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November 2011

Tuesday, 11/1

Three Rails Live: Roderick Coover, Nick Montfort, Scott Rettberg

presented by Writers Without Borders

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

Digital artist Roderick Coover (Temple University), e-poet Nick Montfort (MIT) and e-fiction writer Scott Rettberg (University of Bergen) present an evening of works created through intercontinental collaboration and across media forms. Coover and Montfort will present Currency, a series of 60 second video poems created through writing and image-making constraints and filmed in Puerto Rico, Switzerland, London, Brooklyn and Philadelphia. Montfort and Rettberg will read from Implementation, a novel published on stickers, stuck and photographed around the world; and, Coover and Rettberg will premiere works from the Norwegian Trilogy, a set of video narratives concerning legend, love, plague, volcanic dust and a great flood.


Roderick Coover's works include films and interactive arts such as Unknown Territories (unknownterritories.org), The Theory of Time Here (Video Data Bank) and Cultures In Webs (Eastgate Systems), as well as print publications such as Switching Codes: Thinking Through Digital Technology In The Humanities And Arts (Chicago). He is Associate Professor at Temple University. His website is at www.roderickcoover.com.

Nick Montfort develops creative text generators and interactive fiction; he has done dozens of literary and academic collaborations. Montfort co-edited The Electronic Literature Collection Volume 1 and The New Media Reader. He wrote Twisty Little Passages, Racing the Beam (with Ian Bogost), Riddle & Bind, and with several others a book, forthcoming from MIT Press, entitled 10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10. He is an alumnus of Penn, where he was part of the Kelly Writers House community. He is now associate professor of digital media at MIT and president of the Electronic Literature Organization.

Scott Rettberg is associate professor of digital culture in the department of linguistic, literary, and aesthetic studies at the University of Bergen, Norway. Rettberg is the author or coauthor of works of electronic literature including The Unknown, Kind of Blue, and Implementation. Rettberg is the cofounder and served as the first executive director of the Electronic Literature Organization. He is the project leader of the HERA-funded collaborative research project ELMCIP (Developing a network-based creative community: Electronic Literature as a model of creativity and innovation in practice ). Rettberg writes a column on electronic literature for the Norwegian literary magazine Vagant and is working on a book about contemporary electronic literature in the context of the twentieth century avant-garde.

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

Wednesday, 11/2

Judy's Turn

a Creative Ventures Program

8:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

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

Taking a twisted approach to 1960s teen pop, Judy’s Turn is a cyclical one-act play examining the love triangle between a good girl, a bad girl, and a high school jock. You would cry too, if it happened to you. Judy's Turn was first performed as part of iNtuitons' Alternative theatre festival in 2011.

Written and directed by Violette Carb. Starring Brooks Russell as Johnny, Ansley Sawyer as Julie, and Markie Reichert as Judy.

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

Thursday, 11/3

lunch with poet Alice Notley

11:30 AM in the dining room and Arts Cafe

RSVP: email wh@writing.upenn.edu or call 215-746-POEM
watch: a video recording of this event.
listen: to an audio recording of this event on PennSound.

Often identified with the so-called second generation New York School poets, Alice Notley has published over 25 books of poetry, including Grave of Light: New and Selected Poems 1970-2005 (2006), awarded the Lenore Marhsall Poetry Prize; Disobedience (2001), awarded the Griffin International Poetry Prize; Mysteries of a Small House (1998); The Descent of Alette (1996); Close to me & Closer . . . (The Language of Heaven) and Désamère (1995); To Say You (1994); Selected Poems of Alice Notley (1993); The Scarlet Cabinet (with Douglas Oliver, 1992); Homer's Art (1990); At Night the States (1988); Parts of a Wedding (1986); Margaret and Dusty (1985); and Sorrento (1984). In addition to the Marshall and Griffin prizes, Notley has received the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Poetry, an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America. She has also been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She currently lives in Paris.

Holocaust Prints by Sigmund Laufer

a Brodsky Gallery Opening

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

The final Brodsky Gallery exhibition of the semester will feature nine prints from artist Sigmund Laufer's series "The Holocaust." Susan Bee and Charles Bernstein will introduce us to the artist and his work, and following will be a conversation about art and representation of the Holocaust, moderated by Writers House faculty director Al Filreis. Afterwards there will be a reception with ample time to continue the conversation and engage with Laufer's expressive prints.

