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December 2008

Monday, 12/1

12:00 PM in the Arts Cafe: a lunch talk with novelist Gail Scott.

Fiction writer, essayist, and translator Gail Scott is the author of the novels Main Brides (Coach House, 1993), Heroine (Coach House 1987; Talon 1997), and My Paris (Mercury Press, 1999), a collection of short stories, Spare Parts (Coach House, 1982), the essay collection Spaces like Stairs (Women's Press, 1989), and la theorie, un dimanche (co-authored with Nicole Brossard et al., remue-menage, 1988). She has been short-listed twice for Canada's leading newspapers, she is also a founding editor of the Montreal French-language cultural journal Spirale, and the bilingual journal of women's writing, Tessera. Her translations include France Theoret's Laurence, and The Sailor's Disquiet and Helen with a Secret, both by Michael Delisle. RSVP to wh@writing.upenn.edu.

A recording of this event is available at PennSound.

5:30 PM in the Arts Cafe: A reading with contributors to 3808.

Co-sponsored by the Critical Writing Program.

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

Tuesday, 12/2

6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe: Theorizing presents Laurie Shannon: "The Eight Animals in Shakespeare — or, Before the Human."


Laurie Shannon is Wender Lewis Associate Professor of English at Northwestern University. She received her JD from the Harvard Law School and her PhD from the University of Chicago. She works on early modern literature and culture, with interests concentrated in the history of ideas; political imagination (especially in its utopian and consensualist forms); affect, gender, and sexuality; natural history; and animal studies. Her first book, Sovereign Amity: Figures of Friendship in Shakespearean Contexts (Chicago, 2002), and her current project, The Integral Animal: Zootopian Constitutions of Early Modernity (in progress), both consider historical experiments in constitutional thought and explore the terms and conditions of political membership.

Listen to a complete recording of the event.


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

Wednesday, 12/3

5:30 PM in the Arts Cafe: A reading by students in Lynn Levin's Creative Writing class.

Listen to a complete recording of this event.


8:00 PM in the Arts Cafe: Speakeasy: Poetry, Prose, and Anything Goes!


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

Thursday, 12/4

6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe: Writers Without Borders presents South African novelist, poet, and activist Breyten Breytenbach.


Listen: to an audio recording of this event on PennSound.

BreytenBreytenbachA native of South Africa, Breyten Breytenbach is a distinguished painter, activist and writer of more than 30 books of poetry and fiction, as well as essays and dramatic works in both Afrikaans and English. A committed opponent of apartheid, Breytenbach established the resistance group "Okhela" for which he wrote the platform. From 1975-1982, he was a political prisoner serving two terms of solitary confinement in South African prisons. His most renowned work is the four-volume memoir of this odyssey: A Season in Paradise (1973), The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist (1983), Return to Paradise (1991), and Dog Heart: A Memoir (1999) have been translated into more than a dozen languages.

Watch a streaming QuickTime video of this event.



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

Friday, 12/5

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

Saturday, 12/6

Sunday, 12/7

Monday, 12/8

3:00 PM in the Arts Cafe: The podcast series "PoemTalk" records episode #18: Lydia Davis, "A Position at the University."

Poemtalk logoJoin PoemTalk moderator and host Al Filreis and three friends in the poetics community as they discuss a single poem from the PennSound archive. Episode #18 features a discussion of Lydia Davis' "A Position at the University" with Adrian Khactu, Jessica Lowenthal and David Grazian. PoemTalk is sponsored by the Writers House and CPCW in collaboration with the Poetry Foundation. For more, see poemtalkatkwh.blogspot.com. If you would like to be a member of the live audience, RSVP to wh@writing.upenn.edu.


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

Tuesday, 12/9

4:00 PM in the Arts Cafe: A reading by Greg Djanikian's 113 poetry class.


Listen to a complete recording of the event.

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

Wednesday, 12/10

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

Thursday, 12/11

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

Friday, 12/12

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

Saturday, 12/13

Sunday, 12/14

Monday, 12/15

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

Tuesday, 12/16

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

Wednesday, 12/17

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

Thursday, 12/18

Friday, 12/19

Saturday, 12/20

Sunday, 12/21

Monday, 12/22

Tuesday, 12/23

Wednesday, 12/24

Thursday, 12/25

Friday, 12/26

Saturday, 12/27

Sunday, 12/28

Monday, 12/29

Tuesday, 12/30

Wednesday, 12/31