Alumni Visitors Series

May 18, 2024: Nate Chinen, Lauren Francis-Sharma, Natalie Eve Garrett, Amiee Koran, Catherine Ricketts, Joseph Earl Thomas

Nate Chinen (C'97) is the author of Playing Changes: Jazz For the New Century. He served as the first assistant coordinator at the Kelly Writers House, before becoming a columnist for JazzTimes and a music critic for The New York Times. Nate is now editorial director at WRTI, a regular contributor to NPR, and proprietor of The Gig, a Substack publication. A thirteen-time winner of the Helen Dance–Robert Palmer Award for Excellence in Writing, he is also coauthor of George Wein's Myself Among Others: A Life in Music.

Lauren Francis-Sharma (C'94) is the author of Book of the Little Axe, the 2020 ALA “Libraries Transform Book Pick” and a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Award in Fiction. Her first novel, Til the Well Runs Dry was awarded the Honor Fiction Prize by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association and short-listed for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. Lauren is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Michigan Law School, and the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. Her next novel, Casualties of Truth, based on her time at the Truth and Reconciliation Hearings in South Africa, will be published by Grove/Atlantic in February. Lauren is a book reviewer for the San Francisco Chronicle and a MacDowell Fellow. She serves on the board of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation, and is the Assistant Director of Bread Loaf Writers' Conference at Middlebury College.

Natalie Eve Garrett (MFA'04) is an artist and a writer. She's the editor of The Lonely Stories, a cathartic collection of personal essays from 22 celebrated writers about the joys and struggles of being alone, out now from Catapult. She's also the editor of Eat Joy (Catapult, 2019), a collection of stories exploring how food can help us cope in dark times, and The Artists' and Writers Cookbook (pH Books, 2016), a collection of stories with recipes. A graduate of Yale University and the University of Pennsylvania's School of Design, Natalie lives with her husband, two children, and their puppy, Zephyr, in a little town near DC, along the Potomac River.

Aimee Koran (MFA'17) is a multi-disciplinary artist based out of Philadelphia, PA. She holds a Masters in Fine Arts from the University of Pennsylvania, and a Bachelors degree in Fine Arts with a minor in textile design from Moore College of Art & Design. Aimee explores the topic of motherhood focusing on the continuously shifting and complex binaries that shape the role. Her work has been shown around the globe in venues such as the Richard Saulton Gallery, London, UK; Mutter Museum, Philadelphia, PA; The Arlington Art Center, Arlington, VA; and completed residencies at The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia, PA; The Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, VT; The Wassaic Project, Wassaic, NY; and Project for Empty Space, Newark, NJ. Her solo and group exhibitions have been featured in publications like The New York Times, Vogue, Whitewall, Artslant, Artnet News, and A Woman's Thing. Aimee's work was recently acquired for addition to the permanent contemporary collection at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston.

Catherine Ricketts (C'09) writes about the arts, grief, joy, and spirituality. She studied writing at the University of Pennsylvania and holds an MFA in nonfiction from Seattle Pacific University. Her essays have appeared in The Kenyon Review Online, The Christian Century, Image, The Millions, Paste, and the Ploughshares blog, among other publications. While writing, she has supported the work of other practicing artists as a live arts presenter, having held jobs at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia's FringeArts, and the public radio station WXPN. Ricketts lives with her family near Philadelphia and works in the Villanova University Honors Program. Find her on Instagram at @bycatherinericketts.

Joseph Earl Thomas (G'24) is the author of Sink, a memoir, the novel God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer forthcoming next month, and the story collection Leviathan Beach (Grand Central, 2025). His prose, poetry and criticism has been published in The Kenyon Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Dilettante Army, and >span class="title">The New York Times Book Review. Sink was longlisted for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award and shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. A graduate of the University of Notre Dame's MFA program in prose, he is earning a PhD in English at The University of Pennsylvania. He will be teaching writing at Sarah Lawrence College in the Fall, and also teaches courses in Black Studies, Poetics, Queer Theory, Video Games and more at The Brooklyn Institute for Social Research.

January 2024: Jeff Barg

Jeff Barg (C’02, GCP’10) (music and lyrics, original story) is a composer and performer from South Philadelphia. He has composed the music and lyrics for several musicals, including The Ballad of King Henry, a folk adaptation of Shakespeare's Henry IV Part I, co-created with Benjamin Kamine and Sally Ollove. He started The Angry Grammarian as a newspaper column for Philadelphia Weekly in 2007, and in 2018, began publishing the column in The Philadelphia Inquirer, where it runs biweekly. He is a resident member of South Philadelphia's Raw Street Productions, where he performs regularly. By day he is a director for Ceisler Media & Issue Advocacy.

September 28, 2023: Victor Bockris

Victor Bockris graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1971. After graduation, he founded Telegraph Press, a seminal small press in the early seventies. He also had several books of poems and prose published, including In America and The Joe DiMaggio Victor Bockris Special. He worked with collaborator Andrew Wylie under the name “Brockis-Wylie” to publish a number of interviews under the column “Electric Generation” for The Drummer. Their crowning achievement was Ali: Fighter Poet Prophet, published by the legendary Maurice Girodias on the day Ali regained his heavyweight crown in October 1974. After the duo broke up amicably, Bockris went on to publish widely in Interview and High Times. He worked freelance for Andy Warhol and William Burroughs and became a fixture on the punk scene. In the 1980s he published a trilogy of portraits: A Report from the Bunker With William Burroughs, Making Tracks: The Rise of Blondie, and Uptight: the Velvet Underground Story. In the 1990s, he turned to biography, publishing the trilogy Warhol: The Biography, Keith Richards: The Biography, and Transformer: The Lou Reed Story.

September 2023: Paige Menton and Carlos Price-Sanchez

Paige Menton (GED’93) lives outside of Philadelphia where she runs a land restoration organization called Journeywork, which she founded in 2022. She also cares for the land of a Quaker meeting. Her first full-length poetry collection, Wrim, was published by Spuyten Duyvil in 2023. She has also written a chapbook, Twenty Miles to April (Dancing Girl Press, 2021), and a children’s book, She Held Her Breath in Wonder(2023). Her poetry has appeared in Interim, New South, Prelude, Kestrel, Matter, and other publications. She grew up in Birmingham, Alabama and left to go to Brown and Penn.

Carlos Price-Sanchez (C’19, GED’20) is a poet from Philadelphia. His most recent work can be found at the Adroit Journal, Quarterly West, and Copper Canyon Press. He is currently a researcher with the Migrant and Seasonal Farmworker Program at Sea Mar Community Health Centers, and a postgraduate student at NYU.

May 13, 2023: Grace Ambrose, Cecilia Corrigan, Jessica Goodman, Alex Koppelman, Gwen Lewis, Greg Maughan, Joe Pinsker, Ali Jaffe Ramis, Julia Rubin, and Hillary Reinsberg

Grace Ambrose (C'11) lives in Kansas City, Missouri, where she is a co-founder of the city’s first mobile syringe exchange. She was previously coordinator of Maximum Rocknroll, the world’s longest continuously published punk periodical. She runs the Thrilling Living record label and is the editor of the forthcoming book Kleenex/LiLiPUT about the seminal Swiss band of the same name.

Cecilia Corrigan (C'11) is a New York-based writer and performer. In addition to winning the Plonsker Prize for Titanic in 2013 and being selected as Issue Project Room’s 2016 Artist in Residence, she has also been commissioned by Bedlam theater company to write a new play for their forthcoming season. Her script Tulum is currently under option with Billy Porter's Icognegro Productions. Follow her @ceciliakcecilia.

Jessica Goodman (C'12) is the New York Times bestselling author of young adult thrillers They Wish they Were Us, They’ll Never Catch Us, The Counselors, and The Legacies. She is the former op-ed editor at Cosmopolitan magazine, and was part of the 2017 team that won a National Magazine Award in personal service. She has also held editorial positions at Entertainment Weekly and HuffPost, and her work has been published in outlets like Glamour, Condé Nast Traveler, The Cut, Elle, Bustle, and Marie Claire.

Alex Koppelman (C'05) was most recently a managing editor at CNN, where among other things he oversaw the Media, Tech, Transportation and Consumer teams. He's also been an editor at places including The New Yorker and Guardian US, where a series he edited won prizes including an Emmy and a National Magazine Award.

Gwen Lewis (C'14) is a West Philly native and graduate of the College. Working at the intersection of technology and entertainment, she’s built product experiences for Comcast NBC Universal, Google, and Disney. She also writes creative non-fiction and teaches yoga to West Philadelphians.

Greg Maughan (C'05) lives in Philadelphia, PA where he founded and ran a glorified clown college/performance venue called the Philly Improv Theater for 17 years. Since stepping back from that work day-to-day in 2020, he now enjoys attending theater without worrying about what is going on behind the scenes.

Joe Pinsker (C'13) is a reporter at The Wall Street Journal, where he covers "the pursuit of happiness" for the paper's Personal Finance section. Previously, he was a staff writer at The Atlantic magazine, where he covered business and economics, and then families and parenting. At Penn, Joe took two arts-and-culture writing classes with Anthony, and wrote his honors thesis (about how musicians in Philadelphia make a living) under Anthony's guidance.

Ali Jaffe Ramis (C'14) is a Peabody Award-winning segment producer at The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. She has produced over 200 guest interviews for the show with celebrities ranging from Will Ferrell to Greta Thunberg. Ali’s writing has been published by The New York Times, Rolling Stone, New York Magazine, and the Philadelphia Inquirer. She was featured on an episode of The New York Times’s podcast, “The Daily.”

Julia Rubin (C'10) is the editorial director for culture and features at Vox. She launched The Goods in 2018 and was previously the executive editor of Racked, where she originated the site's longform program. Prior to joining Vox Media, Julia was a features editor at Teen Vogue.

Hillary Reinsberg (C'11)is the Editor In Chief of The Infatuation and Zagat, and the Head of Content for Connected Commerce at J.P. Morgan Chase, which acquired The Infatuation and Zagat in 2021. In this role, she oversees all dining, travel, and shopping content at Chase. Since joining as The Infatuation’s first employee in 2014, Hillary has been responsible for building The Infatuation’s editorial presence in cities around the world, hiring its entire editorial staff, and shaping the brand voice. She also played a key role in The Infatuation’s 2018 acquisition of Zagat from Google, and led the effort to bring Zagat back into print in 2019/2020. Before The Infatuation, she was an early member of BuzzFeed’s news division. While at Penn, she was Under The Button's founding editor.

April 19, 2023: Becky Chalsen

Becky Chalsen (C'15) is a novelist and film/tv executive living in New York City. She is a director of development at Sunday Night, John ohn Krasinski's production company, and a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania. Becky is a quadruplet and married to her high school sweetheart — also an identical twin — whose family has spent summers on Fire Island for more than three decades. Kismet (Dutton 2023) is her first novel.

April 10, 2023: Lew Schneider

Lew Schneider’s path to a TV career was pretty typical. He had a history degree from Penn, didn’t want to go to law school or teach so...comedy was the only alternative. After a few stints in front of the camera: game show host, HBO stand-up special, and a couple of sitcoms, he turned to writing. His credits include The New Adventures of Old Christine, American Dad, Everybody Loves Raymond (CBS) which won Emmy Awards and millions of people watched and Men of a Certain Age (TNT) which won a Peabody Award and nobody watched. For the last ten years he as worked as a writer and producer on the ABC comedy The Goldbergs and has directed more than fifty episodes. He has a brand new knee...