Sigmund Laufer (1920-2007) grew up in Berlin until age sixteen, when he emigrated to a northern Palestinian Kibbutz as part of the Youth Aliyah of European Jews threatened by the rise of Nazism in Germany. He then moved to Jerusalem where he met his future wife, Miriam Laufer, also an artist and a refugee from Berlin. After the war in June 1947, they emigrated together to New York City, where they had two children, Abigail Laufer and Susan Bee (Laufer). Sigmund began working for the Board of Jewish Education as a book designer, calligrapher, and art director of the children's publication, World Over. He was employed by the BJE for 44 years from 1948 to 1992. Upon moving to New York, Laufer simultaneously began his career as a printmaker and artist, and created black and white and color etchings and lithographs. His first exhibition was just two years after arriving in New York, as part of a group show at the Jewish Museum in New York City in 1949. He had solo shows in New York and was included in many group shows. His work was widely reviewed. Laufer’s prints are part of many collections, private and public, in the United States and abroad, including the Metropolitan Museum and the Brooklyn Museum in New York, the National Library in Paris, and the National Museum in Jerusalem. This series of nine Holocaust etchings, which were created in the 1960s, have not been exhibited together since then. Visit his website here.


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

Friday, 11/4

Saturday, 11/5

The Creative Economy

a Creative Ventures Program

4:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

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

Join the Kelly Writers House and panel moderator Peter Decherney, associate professor of Cinema Studies and English at the University of Pennsylvania, as we talk about how "The Creatives"—out-of-the-box, big picture thinkers and problem solvers—are driving the new economy. Panel guests will include Gary Steuer, Chief Cultural Officer for the City of Philadelphia; Cheryl J. Family (C' 91), Senior Vice President/Brand Strategist of MTV Networks; Veronica Jurkiewicz (C'04), Performance Coordinator of the UPenn Department of Music and Co-founder of Classical Revolution; and Alex Mulcahy, Owner of Red Flag Media and Founder of GRID magazine, a local free magazine that focuses on urban sustainability. Advance registration not required, but seating is limited. Reception to follow. Please RSVP to whhomecoming@writing.upenn.edu or (215) 746-POEM.

The Creative Ventures series supports creative collaborations across discipline, emphasizing evolution and innovation, convergence, creative process, and imagination.

Moderator:
Peter Decherney: Peter Decherney is an associate professor of Cinema Studies and English at the University of Pennsylvania. His research focuses on media history, especially government regulation of Hollywood. His first book, Hollywood and the Culture Elite: How the Movies Became American (Columbia UP, 2005), uncovers and examines collaborations between Hollywood and universities, museums, and government agencies from World War I to the Cold War.

A forthcoming book, Hollywood's Copyright Wars, from Edison to the Internet (Columbia UP, forthcoming early 2012), focuses on the history and future of Hollywood and copyright law. It explores the history of film piracy, the importance of plagiarism for the studio system, film directors' campaign for "moral rights," and Hollywood's love-hate relationship with fair use, among other topics. His research has been supported most recently by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the American Council of Learned Societies.

Panelists:
Gary Steuer – Chief Cultural Officer, City of Philadelphia: Gary P. Steuer began serving on October 1st, 2008 as Chief Cultural Officer for the City of Philadelphia, directing the newly created Office of Arts Culture and the Creative Economy, appointed by Mayor Michael Nutter. Prior to that he served as Vice President for Private Sector Affairs at Americans for the Arts, the national service organization for local arts agencies. He also had the additional title of Executive Director of the Arts & Business Council of Americans for the Arts. He was responsible for leading efforts to stimulate more private sector support for the arts, including promoting partnership between the arts and business, as well as overseeing services to the national network of Arts & Business Councils, Business Committee for the Arts affiliates and United Arts Funds. He also managed strategic partnerships with such organizations as The Conference Board, Council on Foundations, Independent Sector and Grantmakers in the Arts. He served as president and CEO of the Arts & Business Council from 1996 to 2005, when the Council merged its operations with Americans for the Arts. From 1993 to 1996, Gary was director of New York programs for the Council. Under his leadership the Council's budget grew by more than 400 percent and included the creation of such programs as the National Arts Marketing Project, with a total of over $5 million in support from American Express to date; the Met Life Foundation National Arts Forums; and the New York State Cultural Tourism Initiative.

Earlier in his career he was Executive Director of National Actors Theatre on Broadway, Director of the Capital Funding Initiative of the New York State Council on the Arts, Managing Director of the Vineyard Theatre, Director of Programs for the Alliance of Resident Theatres/New York, an aide to a United States Congressman, and a commercial theatre producer. Gary has written, lectured, and taught extensively on arts management and policy issues. He has served on many boards of directors, and funding and advisory panels for local, statewide, and national organizations.

