibber is revealed and those who chose wisely are rewarded with a prize and smug sense of satisfaction.

Hillary Rea is a comedian and storyteller living in Philadelphia. She is the host of the comedic storytelling shows Tell Me A Story and Fibber. Hillary is a Moth StorySlam winner and has performed with the How I Learned Series, Tales of the Cosmos, The Soundtrack Series, Real Characters, Steamboat!,Comedy Dreamz, Speakeasy DC and more.

Wednesday, 4/9

SASHA ISSENBERG

The Victory Lab: How Presidential Campaigns Are Changing

Povich Journalism Program

12:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

hosted by: Dick Polman
RSVP: wh@writing.upenn.edu
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen: to an audio recording of this event

Sasha Issenberg is the author of The Victory Lab, a columnist for Slate and the Washington correspondent for Monocle, where he covers politics, business, diplomacy, and culture. He covered the 2008 election as a national political reporter in the Washington bureau of The Boston Globe, and his work has also appeared in New York, The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Monthly, Inc., The Atlantic, Boston, Philadelphia, and George, where he served as a contributing editor. His first book, The Sushi Economy: Globalization and the Making of a Modern Delicacy, was published by Gotham in 2007.

Symbiosis: The Crossroads of Arts and Writing

Brodsky Gallery Opening

6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

supported by: Creative Ventures
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen: to an audio recording of this event

Founded in September 2012, Symbiosis is a project based in the Kelly Writers House dedicated to uniting visual and literary artists. The project pairs artists with writers and encourages them to collaborate. Central to the mission of the Symbiosis project: the free exchange of creative ideas across disciplines. Scientifically, "symbiosis" is the interaction between two different organisms living in close physical association. For people, "symbiosis" refers to a mutually beneficial relationship.

The Brodsky Gallery is an art gallery integrated with the ground floor of the Writers House. Up to six exhibitions take place during the academic year from September through May. Openings feature a reception for the artist and an accompanying program; examples include panel discussions, poetry readings, film screenings, and technique demonstrations by the artist. Through exhibiting a diverse array of art media and cross-disciplinary programming, the Brodsky Gallery at KWH seeks to engage Penn students and the broader Philadelphia community with the interrelationships between literary and visual arts. Thanks to the generosity of Michael and Heidi Brodsky, whose support makes our gallery space possible, the Brodsky Gallery is a permanent project of Kelly Writers House.

Thursday, 4/10

Locally Grown

Jane Golden, Daniel Denvir, Ann Karlen, & Grace Ambrose

Kerry Prize Program

6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

hosted by: Kenna O'Rourke
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen: to an audio recording of this event

For Philadelphians, "localness" is all too often generalized into cheese steaks, Rocky, and cold pretzels. What does it really mean to be "local," one of hip urban America's favorite buzzwords, and what does it mean to be Philadelphian? Join genuine Philadelphian legends of local — Jane Golden (director of the Philadelphia MuralArts program), Daniel Denvir (writer for City Paper), Ann Karlen (director of Fair Food Philly), and Grace Ambrose (DIY and local music/art/feminism proponent) — for a conversation of "the local" as a cultural and philosophical concept. This year's Kerry Prize winner, Kenna O'Rourke, will moderate, and a reception featuring delicious locally sourced food will follow.

Friday, 4/11

The Motion of Light

Celebrating Samuel R. Delany's Performative Poetics

2:00 PM (full schedule below) in the Arts Cafe

watch: a video recording of this event (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) via KWH-TV
listen: to an audio recording of this event (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 can be found as a Close Listening program here)

Tributes to Delany to honor his contribution to Temple-Penn Poetics, with Fred Moten, Kenneth James, Terry Rowden, Holly Wilson, Ira Livingston, and Jena Osman with a special message from John Keene. Organized by Charles Bernstein and Tracie Morris, who will host the event and toast the guest of honor. The celebration will begin with a screening of The Polymath or, The Life and Opinions of Samuel R. Delany, Gentleman, presented by the film maker, Fred Barney Taylor, and will conclude with a reading by Chip Delany.