March 29, 2023: Chloe Gong

Chloe Gong is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of These Violent Delights and its sequel Our Violent Ends. She is a recent graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, where she double-majored in English and International Relations. Born in Shanghai and raised in Auckland, New Zealand, Chloe is now located in New York pretending to be a real adult.

March 22, 2023: Mashinka Firunts Hakopian and Daniel Scott Snelson

Mashinka Firunts Hakopian is an Armenian writer, artist, and researcher born in Yerevan and residing in Glendale, CA. She is an Associate Professor in Technology and Social Justice at ArtCenter College of Design. In 2021, she was a visiting Mellon Professor of the Practice at Occidental College, where she co-curated the exhibition “Encoding Futures: Critical Imaginaries of AI” with Meldia Yesayan. With Avi Alpert and Danny Snelson, she makes up one-third of the collective, Research Service. She is a Contributing Editor for Art Papers, and her writing and commentary have appeared in Los Angeles Review of Books, Performance Research Journal, Art in America, Hyperallergic, and Meghan Markle's Archetypes. Performances and projects have been presented at the Palais de Tokyo (Paris), Museum of Contemporary Art (LA), Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia), Drawing Center (NY), Judson Memorial Church (NY), and in the New Museum (NY) Voice Registers Series. See also: www.mashinkafirunts.com

Daniel Scott Snelson is a writer, editor, and archivist working as an Assistant Professor in the Departments of English and Design Media Arts at UCLA. His online editorial work can be found on PennSound, Eclipse, UbuWeb, Jacket2, and the EPC. His books include Full Bleed: A Mourning Letter for the Printed Page (Sync, 2019), Apocalypse Reliquary: 1984-2000 (Monoskop, 2018), Radios (Make Now, 2016), EXE TXT (Gauss PDF, 2015), Epic Lyric Poem (Troll Thread, 2014), and Inventory Arousal with James Hoff (Bedford Press/Architectural Association, 2011). With Mashinka Firunts Hakopian and Avi Alpert, he performs as one-third of the academic performance group Research Service. See also: dss-edit.com

November 29, 2022: Mecca Jamilah Sullivan

Mecca Jamilah Sullivan (GR'12) is the author of the short story collection Blue Talk and Love (2015), winner of the Judith Markowitz Award for Fiction from Lambda Literary; The Poetics of Difference: Queer Feminist Forms in the African Diaspora (University of Illinois Press, 2021); and her highly anticipated debut novel Big Girl (W.W. Norton & Co., 2022), which was longlisted for the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize. Sullivan's fiction explores the intellectual, emotional, and bodily lives of young Black women through voice, music, and hip-hop inflected magical realist techniques. She is Associate Professor of English at Georgetown University and lives in Washington, DC.

November 15, 2022: Jennifer Egan

Jennifer Egan's 2017 novel, Manhattan Beach, has been awarded the 2018 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. Egan was born in Chicago and raised in San Francisco. She is also the author of The Invisible Circus, a novel which became a feature film starring Cameron Diaz in 2001, Look at Me, a finalist for the National Book Award in fiction in 2001, Emerald City and Other Stories, The Keep, and A Visit From the Goon Squad, won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, and the LA Times Book Prize. Her short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Harpers, Granta, McSweeney's and other magazines. She is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Fiction, and a Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Fellowship at the New York Public Library. Also a journalist, she has written frequently in the New York Times Magazine. Her 2002 cover story on homeless children received the Carroll Kowal Journalism Award, and "The Bipolar Kid" received a 2009 NAMI Outstanding Media Award for Science and Health Reporting from the National Alliance on Mental Illness. She recently completed a term as President of PEN America.

November 3, 2022: Alexandra Sternlicht

Alexandra Sternlicht is a tech reporter at Fortune where she covers creators, startups and founders. Previously she reported and edited Forbes 30 Under 30 and Forbes Top Creatorsand led the 10,000-person Forbes Under 30 honoree community. In this role she wrote cover stories on the D'Amelios, Miley Cyrus, Gymshark among others and edited 10-plus 30 Under 30 lists. She's also oversaw editorial programming for Under 30 summits around the world and has moderated discussions with Huda Kattan, Tinx, Charli D'Amelio, Amanda Nguyen and others. Alexandra graduated magna cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania in 2016 with honors in English. In her free time she enjoys biking, fluffy dogs and things that pair with ketchup.

October 12, 2022: Matt Flegenheimer

Matt Flegenheimer is a correspondent at The New York Times, focused on long-form profiles of political figures and other subjects for the paper and the magazine. He has been at the Times since 2011.

September 22, 2022: Matt Flegenheimer, Jessica Goodman, Joel Siegel, Isabella Simonetti, Stephen Fried

Matt Flegenheimer (C'11) is a correspondent at the New York Times, focused on long-form profiles of political figures and other subjects for the paper and the magazine. He has been at the Times since 2011.

Jessica Goodman (C'12) is the New York Times bestselling author of young adult thrillers They Wish They Were Us , They’ll Never Catch Us , and The Counselors. She is the former op-ed editor at Cosmopolitan magazine, and was part of the 2017 team that won a National Magazine Award in personal service. She has also held editorial positions at Entertainment Weekly and HuffPost , and her work has been published in outlets like Glamour, Condé Nast Traveler, The Cut, Elle, Bustle, and Marie Claire.

Joel Siegel (C'79) is the Managing Editor of the Spectrum News Washington bureau, supervising 10 reporters who cover Congress, the White House and breaking news in Washington for Spectrum News channels across the U.S. Before that he was the Managing Editor at NY1 News, the Managing Editor/Politics at the N.Y. Daily News and a Senior Editor, Head Writer and Producer on the ABC News programs “World News Tonight” and “Weekend World News.” He also worked as the Senior Political Correspondent of the N.Y. Daily News, and as a Reporter and Editor with The Associated Press in Philadelphia, Harrisburg and Trenton. He has written for “New York” and other magazines, and is the recipient of one Edward R. Murrow, three Emmy and four Writers Guild of America awards.

Isabella Simonetti (C'21) is the David Carr fellow in business reporting at The New York Times. Previously, she was a media reporter at Observer where she covered technology and social media and launched her own newsletter on the business of the creator economy. She has interned at publications including Bloomberg News, Vox, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and the New York Post. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2021 and served as president of The Daily Pennsylvanian.

Stephen Fried (C'79) is an award-winning journalist and New York Times bestselling author who teaches at Penn and Columbia. He is the author of six nonfiction books, including the acclaimed biographies RUSH: Revolution, Madness and Benjamin Rush, the Visionary Doctor Who Became a Founding Father (a finalist for the 2019 George Washington Book Prize), Appetite for America: Fred Harvey and the Business of Civilizing the Wild West—One Meal at a Time, and Thing of Beauty: The Tragedy of Supermodel Gia, and co-author with Patrick Kennedy of A Common Struggle: A Personal Journey Through the Past and Future of Mental Illness and Addiction. A two-time winner of the National Magazine Award, Fried has been a staff writer at Vanity Fair, GQ, Glamour, and Philadelphia Magazine.

September 2022: JJ Tiziou

JJ Tiziou (C’02) is the artist whose photographs are featured in Philadelphia’s largest piece of public art (the How Philly Moves mural at Philadelphia International Airport.) – He is also a Licensed Massage Therapist, block captain, and the organizer of Walk Around Philadelphia.

May 14, 2022: Nate Chinen, Taylor Hosking, Naomi Shavin, Yowei Shaw, with Jamie-Lee Josselyn

Nate Chinen (C’97) is the author of Playing Changes: Jazz for the New Century, and a charter member of the Hub at the Kelly Writers House. A former critic for The New York Times and former columnist at JazzTimes, he's a regular contributor to NPR and editorial director at WBGO — where he co-hosts Jazz United, which the Jazz Journalists Association recently recognized as Podcast of the Year.

Taylor Hosking (C’17) is a freelance podcast producer and writer based in New York City. At Penn, she and Stephanie Hodges started the first culture podcast for the Daily Pennsylvanian called ‘In the Cut’ geared toward minorities and creatives on campus. She spent her first two years after Penn writing articles at the intersection of culture and politics at The Atlantic and VICE before getting back into podcasting as a producer and host. Working at Pineapple Street Studios in New York, she’s produced podcasts for Netflix and HBO, including an original podcast idea for the HBO show “Insecure.” And as a freelancer she’s reported and hosted audio stories on The New Yorker Radio Hour, WNYC, and KCRW.

Naomi Shavin (C'14) was the founding member and is currently the senior producer for narrative a nd development on Axios's audio team. Before moving into podcasting, she was an editor at Axios and at Vox and worked for magazines including The New Yorker, The New Republic, Smithsonian Magazine and Forbes.

Yowei Shaw (C'10) is the co-host and editorial lead of NPR's Invisibilia, where she reports, produces, and sound designs stories. Her work has also been featured in places like This American Life, and has been honored with several awards, including a Third Coast Documentary Award. She's also the daughter of Taiwanese-American immigrants and a member of multiple friend crews, and once upon a time, she made really good elevator music in Chinatown, Philadelphia.

Jaime-Lee Josselyn (C'05) is an instructor & Associate Director in the Creative Writing Program at Penn. Her writing has been published in Literary Hub, Cleaver Magazine, and elsewhere. She hosts a literary podcast series about writing about the death of a parent called Dead Parents Society.

April 19, 2022: Carlos Decena

Carlos Ulises Decena is an interdisciplinary scholar and writer. A member of the Rutgers University faculty since 2005, Decena teaches in the Department of Latino and Caribbean Studies and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. He published his first book, Tacit Subjects: Belonging and Same-Sex Desire among Dominican Immigrant Men in 2011. Circuits of the Sacred: Faggotology in the Black Latinx Caribbean will be published in Spring 2023 by Duke University Press.

April 12, 2022: Lew Schneider

Lew Schneider is a writer, producer and director of the ABC comedy, The Goldbergs. Other credits include his own HBO stand-up special, and the primetime shows American Dad, The New Adventures of Old Christine, Men of a Certain Age (which won a Peabody Award but very few people watched), and Everybody Loves Raymond (which won Emmy Awards and more people watched).

April 4, 2022: Dan Rottenberg

Dan Rottenberg has been chief editor of seven innovative publications, most recently Broad Street Review, an online arts and culture salon he created in 2005. As an advocate for free expression and alternative media, he successfully defended seven libel suits and received Temple University’s Free Speech Award in 1992. His twelve published books include Finding Our Fathers, which launched the modern Jewish genealogy movement in 1977, Death of a Gunfighter, which was honored as the best Western history book of 2008, and, most recently, The Education of a Journalist. He has written more than 300 articles for such magazines as Town & Country, Reader’s Digest, The New York Times Magazine, Forbes, Civilization, American Benefactor, Bloomberg Personal Finance, TV Guide, Playboy, Rolling Stone, Chicago, and many others. He served as a consultant in 1981 when Forbes magazine launched its annual “Forbes 400” list of wealthiest Americans. His syndicated film commentaries appeared in monthly city magazines around the U.S. from 1971 to 1983. Earlier in his career, he was a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer, executive editor of Philadelphia Magazine, managing editor of Chicago Journalism Review, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, and editor of the Commercial Review, a daily newspaper in Portland, Indiana. He was born and raised in New York City and earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife, a piano teacher. Their two adult daughters live and work in New York City.