Veronica Jurkiewicz C'04 – Performance Coordinator, Department of Music, UPenn; Co-founder, Classical Revolution: Veronica Jurkiewicz, a music-department administrator and co-founder of the Philadelphia chapter of Classical Revolution, a group that fosters collaborations between local musicians from mixed styles and backgrounds. Jurkiewicz attended the San Francisco Conservatory, where she earned her master's degree and artist's diploma in viola performance. When she returned to Philadelphia three years ago, Jurkiewicz and a few musician friends from the San Francisco movement and its Chicago offshoot got together to start a Philadelphia branch of Classical Revolution, which stages concerts—irregular, but frequent—in casual venues throughout the city. Equal parts innovator, administrator, practitioner, and teacher, Jurkiewicz is the model of a 21st-century working musician: a multi-tasker who integrates her skills in a centuries-old musical discipline with managerial and new-media know-how. She is also a product of, and poster child for, Penn's music-performance program.

Alex Mulcahy – Owner, Red Flag Media; Founder, GRID magazine: In 1993, Alex Mulcahy was working at the Gallery of Sound, an independent record store in Wilkes-Barre, PA. Armed with an English degree and an entrepreunerial bent, and unimpressed by the quality of their in-store newsletter, he approached the owner with a proposal to bring some life to the publication. Within a few years, Alex and his big idea had evolved into Red Flag Media and a portfolio of ten in-store music magazines, customized for mid-size regional music chains from Baltimore to Sacramento. Red Flag Media is an independent magazine publisher based in Philadelphia, PA, that also provides design, production and prepress services to other small publishers.

GRID: Towards A Sustainable Philadelphia was born out of a potent combination of inspiration and frustration. With enthusiasm fueled by reading the growing library of books about sustainability, Mulcahy looked around Philadelphia in 2009 and found local media coverage lacking. The story of sustainability was either not reported, wrongly reported, under-reported, or lost in the much of celebrity-obsessed titillation. GRID strives to be the encouraging voice to discuss these issues on a local level. Beyond helpful how-tos, GRID explains complex issues—whether they be economic, social, or environmental—in a straightforward and easy to understand way.

Cheryl J. Family C’ 91 –Senior Vice President/Brand Strategist, MTV Networks: Cheryl J. Family is Senior Vice President/Brand Strategist in the MTV Networks Creative Services department. She is responsible for setting the creative vision and developing brand strategies on projects for MTV Networks and Viacom, which encompass integrated solutions across digital, on-air, video, print, radio and merchandise for business-to-business, consumer and internal communications. Her award-winning work spans everything from comprehensive campaigns and large-scale pro-social efforts to new business initiatives, network launches and brand development. She is also an adjunct professor at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Media, Culture and Communication.

Cheryl holds a BA in English, cum laude, from the University of Pennsylvania and an MA in Communications from New York University, where she was named a Centennial Scholar. Currently, she resides in New York City and is married with two children.

Sunday, 11/6

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

Monday, 11/7

Lunch with editor of One Story, Marie-Helene Bertino

Applebaum Editors and Publishers Series

12:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

RSVP: email wh@writing.upenn.edu or call 215-746-POEM
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen: to an audio recording of this event

Join us for lunch and an informal discussion with Marie-Helene Bertino, Associate Editor of One Story, one of the nation's most successful and unusual independent literary magazines. A longtime editor and fiction writer, Marie-Helene will answer your questions about life on both sides of the editorial desk.

About One Story:

One Story is a literary magazine that contains, simply, one story. Approximately every three weeks, subscribers are sent One Story in the mail. This story will be an amazing read. Each issue is artfully designed, lightweight, easy to carry, and ready to entertain on buses, in bed, in subways, in cars, in the park, in the bath, in the waiting rooms of doctors, on the couch in the afternoon or on line at the supermarket." —www.one-story.com

"It's not your standard award-winning literary magazine. It isn't affiliated with a college or university writing program. It is not funded by an endowed trust or owned by a media company. It doesn't publish poetry, essays, reviews, or art, and it doesn't run any ads—not even for MFA programs." — Poets & Writers

"At a time when literary writing seem like a dying art, when little magazines are folding left and right, when publishers bemoan the sinking bottom line, here lies a spot of hope. Almost literally a spot. It is called One Story magazine and it measures only 5 inches wide by 7 inches tall." — The New York Times

Marie-Helene Bertino has been a music writer, a muralist, a diner waitress and a singer in a band. However, her heart is all fiction writer: her stories have appeared or are forthcoming in The Pushcart Prize Anthology XXXIII, The North American Review (Kurt Vonnegut Award 2007), Mississippi Review, Inkwell, The Indiana Review, American Short Fiction and West Branch. She received an MFA from (no sleep 'til) Brooklyn College where she edited The Brooklyn Review. She is a 2011 Center for Fiction NYC Emerging Writers Fellow and is currently working on a novel and children's book. She lives in Brooklyn, where she is learning guitar.