  • 2:00 PM: Screening of The Polymath or, The Life and Opinions of Samuel R. Delany, Gentleman, presented by the film maker, Fred Barney Taylor
  • 3:30 PM: Kenneth James, Terry Rowden, Holly Wilson
  • (break)
  • 4:15 PM: Ira Livingston
  • 4:45 PM: Tracie Morris
  • 5:30 PM: Keynote Address by Fred Moten
  • (break)
  • 6:30 PM: Jena Osman, Sarah Micklem, and (in absentia) John Keene
  • 6:45 PM: Close Listening with Samuel Delany and Charles Bernstein
  • 7:15 PM: Samuel Delany reading

Saturday, 4/12

Sunday, 4/13

Monday, 4/14

A lunch chat with Anthony Wallace

12:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

hosted by: Karen Rile
rsvp: wh@writing.upenn.edu
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen: to an audio recording of this event

Join us for a reading by Philadelphia native Anthony Wallace, winner of the 2013 Drue Heinz Literature Prize. Wallace is also the recipient of a 2013 Pushcart Prize, and a finalist for the 2014 PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Fiction. Currently a creative writing professor at Boston University, Wallace has published poetry and fiction in such venues as Cleaver Magazine, Atlanta Review, CutBank, and the River Styx.

Anthony Wallace is a Senior Lecturer in the Arts and Sciences Writing Program at Boston University, where he is also Co-director of "Arts Now," a curriculum-based initiative to support the arts at BU. Tony has published poetry and fiction in literary journals including CutBank, Another Chicago Magazine, the Atlanta Review, River Styx, Sou'wester, 5-Trope, the Republic of Letters, and the Florida Review. His short story "The Old Priest" won a Pushcart Prize and was published last fall in Pushcart 2013. His short story collection The Old Priest is the winner of the 2013 Drue Heinz Literature Prize and was published last September by the University of Pittsburgh Press. His personal essay "In a Room with Rothko" received a 2014 Pushcart "Special Mention."


Tuesday, 4/15

Wednesday, 4/16

Brave Testimony: Brenda Marie Osbey

A poetry reading

6PM in the Arts Cafe

sponsored by: The Center for Africana Studies
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen: to an audio recording of this event

Brenda Marie Osbey, a New Orleans native, is an author of poetry and prose nonfiction in English and French. Her books include History and Other Poems (Time Being Books, 2013); All Saints: New and Selected Poems (LSU Press, 1997), which received the 1998 American Book Award; Desperate Circumstance, Dangerous Woman (Story Line Press, 1991); In These Houses (Wesleyan University Press, 1988); and Ceremony for Minneconjoux (Callaloo Poetry Series, 1983; University Press of Virginia, 1985). In spring 2005, Osbey was appointed the first peer-selected Poet Laureate of the State of Louisiana. During her two-year tenure as laureate, she toured the United States presenting a series of poetry readings, lectures and open discussions advocating the rebuilding of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast region of the United States in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. She has been a resident fellow of the MacDowell Colony, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the Kentucky Foundation for Women, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Millay Colony, the Camargo Foundation and the Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College, Harvard University. She also has received fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Louisiana Division of the Arts, the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation and others. Osbey is currently Distinguished Visiting Professor of Africana Studies at Brown University.

Thursday, 4/17

Rob Sheffield: Turn Around Bright Eyes

The Rituals of Love and Karaoke

5:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

hosted by: Anthony DeCurtis
RSVP: wh@writing.upenn.edu
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen: to an audio recording of this event

Rob Sheffield will discuss his latest book, Turn Around Bright Eyes, an emotional journey of hilarity and heartbreak with a karaoke soundtrack. It's a story about finding the courage to move on, clearing your throat, and letting it rip. It's a story about navigating your way through adult romance. And it's a story about how songs get tangled up in our deepest emotions, evoking memories of the past while inspiring hope for the future. The event will conclude with a reception and Karaoke party (email your requests to wh@writing.upenn.edu).

Rob Sheffield is a columnist for Rolling Stone, where he has been writing about music, TV, and pop culture since 1997. He is the author of two national bestsellers Love Is a Mix Tape: Love and Loss, One Song at a Time and Talking to Girls About Duran Duran: One Young Man's Quest for True Love and a Cooler Haircut. He also appears regularly on VH1.


Friday, 4/18

If Bach Taught Writing: The Nature of Expertise & Transfer of Learning

A workshop with Anne Beaufort

11:30 AM lunch reception; 12:00 PM workshop

Sponsored by the Critical Writing program
RSVP: critwrit@writing.upenn.edu
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen: to an audio recording of this event

What allows some students to make progress in a writing class and others not? How should we be thinking about our priorities in teaching writing? What types of writing assignments will best help students in their other courses? In this interactive session, Dr. Anne Beaufort will present findings from her two ethnographic research studies on writers in college and after college that shed light on the nature of writing expertise and issues of transfer of learning. She will also share some of the ways in which her research has changed the ways she approaches coaching writers.