March 31, 2022: Wendy Bach

Professor Wendy A. Bach is a nationally recognized expert in both clinical legal education and poverty law. She has been with the University of Tennessee College of Law since fall 2010. From 2005 to 2010, she taught in the clinical program at the City University of New York School of Law. Before entering the academy, she was director of the Homelessness Outreach and Prevention Project at the Urban Justice Center in New York City and a staff attorney with the Legal Aid Society of Brooklyn. Professor Bach has dedicated her career to representing children and families in poor communities in a variety of legal settings, and she continues to do so in UT College of Law's nationally-ranked clinical program. Her scholarship focuses on the interaction between systems of support and care and systems of punishment in poor communities and has been published in the William and Mary, Wisconsin, Brooklyn, and Michigan Law reviews, The Florida Tax Review and The Yale Journal of Law and Feminism.

February 24, 2022: Rachel Seville Tashjian

Rachel Seville Tashjian is the fashion critic at GQ and the creator of the newsletter Opulent Tips. She was formerly the deputy editor of Garage Magazine and a writer at Vanity Fair.

February 24, 2022: Heled Travel Grant Recipients Grace Leahy and Ian McCormack

Grace Leahy graduated from Penn in the winter of 2020 with a double major in English and Cinema & Media Studies. The photo to the left was taken from her apartment on 42nd street, which she misses very much. She also misses the Writers House. And Nicola Gentili. Currently, Grace is based in Los Angeles, pursuing a career in film & television.

Ian McCormack graduated from Penn with a major in History and a minor in Creative Writing. He enjoys spooky stuff and adventuring in unlikely places. He is now based in Manchester, NH, working in board game publishing.

February 10, 2022: Andrew Zitcer and Jamila Medley

Andrew Zitcer is an associate professor of Urban Strategy at Drexel University. He studies cooperative social and economic practices as well as the arts as a vehicle for community transformation. He is also the co-founder of the Rotunda, a community arts venue, and Kol Tzedek Synagogue, a progressive Jewish congregation.

Jamila Medley is an organizational development consultant, leadership coach, and educator/advocate for the solidarity economy. From 2012-2021 she served in governance roles and then as executive director of the Philadelphia Area Cooperative Alliance (PACA). Jamila, a UPenn alum, lives in Philadelphia's Mt. Airy neighborhood and serves on the boards of directors of Food Co-op Initiative, Movement Alliance Project, All Together Now PA, and the Independence Public Media Foundation.

February 1, 2022: Jen Wroblewski

Jen Wroblewski (born California, 1973) is an artist, professor, and curator whose work is grounded in an interest in drawing as object and performance. Fluent in the histories of mark-making, she defines drawing as an accretion of marks, or as the relic of the physical act of drawing. She is the recipient of many fellowships and awards, including the NYFA in printmaking/book arts/drawing, and Aldrich Radius fellowship, and the A.I.R. Gallery fellowship. Her work and projects have been discussed in the New York Times, Hartford Courant, Brooklyn Rail, and NJ Star Ledger and many books and online publications. Exhibitions include Resistance Movement in collaboration with Kellie O'Dempsey at the Kentler International Drawing Space, Endogenic Flux Machine at Kansas State University, Timeless: the art of drawing at the Morris Museum, New Monuments to the AntiConcept at A.I.R. Gallery, and Draw to Perform 2 in London. From 2006-2016 she taught at the SUNY Purchase School of Art+Design, and she also designed and taught a descriptive drawing curriculum for designers at the University of the Arts and has been a visiting professor at many universities and studio programs. Her current project is Gold/scopophilia*, a contemporary art gallery in Montclair NJ where she shows work by artists who demonstrate idiosyncratic material fluency (and is comprised mainly of women). Exhibitions at the gallery have been reviewed in Hyperallergic, Two Coats of Paint, ANTEMag and ArtSpiel.

February 2022: Martha Cooney

Martha Cooney (C’05) grew up in Philadelphia and writes about her life in her humor newsletter Yo. She is a winner of The Moth GrandSLAM storytelling c ompetition and a frequent First Person Arts Winning Storyteller and Audience Favorite. Martha also writes for the satire newspaper The Philadelphia Jabroni and has had her work featured by WHYY’s Billy Penn. Martha made her comedy debut in a Dublin, Ireland hostel in 2008 in exchange for a free night’s stay. She is currently working on an essay collection.

January 2022: Prakash Mishra and Lauren Yatess-Murray

Prakash Mishra (ENG'19, W'19, GRW'24) has been performing poetry for several years. They reflect largely on their Desi heritage and Southern upbringing. Prakash has performed at Philly's You Can't Kill A Poet twice in the past.

Lauren Yates-Murray (C’12) is a Philadelphia-based writer and visual artist. In 2012, Lauren earned her B.A. in English with a Creative Writing Emphasis from the University of Pennsylvania. A fan favorite in the slam poetry scene for her irreverent sense of humor, Lauren has represented Philadelphia at the Women of the World Poetry Slam and the National Poetry Slam. Her work has appeared in APIARY, Gigantic Sequins, Foundry, Crab Fat Magazine, and more. Find her on Twitter @queerblackfemme.

November 11, 2021: Clayton Neuman

In his twelve years with AMC, Clayton Neuman has been influential in developing their social and digital content programs and building the company's award-winning gaming business from the ground up. Throughout his tenure and in the broader gaming and digital content industries he is recognized as a creative, strategic, and revenue-driven leader that has created one of the top IP portfolios in entertainment. This event will be online only.

November 6, 2021: Zachary Sergi and Jennifer Yu

Queer writer Zachary Sergi grew up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and studied Creative Writing at Regis High School and the University of Pennsylvania. He is a television and fiction writer currently living in Los Angeles, where he writes his Interactive Novels and lives with his husband. Zachary is currently writing new Interactive Series, promoting his YA debut, MAJOR DETOURS, and working on his second novel for Running Press Teens.

Jennifer Yu is the author of the young adult novels Four Weeks, Five People (2017) and Imagine Us Happy (2018). When not writing, you can find her weeping intermittently about the Boston Celtics, photos of the Earth from outer space, and the etymology of the word disaster. She has lived in Kansas, Boston, and Los Angeles, though these days she is mostly living out of her 2018 Toyota Corolla LE as she hikes her way across the Mountain West.

October 28, 2021: Jessica Goodman

Jessica Goodmanis the New York Times bestselling author of young adult thrillers They Wish They Were Us, They’ll Never Catch Us, and The Counselors (out in 2022) from Razorbill/ Penguin Teen. She is the former op-ed editor at Cosmopolitan magazine, and was part of the 2017 team that won a National Magazine Award in personal service. She has also held editorial positions at Entertainment Weekly and HuffPost, and her work has been published in outlets like Glamour, Condé Nast Traveler, Elle, and Marie Claire.

October 7, 2021: Jean Chatzky, Madeleine Ngo, and Rebecca Tan, with Stephen Fried

Careers in Journalism and new media: alumni panel, a Povich Journalism Program

October 4, 2021: Cindy Spiegel

Cindy Spiegel is co-CEO of Spiegel & Grau, an independent publishing company that was previously an imprint of Penguin Random House. Before that she was Publisher of Riverhead Books, where she was a founding editor. Among the writers whose careers she launched are James McBride, Bryan Stevenson, Khaled Hosseini, Chang-rae Lee, Gary Shteyngart, Philipp Meyer, ZZ Packer, Alex Garland, Danzy Senna, and Sana Krasikov; and she has also edited and published books by Yuval Noah Harari, Yann Martel, Sara Gruen, Harold Bloom, Ari Shavit, Dan Pink, Steven Rinella, Anne Lamott, and many others. She sits on the board of Archangel Ancient Tree Archive and on the advisory board of Columbia Global Reports. She graduated from Penn as an English major and has an MA in Comparative Literature from U.C., Berkeley.

March 4, 2021: Joshua Herren, Arielle Brousse

Josh Herren is a writer and elementary school teacher living in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Josh has a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, where he worked at the Kelly Writers House and wrote about history, sexuality, and art. He currently writes about theater for Phindie and the Broad Street Review. He also hosts the Chosen by Committee podcast, in which he and his cohosts are reading every pulitzer prize winning play since 1918 so you don't have to. Josh is passionate about education, theater, and convincing others that Philadelphia is the greatest city on earth. Oh, and he is married to KWH alum, Henry Steinberg.

February 9, 2021: Maya Arthur, Imani Davis, Izzy Lopez, Amanda Silberling

Maya Arthur is a writer and novice archivist/artist/researcher. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a BA in English & Creative Writing in 2018. She loves gardening in her cradle graves at the Woodlands cemetery, making and reading zines, discussing witches at length, and eating as much Fu Wah banh mi as she can. Her poetry right now focuses on memory, nostalgia, and self encountering. She was a 2019 Lambda Poetry Fellow and 2020 Aspen Words fellow. You can find her wandering around West Philly.

Imani Davis is a queer Black writer from Brooklyn. A Pushcart Prize-nominated poet and Urban Word NYC alumnus, they earned fellowships from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The Lambda Literary Foundation, BOAAT Press, and the Stadler Center for Poetry. Imani’s work has appeared with Best New Poets 2020, PBS News Hour’s Brief But Spectacular Series, The Offing, The Adroit Journal, Best of the Net, Shade Literary Arts, The Rumpus, TEDx, and elsewhere. They completed their B.A. summa cum laude in English and Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, and are currently pursuing a Ph.D. in American Studies at Harvard.

Izzy Lopez is a writer and artist whose work seeks to uncover the extraordinary in everyday experience. Izzy writes memoir and personal essays and is interested in family, coming of age, and memory. Her work has appeared in Penn Appétit, The Red Cedar Review, r.kv.r.y. quarterly literary journal, F-Word Magazine, and The Penn Review. Izzy received a B.A. in English from the University of Pennsylvania, and she currently lives in South Philadelphia with her boyfriend and cat.

Amanda Silberling is writer and artist with work in Hyperallergic, NPR, Business Insider, the Kenyon Review, and other places. As a Kelly Writers House Junior Fellow, she is developing the Good Poem Project, a collaborative poetry experiment and resource. According to Jamie-Lee Josselyn, she is also the Chief Meme Officer of the Kelly Writers House. Find her on Twitter at @asilbwrites or on her website.

February 2021: Dan McQuade

Dan McQuade (C’05) is a lifelong Philadelphian who is now video and multimedia editor at Defector, a cooperatively-owned sports and culture publication. Over his career, he’s covered the Eagles’ and Phillies’ title runs, lived like Mark Wahlberg for a day, argued for drug legalization, explored the history of The Gallery mall, traced Rocky’s 31-mile route in Rocky 2 and unintentionally started a chain of events that sent Bill Cosby to prison. He lives in the Wissahickon section of the city with his wife and their cat.