Holocaust Testimony

a conversation with Alan Rosen

7:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

supported by: the Wexler Family Endowed Fund for Programs in Jewish Life and Culture
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen: to an audio recording of this event



Alan Rosen is most recently the author of Sounds of Defiance: The Holocaust, Multilingualism and the Problem of English; the collaborator on a French edition of I Did Not Interview the Dead, by David Boder; and the editor of Approaches to Teaching Wiesel's Night. His latest book, The Wonder of Their Voices: The 1946 Holocaust Interviews of David Boder was published by Oxford University Press in fall, 2010. He was a research fellow of the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah from 2006-2009. He has also held fellowships at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; the International Institute for Holocaust Research, Yad Vashem; the Katz Center for Advanced Jewish Studies, University of Pennsylvania, and the Archives for the History of American Psychology, University of Akron. He has taught at universities and colleges in Israel and the United States, and lectures regularly on Holocaust Literature at Yad Vashem’s International School for Holocaust Studies and other Holocaust study centers. Born and raised in Los Angeles, educated in Boston under the direction of Elie Wiesel, he lives in Jerusalem with his wife and four children. His current book projects include editing for Cambridge UP a critical introduction to Holocaust literature, collaborating with Elie Wiesel on a volume of key Holocaust documents, and researching and writing a monograph entitled, "Killing Time, Saving Time: Calendars and the Holocaust."

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

Tuesday, 11/8

A poetry reading by Peter Balakian

6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

introduced by: Greg Djanikian
co-sponsored by: the Creative Writing Program
watch: a video recording of this event
listen: to an audio recording of this event

Peter Balakian is a poet and nonfiction writer. He is the author of numerous poetry collections, including, most recently, Ziggurat (University of Chicago Press 2010) and June-tree: New and Selected Poems 1974-2000. He is also the author of the memoir Black Dog of Fate, winner of the PEN/Albrand Prize for memoir and a New York Times Notable Book, and The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America's Response, winner of the 2005 Raphael Lemkin Prize and a New York Times Notable Book. His essays on poetry, culture, art, and social thought have appeared in many publications including Art In America, American Poetry Review, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The American Quarterly, American Book Review, and Poetry. He is co-founder and co-editor with the poet Bruce Smith of the poetry magazine Graham House Review, which was published from 1976-1996, and is the co-translator (with Nevart Yaghlian) of the book of poems Bloody News From My Friend by the Armenian poet Siamanto. Translations and editions of Balakian's work appear in Armenian, Greek, German, Dutch, Bulgarian, Turkish, and Russian.

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

Wednesday, 11/9

Richard Ben Cramer

Povich Journalism Program

6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

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

Born in Rochester, New York, in 1950, Richard Ben Cramer attended Johns Hopkins University, earned an MA in journalism from Columbia University and was hired by The Baltimore Sun in 1973. Cramer covered city hall and local politics for three years before leaving for The Philadelphia Inquirer, where he became the paper's New York bureau chief. In 1977, Cramer was sent to Cairo to cover the Israeli-Egyptian peace negotiations. His dispatches earned him a 1979 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting, and in 1980 he won the Ernie Pyle Award for foreign reporting and an Overseas Press Club Award for his writing from Afghanistan.

Despite his fame as a newspaper reporter and foreign correspondent, Cramer came into his own—professionally and aesthetically—as a magazine journalist. Cramer left the Inquirer and moved to New York, where he became a full-time freelance writer, producing lengthy profiles for Esquire and Rolling Stone. Freed from the constraints of newspapers, he reveled in the amount of space he could devote to his intensely reported articles.

His first book, What It Takes: The Way to the White House, is widely regarded as one of the best books on American presidential politics ever written. Time magazine recently named it one of the top 100 nonfiction books of all time. It is an epic chronicle of the 1988 election, a group portrait of presidential candidates (George Bush, Bob Dole, Michael Dukakis, Gary Hart, Joe Biden and Richard Gephardt) as multidimensional people, rather than personalities or stand-ins for various ideologies or policies. Cramer's second book was the bestselling biography, Joe DiMaggio: The Hero's Life. His most recent book, How Israel Lost: The Four Questions, revisits the Middle East he covered so brilliantly in the 1970s and details the corrosive impact of the country’s long military occupation of Palestinian territory.