Bring a typical article from your discipline as well as a writing assignment that you give to your students so that we can think about our teaching in light of the presentation.

Anne Beaufort has published two ethnographic studies of writers in university and workplace settings, Writing in the Real World: Making the Transition from School to Work (1999, Teachers College Press) and College Writing and Beyond: A New Framework for University Writing Instruction (2007, Utah State University Press). The first book, winner of the NCTE 2001 best book in science/technical communications, examines writers' learning processes in moving from academic to workplace writing and theorizes the nature of writing expertise. The second book, an in depth analysis of all dimensions of a writer's progress from freshman through senior years of college and in his first professional job, documents the need for revised paradigms for university writing instruction. Her current research interests include investigating ways traditional and new visual media can enhance development of writing skills, and investigating writing protocols for improving physical and mental health. For more about Anne, visit here.

Saturday, 4/19

Sunday, 4/20

Monday, 4/21

A reading by Roxane Gay

Cheryl J. Family Fiction program

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

Roxane Gay's writing appears or is forthcoming in Best American Short Stories 2012, Best Sex Writing 2012, New Stories From the Midwest 2011 and 2012, Salon, Oxford American, NOON, American Short Fiction, Indiana Review, Brevity, The Rumpus, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Praire Schooner, West Branch, and elsewhere. She is the co-editor of PANK, the essays editor for The Rumpus, and an HTMLGIANT contributor. She is also the author of Ayiti, a collection of writing about the Haitian diaspora experience.


Tuesday, 4/22

Pretty in Ink: Lunch with Lindsey Palmer

a reading and conversation

12:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

hosted by: Jamie-Lee Josselyn
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen: to an audio recording of this event

Lindsey Palmer's debut novel Pretty in Ink opens as the staff of Hers magazine is in for a shock: After months of flagging sales and the increasing ire of the corporate VIPs, the magazine's beloved Editor in Chief gets the pink slip, and a notoriously tough editor swoops in to fill the publication's top spot… and then the massacre begins. The new boss has big plans to overhaul the magazine — to stuff its pages with more celebs, scandal, and smut —and it's no secret that she plans to overhaul Hers' staff, too. As the staffers battle it out to hang onto their jobs, all their fears and anxieties, their hopes and vulnerabilities play out on the stage of the Hers workplace.

The fictional drama of Pretty in Ink portrays a reality that continues to sweep through the publishing industry, as magazines struggle desperately to figure out how to survive in the new media landscape. Informed by her years of experience working at women's lifestyle publications, Palmer offers a funny and fresh insider's look at the budget cuts, staff turnovers, redesigns and editor resignations are real-life mainstays of any magazine in this day and age.

Lindsey J. Palmer worked as a professional writer and editor in the magazine industry for seven years, most recently as Features Editor at Self and previously at Redbook and Glamour. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania (C'05), she earned a Master of Arts in English Education from Teachers College, Columbia University, and currently teaches 12th grade English, A.P. Literature, and Creative Writing at NEST+m in Manhattan. Her first novel, Pretty In Ink, will be published by Kensington in March 2014. Lindsey lives in Brooklyn. Visit her at www.lindseyjpalmer.com.


Laynie Browne & Lisa Jarnot

A poetry reading

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

Laynie Browne is the author of nine collections of poetry and two novels. Her work appears recently in The Norton Anthology of Postmodern American Poetry (2013) as well as in Ecopoetry: A Contemporary American Anthology (Trinity University Press, 2013). Her honors include: the National Poetry Series Award, the Contemporary Poetry Series Award, and two Gertrude Stein Awards for Innovative American Poetry. A new collection, Lost Parkour Ps(alms) is forthcoming from Université de Rouen in 2014. She is co-editor of I'll Drown My Book: Conceptual Writing by Women (Les Figues Press, 2012).

Poet Lisa Jarnot is the author of four full-length collections: Some Other Kind of Mission (Burning Deck Press, 1996), Ring of Fire (Zoland Books, 2001 and Salt Publishers, 2003), Black Dog Songs (Flood Editions, 2003) and Night Scenes (Flood Editions, 2008). Her biography of the San Francisco poet Robert Duncan was published by the University of California Press in 2012 and was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Randy Shilts Award for Gay Non-Fiction, and received Honorable Mention in Literature from American Publishers Awards program. A Selected Poems was published by City Lights in May of 2013. Jarnot currently lives in Jackson Heights, New York with her husband and daughter. She works as a teacher, writer, and freelance gardener and is a founding member of the Central Park Forest Nursery.