December 1, 2020: Jamie-Lee Josselyn

Jamie-Lee Josselyn (C'05) is Associate Director for Recruitment for the Creative Writing Program. She is also Director of the Summer Workshop for Young Writers at the Kelly Writers House and has taught writing at the New England Young Writers Conference, St. Paul’s School’s Advanced Studies Program, and numerous workshops for high-school students. She has been listed among Penn’s Top 30 Professors by the Daily Pennsylvanian, and she has received the Beltran Family Award for Innovative Teaching and Mentoring. Her writing has been published in The New Republic, Literary Hub, Cleaver Magazine, and elsewhere. Jamie-Lee received a BA from the University of Pennsylvania and an MFA from Bennington College.

November 2020: Mara Gordon

Dr. Mara Gordon (C'08, M'15) is an assistant professor of family medicine at Cooper Medical School of Rowan University in Camden, NJ. At Cooper, she serves as a primary care physician for patients of all ages and teaches medical students. She is a frequent contributor to NPR, where she is a host of the podcast Life Kit. She's an alumna of the University of Pennsylvania, where she spent lots of time at the Kelly Writers House!

October 9, 2020: Ernest Owens

Ernest Owens (C'14) is an award-winning journalist and CEO of Ernest Media Empire, LLC. As an openly Black gay journalist, he has made headlines for speaking frankly about intersectional issues in society. In 2018, he launched his growing media company that specializes in multimedia production, consulting, and communications. His work has been featured in the New York Times, CNN, MTV News, and other media outlets. He has won countless honors, which includes landing on the 2020 Forbes 30 Under 30 list, and receiving the 2019 NEXT Award by the American Society of Magazine Editors. He can be found on Twitter and other social media platforms at @MrErnestOwens and ernestowens.com.

October 7, 2020: Gabriel Ojeda-Sagué

Gabriel Ojeda-Sagué is a poet and writer living in Chicago. He is the author of three books of poetry, including most recently Losing Miami (The Accomplices, 2019) which was nominated for the Lambda Literary Award in Gay Poetry. His fourth poetry book, Madness, is forthcoming from Nightboat Books. He is also the co-editor of a book of selected sketches by the artist Gustavo Ojeda, forthcoming from Soberscove Press in 2020. He is currently a PhD student in English at the University of Chicago where he works in the study of sexuality.

May 16, 2020: Andy Wolk

This participatory workshop led by award-winning screenwriter and director Andy Wolk is for people who have stories or ideas they want to tell for TV or film. Participants will learn about story development, structure, and character along with how to pitch your big idea and how to sell it. Andy Wolk (C’70) has written features for HBO, Showtime, FX and every major studio, and has directed many movies and shows including The Sopranos, Criminal Minds, and Gossip Girl.

February 27, 2020: Sebastian Modak

Sebastian Modak is a travel writer and multimedia journalist based in New York City. In 2019, he was selected to be the New York Times 52 Places Traveler and spent the year traveling to and reporting from all the destinations on the Times's "52 Places to Go" list. Prior to that, Modak was part of the digital team at Condé Nast Traveler for three years where he was an editor and then a staff writer. He also has worked as a producer on the MTV World series "Rebel Music," and, as a 2013 Fulbright-mtvU Fellow, spent a year documenting the hip-hop scene in Gaborone, Botswana. Of mixed Colombian and Indian heritage, Modak has lived in six countries on four continents. In 2010, Modak received a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, where he majored in English and History and minored in Music and African Studies.

December 5, 2019: Nina MacLaughlin

Nina MacLaughlin is the author of Hammer Head: The Making of a Carpenter (W.W. Norton, 2015) and Wake, Siren (FSG, 2019), a re-telling of Ovid's Metamorphoses told from the perspective of the female figures who are transformed. Formerly an editor at The Boston Phoenix, she is a books columnist for The Boston Globe and has written for publications including The Paris Review Daily, The Believer, the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Wall Street Journal, and elsewhere. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

November 9, 2019: Buzz Bissinger

Buzz Bissinger is among the nation’s most honored and distinguished writers. A native of New York City, Bissinger is the winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the Livingston Award, the American Bar Association Silver Gavel Award and the National Headliners Award, among others. He also was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. He is the author of the highly acclaimed nonfiction books: Friday Night Lights, A Prayer for the City, Three Nights in August, Shooting Stars, and Father’s Day.

Bissinger has been a reporter for some of the nation’s most prestigious newspapers; a magazine writer with published work in Vanity Fair, The New York Times Magazine and Sports Illustrated; and a co-producer and writer for the ABC television drama NYPD Blue. Two of his works were made into the critically acclaimed films: Friday Night Lights and Shattered Glass. Three more are in active development. Friday Night Lights also served as the inspiration for the television series of the same name.

November 5, 2019: Dottie Lasky

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.

Dorothea Lasky is the author of six books of poetry and prose, most recently Animal, out this fall from Wave Books. She is an Associate Professor of Poetry at Columbia University School of the Arts and lives in New York City. (photo by Sylvie Rosokoff).

October 28, 2019 : Emily Harnett and Rachel Levy Lesser

Emily Harnett (C’13) is a teacher and writer living in Philadelphia. Her essays on books and culture have appeared online in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Lapham's Quarterly, The Baffler, Literary Hub, and elsewhere. She has degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and Yale University.

Rachel Levy Lesser (C’96) has written for The Huffington Post, Glamour.com, Modern Loss, Scary Mommy, The Philadelphia Jewish Exponent, and elsewhere. She is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and received her MBA from the University of Michigan. Her fourth book, Life’s Accessories: A Memoir and Fashion Guide, is being published by She Writes Press in November of 2019. More about Rachel, including information about her upcoming book tour, is available at RachelLevyLesser.com.

October 24, 2019: Carole Bernstein

Carole Bernstein is the author of three poetry collections, Buried Alive: A To-Do List (Hanging Loose Press, 2019); Familiar (Hanging Loose Press)—which J. D. McClatchy called "an exhilarating book"—and And Stepped Away from the Circle (Sow's Ear Press), winner of the Sow's Ear Chapbook contest. Her poems have been widely published, including in Antioch Review, Bridges, Chelsea, The F-Word, Paterson Literary Review, Poetry, Shenandoah, and Yale Review, and in anthologies such as American Poetry: The Next Generation and Unsettling America. She is an original member of KWH's Suppose an Eyes poetry group. A Penn graduate (C'81), she studied poetry with Daniel Hoffman and William Zaranka, and won second place in a university-wide poetry contest judged by Elizabeth Bishop (who corrected her grammar).

October 24, 2019: Hillary Reinsberg

Hillary Reinsberg is the Editor in Chief of The Infatuation and Zagat. The Infatuation's first hire, Hillary has overseen the editorial expansion of the restaurant review platform and its signature voice into cities across the U.S and U.K. With The Infatuation's 2018 acquisition of the legendary restaurant guide Zagat from Google, Hillary is now also working on developing content around that brand and platform. Previously, Hillary was an early member of BuzzFeed's news team, and as a writer and editor there covered everything from New Hampshire's election of the first all-female state delegation to viral trends on YouTube. While a student at Penn, Hillary was the first editor of Under The Button and also worked on 34th Street. Last year, she was recognized on the Media section of Forbes' 30 Under 30 list.

October 23, 2019 : Lorene Cary

The Creative Writing Program, the Department of English, and the Center for Africana Studies present a celebration of Senior Lecturer Lorene Cary's new memoir, Ladysitting (Norton, 2019). In addition to hosting a reading by Cary from the book, we are delighted to present an excerpt from the opera based on the memoir, The Gospel According to Nana, by Lorene Cary and Liliya Ugay, commissioned by the American Lyric Theater's Composer Librettist Development Program and performed by Summer Hassan, soprano; Megan McFadden, mezzo; and Grant Loehnig, piano.

Lorene Cary's non-fiction includes magazine articles and blogs as well as her best-selling memoir Black Ice, and a collection of stories for young readers, Free! Great Escapes from Slavery on the Underground Railroad. Novels include The Price of a Child, chosen as the first One Book One Philadelphia offering; ; and If Sons, Then Heirs.

Cary has written scripts for videos at The President's House exhibit on Independence Mall in Philadelphia. Her new memoir, Ladysitting: My Year with Nana at the End of Her Century, will be published by W.W. Norton Books in May 2019. An audiobook recording is planned for this summer, too. Cary is in her second year of a residency in American Lyric Theater's Composer & Librettist Development Program. In 2018, she wrote a libretto that takes off from Ladysitting. Composer Liliya Ugay set the book and has produced her own recording of The Gospel According to Nana, planned for release this Spring.

For 20 years Cary has taught fiction and non-fiction at UPenn; now she invites her students to publish on SafeKidsStories.com on Medium.com, which she created to focus on children's safety and wholeness.

In 1998 Cary founded Art Sanctuary to enrich urban Philadelphia with the excellence of black arts. To create an intentional transition, she stepped down as director in 2012. She served as president of the Union Benevolent Associationß; and from 2011-2013 as a member of Philadelphia's School Reform Commission, where, as chair of the Safety Committee, she worked to rewrite the Student Code of Conduct to eliminate zero-tolerance discipline.

Honors include: UPenn's Provost's Award for Distinguished Teaching, The Philadelphia Award, and honorary doctorates from Swarthmore, Muhlenberg, Colby, and Keene State Colleges, and Arcadia and Gwynedd Mercy Universities. In March 2017, she was featured in a Philadelphia Airport exhibit that commemorates 100 of Philadelphia's African American history makers of the 20th century.

October 3, 2019 : Cecilia Corrigan

Cecilia Corrigan is a writer, actor and comedian. Last year she was commissioned by Bedlam Theater Company to write and act in a contemporary, queer adaptation of Moliere's The Misanthrope, with a production slated for Spring 2020. Recent work includes Le Balm, an essayistic video series of makeup reviews, about a beauty vlogger turned aspiring political radical. She was Issue Project Room's 2016 Artist in Residence, where she developed Motherland, a play Corrigan wrote, directed, and starred in. Her first book of poetry, Titanic, won the Madeleine P. Plonsker prize in 2014. Her work has been featured in such publications as The Village Voice, The New Yorker, The New York Times, 周末画报 (Modern Weekly), n+1, Interview Magazine, and BOMB.

September 24, 2019: Airea D. Matthews

Airea D. Matthews (C’94) is the author of Simulacra, winner of the 2016 Yale Series of Younger Poets. Her work has appeared in Best American Poets, Callaloo, Harvard Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, Tin House, and elsewhere. She was awarded a Rona Jaffe Writer’s Foundation Award, a Louis Untermeyer Scholarship in Poetry from Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, a Kresge Literary Arts award as well as fellowships from Cave Canem, Callaloo, and The James Merrill House. One of Matthews's current projects includes a cross-genre book that explores politics, poverty, race and class. She is an assistant professor at Bryn Mawr College and is a founding member of the Philadelphia-based Riven Collective, a multidisciplinary arts collaborative.

September 19, 2019: Ashley Parker, Luis Ferré-Sadurní, Jessica Goodman

Hoping to work in journalism, media, or publishing after college? Our annual Careers in Journalism and New Media alumni panel — sponsored by KWH, The Daily Pennsylvanian, and the Nora Magid Mentorship Prize — focuses on how you can prepare for first jobs and careers in print, broadcast and online media, publishing, and related fields, as well as how to make decisions about extracurriculars, internships, and grad school in these areas.