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

Thursday, 11/10

Creative Ventures Presents: Kristina Ford

"The Trouble with City Planning: What New Orleans Can Teach Us"

6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

co-sponsored by: Penn Design's Department of City & Regional Planning and Creative Ventures
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen: to an audio recording of this event

After the vast destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans faces a rare chance to rebuild, with an unprecedented opportunity to plan what gets built. As the city's director of planning from 1992 until 2000, Kristina Ford is uniquely placed to use these opportunities as a springboard for an eye-opening discussion of the intransigent problems and promising possibilities facing city planners across the nation and beyond. In The Trouble with City Planning, Ford argues that almost no part of our usual understanding of the phrase "city planning" is accurate: not our conception of the plan itself, nor our sense of what city planners do or who plans are made for or how planners determine what citizens want. Most important, our conventional understanding does not tell us how a plan affects what gets built in any city in America.


Kristina Ford is one of America's best known urban planners, thinkers, and writers. In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Ford's thoughtful, well-informed and articulate assessments – heard on CNN, BBC and National Public Radio – became the first, public voice of reason to mediate the great storm's human and civic consequences to America and beyond. From 1992 to 2000 Ford was Director of City Planning in New Orleans, for which she won the American Planning Association's Award for Distinguished Leadership. From 2000 to 2003, she was Director of the New Orleans Building Corporation. She has written on urban affairs, and specifically on New Orleans, for the Op-Ed page of the New York Times and for Planning, published by the American Planning Association. Her highly-regarded study, Planning Small Town America, is used as a text in many graduate urban planning programs in America, and she is a frequent lecturer and speaker on urban issues. In the Fall of 2009, Yale University Press published her much-acclaimed book, The Trouble with City Planning. Ford holds a Ph.D. in Urban and Regional Planning from The University of Michigan, and was, until her full-time entry into public service in 1983, Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Public Administration at New York University.

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

Friday, 11/11

Saturday, 11/12

Afterschool Tutoring at Spells Writing Lab—Volunteer Orientation Session

1:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

Do you like to be a little bit silly? Itching to let out your inner child? Here at Spells Writing Lab, we not only help children with their homework, but also inspire them to let their creativity flow in all that they do. Your enthusiasm for writing and learning can make a difference in the life of a child!

Spells Writing Lab is open for drop-in tutoring Monday through Thursday from 3:30-5:30 p.m. No teaching experience is required! We provide tutor training and ongoing support through our monthly volunteer newsletter and links to online tutoring resources. There's no minimum time commitment—whether you can volunteer only once a month or every day, you can have a direct impact on the lives of our students.

Because homework loads vary, our tutoring sessions may also include group writing projects, reading time, educational games, and opportunities to write for student publications. The more tutors we have, the more our students can achieve and explore their own creativity. Through a number of different enrichment methods, we work to show our students that learning can be fun, and a little silly, too!

Sunday, 11/13

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

Monday, 11/14

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.

New and old Hub members alike are welcome to join us for pizza and a discussion of upcoming readings and programs, volunteer opportunities, and updates from project leaders. Anyone is welcome to join the Writers House Planning Committee.

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.

A conversation with David Maraniss

6:30 PM in the Arts Cafe

introduced by: Paul Hendrickson
supported by: the Povich Fund for Journalism Programs
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen: to an audio recording of this event

David Maraniss is an associate editor at The Washington Post. In addition to Into the Story: A Writer’s Journey Through Life, Politics, Sports and Loss, Maraniss is the author of five critically acclaimed and bestselling books: When Pride Still Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi; First in His Class: A Biography of Bill Clinton; They Marched Into Sunlight – War and Peace, Vietnam and America, October 1967; Clemente – The Passion and Grace of Baseball’s Last Hero; and Rome 1960: The Summer Olympics That Stirred the World. He is also the author of The Clinton Enigma and coauthor of The Prince of Tennessee: Al Gore Meets His Fate and "Tell Newt to Shut Up!" His current book project tells the full saga of the Obama story through all the generations and destinations (Africa, Indonesia, Hawaii, Kansas, California, and all points in between) on both sides of the family.

David's book on Vince Lombardi also became the basis for one of the longest-running Broadway plays of last year's theater season.