Wednesday, 4/23

Lunch with JEZEBEL founder Anna Holmes: An Interactive Webcast

Povich Journalism Program

12:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

hosted by: Julia Bloch
RSVP: wh@writing.upenn.edu
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen: to an audio recording of this event

Anna Holmes is the founder of the popular website Jezebel.com. She has written and edited for numerous publications, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Newsweek, InStyle and The New Yorker online. In 2012, she won a Syracuse University Newhouse School Mirror Award for Best Commentary, Traditional Media. She speaks regularly on digital media, gender politics, and pop culture, and has appeared on various media outlets including The Today Show, CNN's Reliable Sources, and NPR's All Things Considered, The Takeaway, and Tell Me More. She is the editor of two books, including the Book of Jezebel, and was recently named a columnist for the New York Times Book Review. She lives in New York.

This event is free and open to the public (with RSVP), and will also be offered as an INTERACTIVE WEBCAST: audiences watching from outside the Arts Cafe will be invited to join us with their questions and comments!


To join in person, RSVP by writing to wh@writing.upenn.edu

To join virtually, WATCH the event live at http://writing.upenn.edu/wh/multimedia/tv/

  • CALL 215-573-9752
  • TWEET using #kwhjezebel

    • Speakeasy open mic night

    7:30 PM in the Arts Cafe

    hosted by: Rosa Escandon and Isa Oliveres
    watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
    listen: to an audio recording of this event

    Our Speakeasy Open Mic Night is held once a month. We invite writers to share their work, or the work of others, in our Arts Cafe. Speakeasy 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. You should expect outrageous (and free!) raffles for things you didn't know you needed, occasional costumes, and, of course, community members who love writing.

    Thursday, 4/24

    Rotten English: Caribbean Writers in Conversation about Voice

    Marlon James & Oonya Kempadoo, with Naomi Jackson

    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

    Born in Kingston, Jamaica, Marlon James joined the English department of Macalester College in 2007. His second novel, The Book of Night Women, won the 2010 Dayton Literary Peace Prize, The Minnesota Book Award and was a finalist for the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award in fiction, and an NAACP Image Award. His first novel, John Crow's Devil (2005), was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Commonwealth Writers Prize, and was a New York Times Editor's Choice. James graduated from the University of the West Indies in 1991 with a degree in Language And Literature, and from Wilkes University in 2006 with a Masters in creative writing. His short fiction has appeared in Esquire, Kingston Noir, and Silent Voices, and his nonfiction has appeared in Granta, Publisher's Weekly and The Caribbean Review of Books. In his third novel, A Brief History of Seven Killings, James is exploring multiple genres: the political thriller, the oral biography, and the classic whodunit to confront the untold history of Jamaica in the late 1970's; of the assassination attempt on Bob Marley, and the country's own clandestine battles of the cold war.


    Photo by Thomas Langdon

    Oonya Kempadoo, a novelist and social development researcher, born in England of Guyanese parents, has worked and lived in various Caribbean islands and has resided in Grenada for the last 15 years. Her first novel, Buxton Spice (1998), was long-listed for the Orange Prize and translated into six languages. Her second novel Tide Running won a Casa De Las Americas 2002 prize, was also well received on both sides of the Atlantic, Kempadoo was named a "Great Talent for the 21st Century" by the Orange Prize judges and both books were nominated for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Awards. In 2011 Oonya was awarded a fellowship for the International Writer's Program, University of Iowa and her new novel All Decent Animals was published by Farrar Strauss & Giroux, USA May, 2013. She is currently completing a narrative of local perspectives of sexual abuse. She has worked in the Caribbean region as a consultant and social development researcher and is presently facilitating the opening of a library and homework centre in St George's Grenada. Oonya is currently a Fulbright Scholarr-in-Residence for academic year 2013-2014, with two community colleges in Connecticut, and is teaching and working on her next creative project there.

    A. Naomi Jackson was born and raised in Brooklyn by West Indian parents. She studied fiction at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she was awarded the 2013-2014 Maytag Fellowship for Excellence in Fiction to complete her first novel, Star Side of Bird Hill. She spent the summer of 2012 in Barbados researching and writing Star Side with the support of a Stanley Graduate Award for International Research from the University of Iowa. She traveled to South Africa on a Fulbright scholarship, where she received an M.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Cape Town. A graduate of Williams College, her work has appeared in brilliant corners, The Encyclopedia Project, Obsidian, The Caribbean Writer, and Sable. Her short story, "Ladies" was the winner of the 2012 BLOOM chapbook contest. She has been a resident at Hedgebrook and Vermont Studio Center and received the Archie D. and Bertha H. Walker scholarship at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. She co-founded the Tongues Afire creative writing workshop at the Audre Lorde Project in Brooklyn in 2006.