Ashley Parker is a White House reporter for The Washington Post. She was part of the Washington Post team that won a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 2018, for their coverage of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. She joined The Post in 2017, after 11 years at the New York Times, where she covered the 2012 and 2016 presidential campaigns, and Congress, among other things. She is an NBC/MSNBC senior political analyst, and has also written for The New York Times Sunday Magazine, Glamour, and The Washingtonian, as well as other publications. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2005, with a degree in both English and Communications, and lives in Washington, D.C.

Luis Ferré-Sadurní was born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico and graduated from Penn in 2017 with a major in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE). At Penn, he worked for a few semesters at The Daily Pennsylvanian as a senior writer and politics reporter, covering the New Hampshire primaries in 2016 and investigating Trump's history of donating (or not donating) to the university. After graduation, he moved to New York City for a three-month internship at the New York Times metro desk. He ended up covering Hurricane Irma and Hurricane Maria’s devastating impact in the Caribbean, and spent more than a month reporting for theTimes in Puerto Rico. He was hired as a full-time reporter for the Times in December 2017, and covered crime, criminal justice issues and general assignments for the metro desk. He currently covers housing in New York City.

Jessica Goodman is a senior editor at Cosmopolitan magazine, where she edits stories about career, money, travel, love, and food. She and her team received a National Magazine Award for their 2017 story, How to Run for Office. Previously, she was a digital news editor at Entertainment Weekly and an entertainment editor at HuffPost. Her debut YA novel, THE PLAYERS' TABLE, will be out in 2020 from PenguinTeen.

September 11, 2019: Aaron Short

Aaron Short (C’03) has reported on Donald Trump’s political aspirations for over a decade. He is a Brooklyn-based journalist whose work appears in the New York Post, the Daily Beast, and Vice. Short graduated from Penn in 2003, with a double major in political science and history.

September 5, 2019: Airea D. Matthews

Airea D. Matthews (C’94) is the author of Simulacra, winner of the 2016 Yale Series of Younger Poets. Her work has appeared in Best American Poets, Callaloo, Harvard Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, Tin House, and elsewhere. She was awarded a Rona Jaffe Writer’s Foundation Award, a Louis Untermeyer Scholarship in Poetry from Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, a Kresge Literary Arts award as well as fellowships from Cave Canem, Callaloo, and The James Merrill House. One of Matthews's current projects includes a cross-genre book that explores politics, poverty, race and class. She is an assistant professor at Bryn Mawr College and is a founding member of the Philadelphia-based Riven Collective, a multidisciplinary arts collaborative.

February 27, 2019: Sensible Nonsense

Help us honor the humor, pathos, and enduring wisdom of children’s books through a celebration of The Sensible Nonsense Project, curated by Arielle Brousse. Six community members will share stories about their favorite books from childhood, what those books taught them, and how those lessons continue to influence their adult lives. Stay on after the readings for a delicious reception inspired by after-school snacks, and to get more information about how you, too, can participate in the project. In the meantime, visit The Sensible Nonsense Project at sensiblenonsense.us.

February 25, 2019: Christine Nangle

Christine Nangle is a comedy writer, producer and actor living in New York City. She most recently served as Executive Producer and Head Writer of Netflix's late night variety show The Break with Michelle Wolf. Prior to that, she was Executive Producer and Head Writer of Comedy Central’s Writers Guild Association (WGA) Award-nominated The President Show, a satirical late night talk show hosted by the President of the United States (as played by Anthony Atamanuik.) Nangle previously wrote for the network’s groundbreaking and Emmy-winning Inside Amy Schumer, for which she received a Peabody Award, Writers’ Guild Award, and four Emmy nominations. She has also written for Comedy Central’s Kroll Show, USA’s Playing House, Fox’s The Mick, and NBC’s Saturday Night Live. A Pennsylvania native, Nangle is a proud alumna of the Upright Citizens Brigade in NY. She can be found on Twitter at @nanglish.

February 18, 2019: Trisha Low, Steve McLaughlin

Trisha Low is the author of The Compleat Purge (Kenning Editions, 2013) and Socialist Realism (Emily Books, 2019). She lives in the East Bay. Low graduated from Penn in 2011.

Steve McLaughlin is a programmer and poet based in Austin, Texas. His works include the hoax anthology Issue 1, co-authored with Jim Carpenter (Principal Hand Editions, 2008), and Puniverse, a 57-volume collection of computer-generated puns (Gauss PDF, 2014). Steve has contributed to PennSound and the Electronic Poetry Center since 2005, and his poetry interview series Into the Field is on Jacket2. In recent years, he has used machine learning to catalog public radio archives at WGBH and KUT. Steve has a B.A. in English from Penn and an M.S. in Information Studies from the University of Texas at Austin.

November 28, 2018: Randi Hutter Epstein

Randi Hutter Epstein (C’84), M.D., is an author and writing teacher. She is a proud graduate of Penn where she studied History & Sociology of Science. Randi also has an M.D. from Yale University, where she teaches medical writing to undergraduates and is the Writer In Residence at Yale School of Medicine. She also has an M.S. from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and an M.P.H. from the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University. Randi’s articles have appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Times among other publications. She writes a blog for Psychology Today. Her first book, Get Me Out: A History of Childbirth from the Garden of Eden to the Sperm Bank was called "an engrossing survey of the history of childbirth" by the Washington Post. Her most recent book is Aroused: The History of Hormones and How They Control Just About Everything. The New Yorker called it a "compelling history…a tour of endocrinology, highlighting progress but also the hype that has promoted the curative abilities of hormones."

November 27, 2018: Connie Yu

Laynie Browne is a poet, prose writer, teacher and editor. She is author of thirteen collections of poems and three novels. Her most recent collections include a book of poems You Envelop Me (Omnidawn 2017), a novel Periodic Companions (Tinderbox 2018) and short fiction in two editions, one French, and one English in The Book of Moments (Presses universitaires de rouen et du havre, 2018). Her honors include a 2014 Pew Fellowship, the National Poetry Series Award (2007) for her collection The Scented Fox, and the Contemporary Poetry Series Award (2005) for her collection Drawing of a Swan Before Memory. Her poetry has been translated into French, Spanish, Chinese and Catalan. Forthcoming books of poetry include: Amulet: New & Selected Poems, Amulet Sonnets, In Garments Worn by Lindens, and Translation of the Lilies Back into Lists. Current projects include editing an anthology on The Poet’s Novel, and a collaboration with visual artist Brent Wahl on a public art project in Philadelphia, an installation including sculpture and poetry inscribed in thirteen languages in the new Railpark in Callow Hill. She teaches at University of Pennsylvania and at Swarthmore College.

Bianca Stone is a writer and visual artist. She was born and raised in Vermont and moved to New York City in 2007 where she received her MFA from NYU. She collaborated with Anne Carson on Antigonick, a book pairing Carson’s translation of Antigone with Stone’s illustration and comics (New Directions, 2012). Stone is the author of the poetry collection Someone Else’s Wedding Vows, (Tin House Books and Octopus Books, 2014), Poetry Comics From the Book of Hours (Pleiades Press, 2016) and The Mobius Strip Club of Grief (Tin House, 2018). Her poems, poetry comics, and nonfiction have appeared in a variety of magazines including Poetry, jubilat, and Georgia Review. She has returned to Vermont with her husband and collaborator, the poet Ben Pease, and their daughter Odette, where they run the Ruth Stone Foundation, a writing collective, letterpress studio, and artist residency.

Connie Yu (C'17) is a writer and performer living in Philadelphia, attending to queer Asian worry, meetingplaces for this, that body and what it wears, alternate and constricted transmissions of information. Their poetry and essays have been published in Apiary, Supplement, and Jacket2. Recently, they have worked as an educator at Center for Creative Works; and as a curator of gallery shows and contingent programs at the Kelly Writers House.


November 10, 2018: Stephen Fried

Stephen Fried's new book, RUSH: Revolution, Madness and the Visionary Doctor Who Became a Founding Father, brings a whole new perspective to the birth of our nation — as well as the founding of Penn (where Dr. Rush was the first famous professor and writer.) In honor of Homecoming, we’ll host a talk with Fried about how and why he rediscovered this forgotten and controversial signer, patriot and medical visionary — joined by some of the Penn alumni who worked on the book as undergraduates.

Stephen Fried (C ’79) is an award-winning journalist and New York Times bestselling author who teaches at Penn, and at Columbia (in the departments of journalism and psychiatry.) He is the author of seven acclaimed nonfiction books, most recently RUSH: Revolution, Madness and Benjamin Rush, The Visionary Doctor Who Became a Founding Father (Crown). A two-time winner of the National Magazine Award, his work has appeared in Smithsonian, Vanity Fair, GQ, Glamour, and Philadelphia magazine. Fried lives in Philadelphia, with his wife, author Diane Ayres.

November 7, 2018: Joshua Schuster

Joshua Schuster (C'98, G'08) is an associate professor of English at Western University in Canada. He is the author of The Ecology of Modernism: American Environments and Avant-Garde Poetics (2015). Recent essays have appeared in Resilience, Antennae, Parrhesia, Critical Perspectives on Veganism, and After Derrida. He is currently working on two book projects, one on the cultural representations of animal extinction, and another on poetry and outer space.

November 1, 2018: Alex Koppelman

Alex Koppelman (C'05) is a managing editor for CNN Business, overseeing the coverage of tech, media, and companies. Prior to joining CNN, Koppelman was editorial director of Vocativ. He has also served as enterprise editor at Guardian U.S. and as politics editor of NewYorker.com, and was a senior writer at Salon.com. An Emmy and National Magazine Award winner, Koppelman is a Baltimore native and a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania.

October 11, 2018: Nate Chinen

Nate Chinen is the author of Playing Changes: Jazz for the New Century (Pantheon, 2018). He has been writing about jazz for more than twenty years, notably for The New York Times, JazzTimes and the Philadelphia City Paper. As the director of editorial content at WBGO, he works with the multiplatform program Jazz Night in America and contributes a range of coverage to NPR Music. An eleven-time winner of the Helen Dance–Robert Palmer Award for Excellence in Writing, presented by the Jazz Journalists Association, he is also coauthor of Myself Among Others: A Life in Music, the autobiography of impresario George Wein. A former assistant coordinator at the Kelly Writers House, he now lives in Beacon, New York, with his wife and two daughters.

October 1, 2018: Jennifer Egan

Jennifer Egan's 2017 novel, Manhattan Beach, has been awarded the 2018 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. Egan was born in Chicago and raised in San Francisco. She is also the author of The Invisible Circus, a novel which became a feature film starring Cameron Diaz in 2001, Look at Me, a finalist for the National Book Award in fiction in 2001, Emerald City and Other Stories, The Keep, and A Visit From the Goon Squad, won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, and the LA Times Book Prize. Her short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Harpers, Granta, McSweeney's and other magazines. She is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Fiction, and a Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Fellowship at the New York Public Library. Also a journalist, she has written frequently in the New York Times Magazine. Her 2002 cover story on homeless children received the Carroll Kowal Journalism Award, and "The Bipolar Kid" received a 2009 NAMI Outstanding Media Award for Science and Health Reporting from the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

September 13, 2018: Jill Castellano, Jess Goodman, Ashley Parker, Stephen Fried

Jill Castellano is an investigative reporter and data analyst for inewsource. Castellano graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with degrees in psychology and criminology and was editor-in-chief of the school newspaper, the Daily Pennsylvanian. She has interned at the New York Daily News, Forbes and the Philadelphia Inquirer. Castellano was a Dow Jones Data Fellow in 2016 — its first class of data journalists. She was trained by data experts at the headquarters of Investigative Reporters and Editors in Columbia, Missouri, and spent the summer working as a data reporter for the Salt Lake Tribune. In September 2016, Castellano joined The Desert Sun in Palm Springs as an investigations editor. She mentored reporters in the USA TODAY Network on data analysis and public records, and she collaborated with other newsrooms on data-driven enterprise stories. She was part of a team from the USA TODAY Network that won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Reporting for a project on the U.S.-Mexico border wall.