David is a three-time Pulitzer Prize finalist and won the Pulitzer for national reporting in 1993 for his newspaper coverage of then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton. He also was part of The Washington Post team that won a 2008 Pulitzer for the newspaper's coverage of the Virginia Tech shooting. He has won several other notable awards for achievements in journalism, including the George Polk Award, the Dirksen Prize for Congressional Reporting, the ASNE Laventhol Prize for Deadline Writing, the Hancock Prize for Financial Writing, the Anthony Lukas Book Prize, the Frankfort Book Prize, the Eagleton Book Prize, the Ambassador Book Prize, and Latino Book Prize.


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

Tuesday, 11/15

The Henry Ford of Literature

a talk by ArtsEdge Resident Rolf Potts

6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

supported by: Creative Ventures
co-sponsored by: Facilities and Real Estate Services
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen: to an audio recording of this event

Join us for a talk by ArtsEdge Resident Rolf Potts on the influence and example of Emanuel Haldeman-Julius, the "The Henry Ford of Literature," whose "Little Blue Books" created a mail-order information superhighway that paved the way for the sexual revolution, influenced the feminist and civil rights movements, and foreshadowed the Age of Information. Free vintage books for program attendees. For more about Emanuel Haldeman-Julius, visit The Believer.

Rolf Potts has reported from over sixty countries for dozens of major venues, including National Geographic Traveler, The New Yorker, Outside, Slate.com, National Public Radio, and the Travel Channel. Rolf is perhaps best known for promoting the ethic of independent travel, and his book on the subject, Vagabonding, has been through thirteen printings and translated into several foreign languages. His newest book is Marco Polo Didn't Go There.


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

Wednesday, 11/16

A lunch talk with Jill Lawrence

Povich Journalism Program

12:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

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

Jill Lawrence is a writer for Newsweek and The Daily Beast. Her other positions have included senior correspondent and columnist for Politics Daily and national political correspondent for USA Today. She has also written about politics for The Associated Press, The Boston Globe, The Atlanta Constitution and other publications.

Lawrence has covered every presidential campaign since 1988. Columbia Journalism Review named her one of the top 10 campaign reporters in the country in 2004. She was included in Washingtonian Magazine's 2005 list of the 50 best and most influential journalists in Washington. She won national awards for column writing in 2010 (a Sigma Delta Chi award from the Society of Professional Journalists for Politics Daily columns) and in 1995 (a National Headliners Award for columns she wrote for the AP).

Lawrence received a music literature degree from the University of Michigan and a masters degree in journalism from New York University. She is married to John Martin, an editor and e-letter publisher. They have two sons who are professional musicians.

Speakeasy: Poetry, Prose, and Anything Goes!

8:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

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.

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

Thursday, 11/17

Feminism/s Presents: "The Gurlesque"

featuring Joyelle McSweeney and Kim Rosenfield

7:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

sponsored by: the Fund for Feminist Projects
watch: a video recording of this event.
listen: to an audio recording of this event on PennSound.


Joyelle McSweeney is the author of The Necropastoral (Spork Press), an artist's book featuring poems and essays on the themes of genre & contamination and original collages by Andrew Shuta; the lyric genre novels Flet (Fence) and Nylund, the Sarcographer (Tarpaulin Sky Press); and The Red Bird and The Commandrine, two books of poetry from Fence. She is the co-founder and editor of Action Books and Action, Yes, a press and web-journal for international writing and hybrid forms, as well as a founding contributor to the collective blog montevidayo.com. She lives in Indiana and teaches in the Notre Dame MFA program. Percussion Grenade: Poems and Plays is forthcoming from Fence in Spring 2012, and the prose book Salamandrine: 8 Gothics is forthcoming from Tarpaulin Sky in the following Fall.

Kim Rosenfield is a poet and psychotherapist. She is the author of several books of poetry, including Good Morning--Midnight-- (Roof Books 2001), Tràma (Krupskaya 2004), re:evolution (Les Figues Press 2009) and Lividity (forthcoming, Les Figues Press 2012). Her work has been included in the anthologies Against Expression (Northwestern University Press), Bowery Women (YBK Publishers, Inc.), The Gurlesque (Saturnalia), and I'll Drown My Book (forthcoming, Les Figues Press) and Kindergarde: Avant-garde Poems, Plays & Stories for Children (Small Press Traffic Literary Arts Center, CA).

She is part of the artist/writer's collaborative The Collective Task (The Collective Task, Patrick Lovelace Editions, 2009). In 2010 she was poet-in-residence at Shandy Hall, England as part of the Laurence Sterne Trust. Rosenfield has performed in festivals and readings in Berlin (Discover U.S.), Norway (Audiatour), Sweden, England, and in the U.S. most notably at the Renaissance Society (Chicago), the Hispanic Society (NYC), the Kitchen (NYC), and the Whitney Museum (NYC). Rosenfield lives and works in NYC.