    Friday, 4/25

    Saturday, 4/26

    Sunday, 4/27

    Monday, 4/28

    Rae Armantrout

    Kelly Writers House Fellows Program

    6:30 PM in the Arts Cafe

    RSVP required: whfellow@writing.upenn.edu
    watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
    listen: to an audio recording of this event

    Rae Armantrout was born in 1947 in Vallejo, California and grew up in San Diego, where save for a brief time at UC Berkeley—there she studied with Denise Levertov and met contemporaries, collaborators and friends such as Ron Silliman and Lyn Hejinian—she has spent most of her writing life. Often thought of as minimal, anti-lyric and difficult work, Armantrout describes her own poetry this way in an essay called "Cheshire Poetics":

    I think my poetry involves an equal counter-weight of assertion and doubt. It's a Cheshire poetics, one that points two ways then vanishes in the blur of what is seen and what is seeing, what can be known and what it is to know. That double-bind.

    This seems to capture well the magnetic, entrancing and sometimes maddening complexity of Armantrout's work, and also its brilliance for its apparent simplicity on the page. That is not to suggest that her poetry is self-obsessed in some way, or smug the way the Cheshire Cat sometimes seems to be. Armantrout is anything but apolitical; rather, she reads politics in the way language is used around herself and her readers every day, and sometimes, by repurposing and collaging found text, finds that "Finally, poetry, at least the poetry I value, can reproduce our conflicts and fractures and yet be held together in the ghost embrace of assonance and consonance, in the echoed and echoing body of language."

    Although Armantrout is often associated with the Language poets and contributed regularly to the collective autobiography project The Grand Piano, a landmark of that movement, much of her work operates outside of or along side of Language poetry. She has published twelve collections of poetry and been anthologized in such large collections as the Norton Anthology of Postmodern American Poetry, The Oxford Book of American Poetry, and The Best American Poetry of several recent years. Her 2010 collection Versed was the winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle award, and a finalist for the National Book Award.

    Tuesday, 4/29

    Brunch with Rae Armantrout

    Kelly Writers House Fellows Program

    10:00 AM in the Arts Cafe

    RSVP required: whfellow@writing.upenn.edu
    watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
    listen: to an audio recording of this event

    CREATIVE WRITING CONTEST WINNERS: A Reading

    5:30 PM in the Arts Cafe

    hosted by: Greg Djanikian
    watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
    listen: to an audio recording of this event

    Every year, the Creative Writing Program holds several CREATIVE WRITING CONTESTS. Come hear some of this year’s winning submissions.

    Readers include:

    • Sam Brodey
    • Erin Peraza
    • Alina Grabowski
    • Nicole Greenstein
    • Nadia Laher
    • Seth Simons
    • Peter LaBerge
    • Julia Dasbach
    • Lyn Li Che

    Join us to celebrate these emerging writers and congratulate them on their awards!

    Songs by Sarah Lindstedt

    8:30 PM in the Arts Cafe

    watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
    listen: to an audio recording of this event

    Sarah Lindstedt performed songs she wrote this semester as part of a independent study course in songwriting, supervised by KWH Faculty Director Al Filreis. To hear Sarah's previous songs, visit her site: http://www.reverbnation.com/sarahlindstedt. Click here to listen to Sarah perform a song in which she displaced that songwriter's "I" ("Trying to Get through Here") and click here to hear a performance of "Chasing the Empty," written and sung by Sarah and Janelle McDermoth.

    Wednesday, 4/30

    A POETRY READING

    By Lynn Levin’s Creative Writing Class

    2:00pm in the Arts Café

    watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
    listen: to an audio recording of this event

    Come hear sonnets, Fibonacci poems, comic narratives, cameo cinquains, unanswerable letter poems, and much more, as students from Lynn Levin’s English 10 class share their poetic achievements. These students hail from a wide variety of majors, so you are bound to hear poems on not-the-usual subjects.

    POETRY WORKSHOP READINGS

    By Greg Djanikian’s Poetry Writing Class

    5:00PM in the Arts Café

    watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
    listen: to an audio recording of this event

    Students in Greg Djanikian’s poetry writing course studied the rhythm and expressiveness of their language, while also exploring the things of this world, sometimes in new relationships and, perhaps, with broader vision. Come listen to reading from their final portfolios.