Jessica Goodman is a senior editor at Cosmopolitan magazine, where she oversees the Work + Play section. She and her team won a National Magazine Award in Personal Service for last year's package, How to Run For Office. Previously, she was a digital news editor at Entertainment Weekly and an entertainment editor at HuffPost. Jessica graduated from Penn's College of Arts and Sciences in 2012 and from Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism in 2013. While at Penn, she was the editor-in-chief of 34th Street Magazine.

Ashley Parker is a White House reporter at the Washington Post. She was part of the Washington Post team that won a 2018 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting — for their look at Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. She was also part of the Post team that won a 2018 George Polk award for reporting on the same topic. Previously, she worked at the New York Times for eleven years, where she covered politics — Mitt Romney in 2012 and Jeb Bush and Donald Trump in 2016 — and Congress, as well as other things. She started at the paper as Maureen Dowd's research assistant. She has also written for the New York Times Sunday Magazine, Glamour, The Huffington Post, The Washingtonian, The New York Sun, Philadelphia Weekly, and Chicago Magazine, and is an MSNBC political analyst. She graduated from Penn in 2005, with a double major in English (creative writing) and Communications.

Stephen Fried (C ’79) is an award-winning journalist and New York Times bestselling author who teaches at Penn, and at Columbia (in the departments of journalism and psychiatry.) He is the author of seven acclaimed nonfiction books, most recently RUSH: Revolution, Madness and Benjamin Rush, The Visionary Doctor Who Became a Founding Father (Crown). A two-time winner of the National Magazine Award, his work has appeared in Smithsonian, Vanity Fair, GQ, Glamour, and Philadelphia magazine. Fried lives in Philadelphia, with his wife, author Diane Ayres.

May 12, 2018: Ariel Djanikian, Amina Gautier, Melissa Jensen

Ariel Djanikian's stories have recently appeared in Tin House, Alaska Quarterly Review, and Glimmer Train. Her nonfiction can be found at The Millions, The Rumpus, The Kenyon Review Online, and The Paris Review Daily. Her first novel, The Office of Mercy, was published with Viking, and she is currently at work on a historical novel about the Klondike Gold Rush. She lives in Maryland with her family.

Dr. Amina Gautier is the author of three short story collections: At-Risk, Now We Will Be Happy and The Loss of All Lost Things. At-Risk was awarded the Flannery O’Connor Award, The First Horizon Award, and the Eric Hoffer Legacy Fiction Award. Now We Will Be Happy was awarded the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction, the International Latino Book Award, the Florida Authors and Publishers Association President's Book Award, a National Silver Medal IPPY Award and was a Finalist for the William Saroyan International Prize. The Loss of All Lost Things was awarded the Elixir Press Award in Fiction, the Phillis Wheatley Award, the Royal Palm Literary Award, the Chicago Public Library’s 21st Century Award, the International Latino Book Award, a National Silver Medal IPPY Award, was shortlisted for the SFC Literary Prize, and was a Finalist for the Hurston/Wright Award, the Paterson Prize and the John Gardner Award. More than ninety-five of her stories have been published, appearing in African American Review, Agni, Callaloo, Glimmer Train, Iowa Review, Oxford American, Prairie Schooner, Southern Review, and Quarterly West. Gautier has received fellowships, residencies, and scholarships from Breadloaf Writer’s Conference, The Carmago Foundation, The Château de Lavigny, Dora Maar/Brown Foundation, Disquiet International, Hawthornden, Kimbilio, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, MacDowell Colony, the Ragdale Foundation, Sewanee Writer’s Conference, Ucross Foundation, VCCA, and Vermont Studio Center.

Melissa Jensen is an award-winning writer of historical and contemporary fiction. Most recently, her Young Adult novels have been official selections on such lists as New York Public Library's Teen Reading and FYA. She is currently working on the fourth and final book in her Philadelphia novel series and a play centered around bog bodies and Irish rap music, as well as participating in an ongoing San Francisco-based multi-media project exploring the connection between anthropology, archaeology, and literature. “Broken Siren”, a contemporary work for string ensemble and soprano based on Homer’s Odyssey, for which she wrote the libretto, will debut in 2018, followed by Carmilla from the Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu novella in 2020. She has contributed to numerous print media, including Philadelphia Style Magazine and the Philadelphia Inquirer. She currently divides her time between Philadelphia and Dublin, all the better to be immersed in the worlds of really really good fiction and poetry, and fascinating stuff unearthed from underground.

April 17, 2018: Gabriel Ojeda-Sague

In the tradition of the uproarious theater of the Cockettes, the experimental verbal collages of Lypsinka, and the plays and poetry of Jackie Curtis, the Writers House brings you a night of drag queens writing, writers dragging, and all things words and wigs. Curated by the Kelly Writers House Junior Fellow of 2017-2018, Gabriel Ojeda-Sague, this event commissions four new performances by artists working at the intersection of these two ostensibly disparate fields.

April 16, 2018: Beltran Family program

Dead Parents Society is a project that explores writing by those who have lost a parent at a relatively young age and that encourages conversation about the purpose of writing about such hardship, and also about the experience of reading such work. Can good writing also be therapeutic? Does writing about death always have to be sad? How do our past traumas shape our present perspectives? This reading will feature writers affiliated with the Penn and Writers House communities whose work has directly or indirectly been influenced by a parent's death. We promise this event won't be as sad as it might sound. And we'll have comfort food!

April 9, 2018: Chris Ludovici

Chris Ludovici has published articles in The Princeton Packet, the Penn Gazette, Cinedelphia, Cleaver Magazine, and Forces of Geek. His fiction has appeared in print in Peregrine and online at Cleaver. In 2009, he won the Judith Stark awards in fiction and drama. He lives outside Philadelphia with his wife, son, and not enough cats.

April 4, 2018: Lew Schneider

Originally from Crossville, TN, Billy Wayne Davis is a stand-up & writer who has performed in 41 states, 4 countries and Texas. He has appeared on Conan, NBC's Last Comic Standing, WTF with Marc Maron, Made It Weird with Pete Holmes, voiced multiple characters on Adult Swim's SquidBillies, hosted a Morgan Spurlock documentary for CMT, named a 2015 Fresh Face by the Just for Laughs Festival in Montreal, opened for Grammy winning badass Sturgill Simpson's 30 city Living the Dream Tour, and just released his second comedy album with Jack White's label, Billy Wayne Davis: Live at Third Man Records.

Writer, comedian, and actor, Aparna Nancherla is a series regular in the debut season of Comedy Central's Corporate and has reprised her role in season 2 of HBO's Crashing. Other TV credits include Master of None, High Maintenance, Inside Amy Schumer, and I Love You, America with Sarah Silverman. Her TV writing credits include Late Night with Seth Meyers and Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell. She is also an alumna of the NBC Stand Up for Diversity program and currently headlines throughout the world and has been seen at a number of festivals including Comedy Central's Clusterfest, Portland's Bridgetown Comedy Festival, Moontower, SF Sketchfest, DC's Bentzen Ball, Outside Lands, Bonnaroo and Dublin's Vodaphone Comedy Festival. Aparna's been featured on and in NPR, Reader's Digest, The Huffington Post, The Washington Post magazine, XM Radio, and Slate V. She can regularly be seen performing at the Upright Citizen's Brigade's in LA and NYC. Her debut album Just Putting It Out There was released in July 2016 by Tig Notaro's label Bentzen Ball Records and hit the #4 on Billboard Comedy Charts.

Lew Schneider (C'83) is a writer, producer, and director of the ABC comedy, The Goldbergs. Other credits include his own HBO stand-up special, and the primetime shows American Dad, The New Adventures of Old Christine, Men of a Certain Age (which won a Peabody Award but very few people watched), and Everybody Loves Raymond (which won Emmy Awards and more people watched).

February 26, 2018: Rebecca Entel

Rebecca Entel holds a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin. She is Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing at Cornell College, where she teaches multicultural American literature, Caribbean literature, creative writing, and the literature of social justice. She began writing her first novel, Fingerprints of Previous Owners, while teaching on San Salvador Island in the Bahamas. Her short stories have been published in Guernica, Joyland, Madison Review, Cleaver, and elsewhere, and several have been shortlist­ed for awards from Glimmer Train, Southwest Review, and the Manchester Fiction Prize.

November 9, 2017: Rachel Tashjian

Rachel Tashjian is the Fashion Features Editor at GARAGE Magazine, an art and fashion biannual that was acquired by Vice in 2016 and recently launched a very exciting website (garage.vice.com). Previously, she was Associate Director of Communications and Contributing Style Editor at Vanity Fair, and has written for New York Magazine, Elle, Lenny Letter, and, because they didn't have to pay her anything extra, Vanity Fair. She will discuss the importance of building a voice online, the challenges and thrills of finding a job as a "writer," and the art of making friends in the media (fake news, fake friends!).

November 4, 2017: Alec Sokolow, Kathleen DeMarco Van Cleve

The Hartman Family Screenwriting Series allows us to host an annual event with a successful professional screenwriter so that aspiring moviemakers in the Writers House community can get a taste of the writers' room. Past events in the series have featured Scott Neustadter (500 Days of Summer, The Fault in our Stars) and John Leguizamo (Ice Age, Romeo + Juliet).

Alec Sokolow, nominated for an Academy Award (Toy Story) has worn many hats in his career as a professional writer. A career in Hollywood has taken him from writing late night TV comedy to having written some of the most memorable studio films of our time. His credited film work has topped one billion dollars in worldwide Box Office receipts and includes Toy Story, Cheaper by the Dozen, Garfield, Evan Almighty, Daddy Day Camp, and Money Talks. Alec hails from New York City and resides in Sagaponack, NY.

Kathleen DeMarco Van Cleve is a novelist, screenwriter, film producer and teacher. She is currently adapting the Young Readers edition of the 2017 National Book finalist Never Caught: The Washingtons' Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge by Erica Armstrong Dunbar for Aladdin Books / Simon & Schuster, due to be published in 2019. She is also working on a film adaptation of the Wesley Stace novel Charles Jessold: Considered as a Murderer and her own young adult book series, Hurricane Ike. With Aline Brosh McKenna as producer, (showrunner, My Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and screenwriter, The Devil Wears Prada), Van Cleve is also working on an original screenplay currently entitled I'm With Her. Her middle grade novel, Drizzle, received starred reviews from Publisher's Weekly and The Bulletin for the Center of Children's Books, and won the Pennsylvania students' choice award for best middle-grade novel. For many years, she was the creative partner of actor and writer John Leguizamo, during which time she produced the films Joe the King, (winner of the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival), Pinero, (a Miramax release starring Benjamin Bratt) and Undefeated (an HBO film starring Leguizamo) as well as worked with Steven Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower), Alexander Payne (Sideways, Election, Downsizing) and Frank Pugliese (showrunner, House of Cards). Her other novels are Cranberry Queen (optioned by Miramax Films) and The Difference Between You and Me. She graduated with a dual degree from the Wharton School and the College of Arts & Sciences, was captain of Penn women's crew, and lives with her husband and two sons in Philadelphia.