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

Friday, 11/18

Saturday, 11/19

Sunday, 11/20

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

Monday, 11/21

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

Tuesday, 11/22

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

Wednesday, 11/23

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

Thursday, 11/24

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

Friday, 11/25

Saturday, 11/26

Sunday, 11/27

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

Monday, 11/28

Lunch with editors of Electric Literature

Applebaum Editors and Publishers Series

12:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

RSVP: email wh@writing.upenn.edu" or call 215-746-POEM
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen: to an audio recording of this event

Join us for lunch and and informal discussion with Benjamin Samuel and Halimah Marcus, editors of the innovative new-media literary magazine Electric Literature. The mission of Electric Literature is, in the words of its editors: "to use new media and innovative distribution to return the short story to a place of prominence in popular culture. Publishing is going through a revolution. There's opportunity and danger. The danger lies in ignoring or resisting the transformation in media. New platforms present an opportunity to adapt. We believe the short story is particularly well-suited to our hectic age, and certainly for digital devices. A quick, satisfying read can be welcome anywhere, and while you might forget a book, you'll always have your phone." Visit Electric Literature for more information.

Benjamin Samuel is the Online Editor of Electric Literature. He combats spambots on The Outlet, the blog of Electric Literature, and facilitates procrastination via Twitter at @electriclit.

Halimah Marcus is the Managing Editor of Electric Literature. She is an MFA candidate in fiction at Brooklyn College and her writing can be found in Philadelphia Noir, The Fiction Desk, and The Fiddleback.


LIVE at the Writers House

7:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

LIVE at the Writers House is a long-standing collaboration between the Kelly Writers House and WXPN FM (88.5). Six times annually between September and April, Michaela Majoun hosts a one-hour broadcast of poetry, music, and other spoken-word art, along with one musical guest, all from our Arts Cafe onto the airwaves at WXPN. LIVE is made possible by generous support from BigRoc. For more information, contact Producer Erin Gautsche (gautsche@writing.upenn.edu).

The Leeway Foundation, which began in 1993 as a foundation dedicated to supporting women artists in the Philadelphia area, is committed to art making as an integral part of social change, to movement building, and anti-oppression work where Leeway is accountable, accessible, part of and governed by, the communities Leeway's programs support. Leeway is guided by the values of fearlessness in action, speech, and self-examination and commits to breaking down boundaries and barriers with creativity, respect, and openness to the process. Leeway funds women and trans artists creating social change. For more information: http://www.leeway.org/.

Ondartza Polita was born in the Basque Country area of Spain. By the age of fifteen, she had won several prizes for stories she wrote. She continued to develop her artistic side by completing her degree in violin performance. She has taught violin and played in different professional orchestras in Spain and the US. She has participated in different bands and performing groups of varied styles such as punk rock, metal, folk, latin and flamenco. She regularly appears in performances as a composer, violinist, vocalist and actress. Polita is working on her Masters of Music Therapy at Temple University. Her interest in helping sexual assault survivors began when she was the only support to a close friend that was sexually abused. She is the inspiration for “The Legend of Nahia.” She is also a sexual abuse counselor and volunteers helping survivors. With her story, combining story telling, acting, music and dance, she intends to bring awareness and hope regarding the healing journey of sexual abuse survivors.

Shari Tobias is an artist and educator originally from the shore of South Jersey. Her work is a visual diary of personal experiences, dreams and social commentary filled with symbolism and humor. Shari works in painting, sculpture, photography, silkscreen, book arts, fibers, ceramics, and jewelry. Tobias received a BFA in fine arts from the University of the Arts. In 2011, Shari has been the recipient of the Leeway Art and Change grant. She was awarded first prize at the Pabst Blue Ribbon crafting event. Tobias completed a 90 ft mural for a senior living facility, a 17 ft permanent fibers installation for a South Philadelphia preschool, and painted two surfboards for "Surf for a Cause" cancer foundation.

Genne Murphy is a Philly native, playwright and recipient of a 2011 Leeway Art and Social Change grant. Genne worked at Philadelphia Young Playwrights for six years, most recently as General and Program Manager. She has had readings or performances of her work with several Philadelphia companies, including Azuka Theatre, the Philly Fringe, and MERGE at the Annenberg. Genne was last featured at LIVE at the Kelly Writers House in 2010 with co-members of the InterAct Theatre Playwrights' Forum. She is co-producer of the NYC-based salon series Queer Memoir which collaborated locally with First Person Arts and the Free Library of Philadelphia. Her play Hope Street and Other Lonely Places, a 2011 Eugene O'Neill finalist, will be produced by Azuka Theatre in March 2012. Genne currently resides in the San Francisco area.