November 2, 2017: Faryn Pearl

Interested in a career in television, film, or animation? Join members of the Kelly Writers House and the Alpha Delta Phi Society for a special workshop. Led by Penn alumna Faryn Pearl, a storyboard artist at DreamWorks Animation, the workshop will focus on storyboards, the shot-by-shot visual representation of a script, used to help visualize and plan a show before it’s filmed. What makes a successful storyboard for shows like Adventure Time and SpongeBob Squarepants? How are storyboards actually used?

Faryn Pearl is a Class of 2014 CAS graduate and storyboard artist for DreamWorks Animation. At Penn, she majored in Classical Studies and minored in Fine Arts and English, with a concentration in screenwriting. Despite these fairly related disciplines, she had no idea what she was going to do with her life until her junior year of college, when she finally gave in to her instincts and started pursuing children's media, which frankly, she had never really stopped enjoying. After interning at Sesame Workshop and Nickelodeon, she moved to beautiful downtown Burbank, and started working at DreamWorks Animation. She's been at DreamWorks for the last three years, working first in production on The Adventures of Puss of In Boots, and then as a storyboard artist and writer on Home: Adventures with Tip and Oh. She is currently boarding and writing additional dialogue on the upcoming feature Trolls 2.

September 27, 2017: Alex Koppelman

Alex Koppelman is senior editor for CNN Media. Prior to joining CNN, Koppelman was editorial director of Vocativ. He has also served as enterprise editor at Guardian US, and as politics editor of NewYorker.com, and was a senior writer at Salon.com. An Emmy and National Magazine Award winner, Koppelman is a 2005 Penn grad.

September 19, 2017: Cortney Lamar Charleston

Cortney Lamar Charleston (C'11) is the author of Telepathologies, selected by D.A. Powell for the 2016 Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize. In 2017, he was awarded a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation and he has also received fellowships from Cave Canem, The Conversation Literary Festival and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. His work has appeared in POETRY, New England Review, Gulf Coast, TriQuarterly, River Styx and elsewhere.

September 18, 2017: Ashley Parker, Jess Goodman, Joe Pinsker, Stephen Fried

Our annual Careers in Media alumni panel — sponsored by KWH, the Daily Pennsylvanian, the Creative Writing Program, and the Nora Magid Mentorship Prize — focuses on how you can prepare for first jobs and careers in print, broadcast and online media, publishing, and related fields, as well as how to make decisions about extracurriculars, internships and grad school in these areas. This year's panel includes:

Ashley Parker is a White House reporter at the Washington Post. Previously, she worked at the New York Times for 11 years, where she covered politics — Mitt Romney in 2012 and Jeb Bush and Donald Trump in 2016 — and Congress, as well as other things. She started at the paper as Maureen Dowd's research assistant. She has also written for The New York Times Sunday Magazine, Glamour, The Huffington Post, The Washingtonian, The New York Sun, Philadelphia Weekly, and Chicago Magazine, and is an MSNBC political analyst. She graduated from Penn in 2005, with a double major in English (creative writing) and Communications.

Joe Pinsker is an associate editor at The Atlantic, where he writes and edits stories about business and economics. The pieces he writes typically focus on the intersection between money and culture, usually involving topics such as food, advertising, technology, and entertainment. He also covers academic research, often in the realms of social mobility, consumer psychology, and personal finance. At Penn, Joe studied English (with a concentration in Creative Writing) and was the Managing Editor of 34th Street. He graduated in 2013 and currently lives in Washington, DC.

Jessica Goodman is a senior editor at Cosmopolitan magazine. Previously, she was a digital news editor at Entertainment Weekly and an Entertainment Editor at HuffPost. Jessica graduated from the College in 2012 and from Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism in 2013. While at Penn, she was the Editor-in-Chief of 34th Street Magazine.

Stephen Fried is an adjunct professor at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and the author of five acclaimed books, including Appetite for America: Fred Harvey and the Business of Civilizing the West—One Meal at a Time (named one of the Top Ten Books of the Year by the Wall Street Journal) and Thing of Beauty: The Tragedy of Supermodel Gia (which introduced the word "fashionista" into the English language and inspired the Emmy-winning film Gia with Angelina Jolie.) A two-time winner of the National Magazine Award, Fried has written for Vanity Fair, GQ, The Washington Post Magazine, Rolling Stone, Glamour, Ladies' Home Journal, Parade and Philadelphia magazine. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife, author Diane Ayres.

September 14, 2017: Ben Lerer

Ben Lerer is the CEO of newly-formed Group Nine Media — a new digital media holding company consisting of Thrillist, NowThis, The Dodo and Seeker. He is the co-founder of Thrillist. Lerer was among Ernst & Young's Entrepreneur of the Year Award Winners, Vanity Fair's Next Establishments, Crain's "40 under 40", Forbes list of "Most Powerful CEOs Under 40", AdWeek's "Young Influentials", Inc's "30 under 30" and Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 5 Entrepreneurs of the Year." Ben is also the Managing Director of Lerer Hippeau Ventures, New York's most active early-stage technology fund. He chairs the Board of Directors for Urban Upbound, a New York non-profit organization and is an Associate Member of the International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences (IADAS). Ben sits on the Board of Directors for Casper, the Advisory Board for Refinery29, the Board of RaisedByUs and is the Chairman of the Board of Directors for JackThreads.

September 12, 2017: Jennifer Yu

Jennifer Yu is a Boston resident and recent graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, where she studied creative writing. In her free time, she enjoys reading books she's too old for, roping unsuspecting friends into listening to her play the guitar and being far too invested in Boston sports teams. Most of her pop culture knowledge comes from binge-watching late-night talk show clips and occasional nervous forays into the depths of Tumblr. Find her online at byjenniferyu.tumblr.com or on Twitter: @yuontop.


May 13, 2017: Ellen Yin

Join us at Writers House for a panel discussion of food and food writing with a special focus on the ever-growing culinary culture of Philadelphia. Led by Creative Writing faculty member and local luminary Rick Nichols — there’s an eating-and-meeting space in Reading Terminal Market named in Rick’s honor — our conversation will explore culinary creativity, the restaurant industry, and approaches to writing about food. A delicious reception, open to all, will follow.

ELLEN YIN is the founder and co-owner of High Street Hospitality Group (HSHG), which operates three of the most noteworthy restaurants and bars in Philadelphia: Fork, at the top of Philadelphia’s must-visit list for nearly 20 years; High Street on Market, a much-lauded breakfast-through-late-night, ingredient-driven restaurant and bakery; and a.kitchen + a.bar at the AKA Rittenhouse Square, a dynamic and popular restaurant and bar frequently honored for their exceptional cooking and wine program. At the end of 2015, HSHG debuted their first outpost outside of Philadelphia, High Street on Hudson, in Manhattan’s West Village. Yin is also the author of Forklore: Recipes and Tales from an American Bistro (Temple University Press, 2007), a thoughtful chronicle of her ongoing success at creating and maintaining a definitive American bistro in Philadelphia’s historic Old City. She is a graduate of the Wharton School.


April 6, 2017: Nick Defina

Come join your fellow poetry lovers at the Kelly Writers House in celebration of National Poetry Month. The program will include a short reading by three English-language poets of their work, originally written in German, Yiddish and Russian, and translated into English, followed by a discussion of poetry, translation and creativity, moderated by Al Filreis.

NICK MARTINEZ DEFINA graduated from the College in May 2016 with a BA in Philosophy. He began developing tonight's program after being named the Kelly Writers House Junior Fellow for the 2016-2017 academic year. Since graduating high school, Nick has pursued his interest in literature and languages in a variety of academic and extracurricular settings. Since completing his BA, Nick has continued to write and read in his free time. He is currently employed by the Philadelphia-based law firm Drinker, Biddle & Reath.


November 16, 2016: Feminista Jones

In the wake of racist attacks against students, FEMINISTA JONES visits her alma mater and speaks with undergraduate student leaders, faculty, and grad students about the implications, the history of protest, the power and responsibility of privilege, and what doing "the work" means (especially to "allies”).


November 9, 2016: Liz Barr

LIZ BARR is an interdisciplinary artist based in Philadelphia and a recent graduate of the Penn Undergraduate Fine Arts Program. She generally works around the themes of beauty, ritual, religion, pop culture, and gender-based power dynamics.


November 7, 2016: Eric Umansky

ERIC UMANSKY is a deputy managing editor of ProPublica, where he edited their Pulitzer Prize-winning series about Wall Street. Previously, he wrote a column for Slate and was editor of Motherjones.com. He's also written for The New York Times Magazine, Washington Post, The New Republic, and elsewhere. He is also a co-founder of Document Cloud. He earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Pennsylvania and a master's degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.


October 31, 2016: Tahneer Oksman

Focusing on the visionary work of seven contemporary female Jewish cartoonists, Tahneer Oksman in her book How Come Boys Get to Keep Their Noses draws a remarkable connection between innovations in modes of graphic storytelling and the unstable, contradictory, and ambiguous figurations of the Jewish self in the postmodern era. American comics reflect the distinct sensibilities and experiences of the Jewish American men who played an outsized role in creating them, but what about the contributions of Jewish women?

TAHNEER OKSMAN is Assistant Professor and Director of the Academic Writing Program at Marymount Manhattan College. In addition to her recent book on Jewish women and comics, Oksman has written on visual culture, women's literature, and Jewish identity for academic publications such as a/b: Auto/Biography Studies, Studies in American Jewish Literature, and Studies in Comics. She also writes reviews and essays for publications and sites including the Forward, Lilith, Jewish Book Council, the Los Angeles Review of Books, BookTrib, and Cleaver, where she is graphic narratives reviews editor.


October 29, 2016: Emily Shutlhies, Jim Newell

In honor of Penn's Homecoming, join us for a discussion of the presidential election with political journalists JIM NEWELL (C'07) of Slate and EMILY SCHULTHEIS (C'11) of CBS Interactive, moderated by Penn faculty member DICK POLMAN, national political columnist at Newsworks. Before becoming a politics writer in the Washington bureau of Slate, Newell wrote for Salon and Wonkette. Until joining CBS Interactive, Schultheis served as the primary reporter covering Hillary Clinton and the 2016 Democratic primary for the National Journal. Polman covered the 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2004 U. S. presidential campaigns for The Philadelphia Inquirer where he wrote for 22 years, most notably as the national political writer/columnist.Reception to follow. Advance registration is not required, but we'd love to hear from you.


September 28, 2016: Uri Friedman

URI FRIEDMAN is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where he covers global affairs. He was previously the editor of The Atlantic's Global section and the deputy managing editor at Foreign Policy magazine.