Debra Wright, born in the city of Rome (NY), grew up in the Germantown section of Philadelphia. Through her travels and family ties, Debra has had the opportunity to embrace Jamaican, African, and Black British culture through a variety of foods: from dry-fried fish, festival and Jollof rice, to steak-and-kidney pie, black pudding, and ginger beer. Since 2000, Debra has been a member of In The Company of Poets, an all-female spoken word ensemble, and her work has been previously published in various publications and collections, including BMa: The Sonia Sanchez Literary Review. As the recipient of the March 2011 Leeway Foundation Art & Change Grant, Debra is the editor of For Women—In Tribute to Nina Simone, a collection of short stories and poems written by long-time friends and new acquaintances from all around the world.

The Reverend Beverly Dale grew up as the daughter of a farmer in Moultrie County in Illinois. Upon graduating from high school she married and raised two children deferring her education until later. In 1982 she received her bachelors of science in sociology with a specialization in sexuality and minor in psychology followed by her masters of science specializing in marriage and the family in 1983 from Illinois State University in Normal Illinois. poetry, storytelling as well as original music.In 2006 she wrote, directed and performed in her one woman show An Irreverent Journey from Eggbeaters to Vibrators that included poetry, storytelling as well as original music. This show debuted at the Philadelphia Fringe Festival and has since then been performed in San Francisco, Wilmington Delaware while parts of the performance have been performed in Chicago and at a variety of churches and local venues for sexuality-oriented workshops. She lives in Philadelphia with her partner and a cat named Queen Esther. In her spare time she enjoys flower gardening and expanding her culinary skills.

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

Tuesday, 11/29

Amina Gautier

Cheryl 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

Amina Gautier is the winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award for her short story collection At-Risk (University of Georgia Press). Over sixty-five of Gautier's stories have been published, appearing in Best African American Fiction, Iowa Review, Kenyon Review, North American Review, and Southern Review among other places. Her work has been honored with scholarships and fellowships from Breadloaf Writer's Conference, Ucross Residency, and Sewanee Writer's Conference and has been awarded the William Richey Prize, the Jack Dyer Award, the Schlafly Microftiction Award, the Danahy Fiction Prize, and a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Gautier teaches at DePaul University.


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

Wednesday, 11/30

Whenever We Feel Like It

a poetry reading featuring Dan Beachy-Quick, Frank Rogaczewski, and Laura Goldstein

8:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

hosted by: Michelle Taransky

The Whenever We Feel Like It Reading Series is put on by Committee of Vigilance members Michelle Taransky and Emily Pettit. The Committee of Vigilance is a subdivision of Sleepy Lemur Quality Enterprises, which is the production division of The Meeteetzee Institute.

Born in Chicago, Dan Beachy-Quick grew up in Colorado and upstate New York, and now teaches writing and literature at Colorado State University. His most recent book is Circle's Apprentice (Tupelo 2011). He is author of four previous books of poems, North True South Bright (Alice James, 2003), Spell (Ahsahta, 2004), Mulberry (Tupelo, 2006), and This Nest, Swift Passerine (Tupelo, 2008); two chapbooks Mobius Crowns (with Srikanth Reddy: P-Queue, 2008) and Apology for the Book of Creatures (Ahsahta, 2008); and a hybrid-prose companion to Melville's Moby-Dick, A Whaler's Dictionary (Milkweed, 2008).

Frank Rogaczewski holds a Ph.D. in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Illinois at Chicago and teaches in the MFA Program at Roosevelt University in Chciago. He is the author of The Fate of Humanity in Verse (American Letters & Commentary 2009). He lives in Berwyn with his wife Beverly Stewart. They are at this very minute walking their dogs—Jasmine and Seamus.

Laura Goldstein's poetry, reviews, and essays can be found in American Letters and Commentary, EAOGH, Requited, Little Red Leaves, How2, Seven Corners, Text/Sound, Rabbit Light Movies, Otoliths, CutBank Reviews, and Moria. She has three chapbooks to date: Facts of Light from Plumberries Press, Ice in Intervals from Hex Press, and Day of Answers from Tir Aux Pigeons. Her next chapbook, Let Her, will be released in spring 2012 from Dancing Girl Press. She currently cocurates the Red Rover reading series and teaches writing and literature at Loyola University.

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