September 22, 2016: Kiley Bense

America's long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have defined a generation even as the gap between soldier and civilian widens. What does literature have to say about these complicated conflicts and their legacy? With post-9/11 veteran and novelist Matt Gallagher (and excerpts from veteran and novelist Elliot Ackerman), we will look at how and why war literature matters today.

KILEY BENSE is a writer and journalist whose literary nonfiction focuses on the intersections of history, memory, and family. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Departures, and Saveur, among others. She is currently at work on a book about World War II and the lasting consequences of trauma. Kiley holds a B.A. in English from the University of Pennsylvania and a master's from the Columbia School of Journalism. Read her work at kileybense.com.


September 19, 2016: Jessica Goodman, David Borgenicht, Maria Popova, Stephen Fried

Our annual Careers in Media alumni panel — sponsored by KWH, the Daily Pennsylvanian, and the Nora Magid Mentorship Prize — focuses on how you can prepare for first jobs and careers in print, broadcast and online media, publishing, and related fields, as well as how to make decisions about extracurriculars, internships and grad school in these areas. This year’s panel includes Jessica Sidman (’08), food editor at Washingtonian magazine; Maria Popova (C’07), the founder and brains behind Brainpickings.com; Jessica Goodman (C’12), the digital news editor of Entertainment Weekly; David Borgenicht (C ‘90), bestselling nonfiction author, and owner and publisher of Quirk Books; and moderator Stephen Fried (’79), award-winning journalist and bestselling author who teaches at Penn and Columbia J-School and mentors longform nonfiction writers.

At the this panel you’ll also learn more about the Nora Magid Mentorship Prize for the top senior nonfiction writer/editor, and other opportunities for internships and networking.

THE NORA MAGID MENTORSHIP PRIZE is given each year to a senior at the University of Pennsylvania who shows exceptional ability and promise in writing/reporting/editing, and who would benefit most from combined mentorship of Nora's network of former students and their colleagues in traditional and new media. The prize is $3000 to be used however the student chooses for their professional development—including being used as a stipend for post-grad internships that require one. The winner also receives unparalleled access to a constantly growing network of Penn alumni—including Nora's former students and over a decade of Nora Prize-winners—as well as their extensive web of colleagues who can assist in the student’s career. It is open to all seniors at Penn, although preference is given to those who expect to attempt to make careers in some form of media.

DAVID BORGENICHT (C'90) is the CEO and owner of Philadelphia book publisher Quirk Books, co-author of the best-selling Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook. Quirk publishes 25 books a year, including international best-seller Pride & Prejudice & Zombies.

JESSICA GOODMAN (C'12) is a Digital News Editor at Entertainment Weekly, where she runs the music and books sections of EW.com. Previously, she was an Entertainment Editor at The Huffington Post, and has written for the Village Voice, Mashable, NYMag.com and Noisey.

MARIA POPOVA (C'07) is a reader and writer, and writes about what she reads on her Brain Pickings blog, which is included in the Library of Congress archive of culturally valuable materials. She has also written for Wired UK and The Atlantic, The New York Times and Smithsonian Magazine. In 2012, she was named among the 100 Most Creative People in Business by Fast Company Magazine.

STEPHEN FRIED (C'79) (moderator) is a best-selling and award-winning journalist who teaches non-fiction writing at Penn and the Journalism School at Columbia University. He is a former contributing editor at Vanity Fair, GQ, Glamour and Philadelphia Magazine.


February 22, 2016: Scott Neustadter

Screenwriter and producer SCOTT NEUSTADTER writes screenplays in collaboration with his writing partner Michael H. Weber. The pair have collaborated since 1999 when Scott hired Michael for an internship at New York's Tribeca Productions. They have proven themselves to be some of Hollywood’s most versatile and sought-after writers with their witty, fresh and intelligent storytelling. Neustadter and Weber together wrote the hit Fox Searchlight comedy/drama (500) Days of Summer, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel. The film was nominated for "Best Feature - Comedy" at the Golden Globe Award and earned them an Independent Spirit Award and a Golden Satellite Award for Best Screenplay of the Year. Their follow-up, The Spectacular Now, starring Shailene Woodley and Miles Teller, and directed by James Ponsoldt, also garnered them a nomination for Best Screenplay at the Independent Spirit Awards. From there, they went on to adapt The Fault in Our Stars, based on the bestselling novel by John Green. It opened as the number one movie in America and has since grossed over $300 million dollars worldwide. This year saw the release of a second John Green adaptation Paper Towns, starring Nat Wolff and directed by Jake Schreier. Neustadter and Weber are currently working on several high profile film projects including The Disaster Artist, currently filming with an all-star cast including James and Dave Franco, Seth Rogen, Sharon Stone, Bryan Cranston, Zac Efron, Jason Mitchell, Bob Oedenkirk and more; Rules of Civility, an adaptation of Amor Towles' critically acclaimed novel; Where’d You Go, Bernadette, based on Maria Semple's bestselling novel; John Green's debut novel Looking for Alaska; and Rosaline, Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet as told through the perspective of Romeo's ex.


February 10, 2016: Kenna O'Rourke

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.

KENNA O'ROURKE is the managing editor of Jacket2, an online poetics journal run from the Kelly Writers House in Philadelphia. Her work has appeared in The Pocket Guide, the Philos Adelphos Irrealis chapbook, and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, as well as a handful of undergraduate publications from her time at Penn.


November 7, 2015: Buzz Bissinger and Beth Kephart

In honor of Penn's Homecoming, join us for a reading by Buzz Bissinger with Beth Kephart, followed by a reception in the Writers House dining room.

Penn alumnus BUZZ BISSINGER (C'76) is among the nation’s most honored and distinguished writers. A native of New York City, Buzz is the winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the Livingston Award, the American Bar Association Silver Gavel Award and the National Headliners Award, among others. He also was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. He is the author of the highly acclaimed nonfiction books: Friday Night Lights, A Prayer for the City, Three Nights in August, Shooting Stars, and Father’s Day. Buzz has been a contributing editor at Vanity Fair magazine since 1996. His August 2007 Vanity Fair article “Gone Like the Wind,” about the saga of 2006 Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro, was optioned by Universal Pictures. In 2009 he became a sports columnist for The Daily Beast. He is a longtime contributor to The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and the Philadelphia Inquirer. His teleplay and screenwriting work includes collaborations with directors Alan Pakula, Peter Berg, Greg Hoblit, Todd Field and Tim Kring. Buzz also spent the 2000-2001 television season in Los Angeles as a co-producer and writer for the long-running television series NYPD Blue.

BETH KEPHART is the author of 21 books of nonfiction, fiction, and fable. Handling the Truth: On the Writing of Memoir, named a best writing book by O Magazine, Poets & Writers, and others, won the 2013 Books for a Better Life Award (Motivational Category). Going Over, a novel of Berlin, was named a 2014 Booklist Top Ten Historical Fiction for Youth and won the Gold Medal, Parents’ Choice Award, Historical Fiction, among other honors. Small Damages, a novel of southern Spain, was the 2013 Carolyn W. Field Honor Book, among other honors. Flow: The Life and Times of Philadelphia’s Schuylkill River is an integral component in a William Penn Foundation-funded Philadelphia schools initiative. Kephart was one of 50 authors included in the 2013/2014 Philadelphia Literary Legacy Exhibition at Philadelphia International Airport and is a Radnor High School Hall of Famer, a National Book Award finalist, and a winner of the Speakeasy Poetry Prize. She has won grants from the National Endowment of the Arts, Pew Fellowship in the Arts, Leeway Foundation, and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. She writes a monthly column for the Philadelphia Inquirer, is a featured reviewer for the Chicago Tribune, and runs an award-winning boutique marketing communications firm. Her books have been translated into sixteen languages.


October 19, 2015: Nick Montfort

NICK MONTFORT develops computational art and poetry and has participated in dozens of writing collaborations. He is the principal of the naming firm Nomnym, is on the MIT faculty, and serves as a director of the Electronic Literature Organization. Montfort wrote the books of poems #! and Riddle & Bind, co-wrote 2002: A Palindrome Story, and developed more than forty digital projects. The MIT Press has published four of his collaborative and individual books: The New Media Reader, Twisty Little Passages, Racing the Beam, and 10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10, with Exploratory Programming for the Arts and Humanities coming soon.

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September 29, 2015: Jessica Goodman, David Borgenicht, Maria Popova, Stephen Fried

A star-studded alumni panel of journalists and media experts reveals what you need to know to get a job in print or broadcast journalism, book publishing, new media, and beyond.

Hoping to work in journalism or publishing after college? A knowledgeable panel of four Penn alumni — who have held every job in the business — will discuss the early trials, tribulations, and eventual bliss of working in the media. Come get the scoop, as these professionals will field your questions and advise aspiring writers and editors on the ever-changing landscape of new media.

DAVID BORGENICHT (C’90) is the CEO and owner of Philadelphia book publisher Quirk Books, co-author of the best-selling “Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook.” Quirk publishes 25 books a year, including international best-seller Pride & Prejudice & Zombies.

JESSICA GOODMAN (C’12) is a Digital News Editor at Entertainment Weekly, where she runs the music and books sections of EW.com. Previously, she was an Entertainment Editor at The Huffington Post, and has written for the Village Voice, Mashable, NYMag.com and Noisey.

MARIA POPOVA (C’07) is a reader and writer, and writes about what she reads on her Brain Pickings blog, which is included in the Library of Congress archive of culturally valuable materials. She has also written for Wired UK and The Atlantic, The New Yorl Times and Smithsonian Magazine. In 2012, she was named among the 100 Most Creative People in Business by Fast Company Magazine.

STEPHEN FRIED (C’79) (moderator) is a best-selling and award-winning journalist who teaches non-fiction writing at Penn and the Journalism School at Columbia University. He is a former contributing editor at Vanity Fair, GQ, Glamour and Philadelphia Magazine, his sixth book, “A Common Struggle” will be published in October.


May 15, 2015: Andy Wolk

ANDY WOLK's (C'70) writing/directing career began with the much-lauded HBO movie Criminal Justice starring Forest Whitaker that made Time Magazine's “Ten Best” List. Mr. Wolk has been nominated 3 times for the Writers Guild Award and won it once for Natica Jackson starring Michelle Pfeiffer. He has been nominated for the Director's Guild Award several times and has directed numerous episodes of shows such as The Sopranos, Damages, NYPD Blue, Criminal Minds, Without A Trace, and The Practice. He has been writer and director on many legal-themed movies including Deliberate Intent, the critically praised 1st movie ever for FX starring Timothy Hutton and (with his brother Peter, also a Penn grad) the acclaimed Fighting The Odds for Lifetime, The Defenders: Payback, Choice of Evils, and Taking The First for Showtime. Mr. Wolk’s other writing credits include HBO’s Emmy-winning From The Earth to The Moon and the award-winning Tales from The Crypt starring Demi Moore. He has written features for Miramax, Paramount,Tri-Star, UA, MGM, Warner Brothers, Columbia Pictures, and AVCO Embassy plus pilots for Fox, ABC, and Showtime.


March 31, 2015: Neil Plakcy

NEIL PLAKCY studied creative writing at Penn with professors including Philip Roth and Carlos Fuentes, then went on to get an MFA in fiction. He is a hybrid author – his twenty-plus novels have been published by large and small presses, and he’s successfully self-published a best-selling mystery series. He also compiles anthologies, edits manuscripts, and teaches writing at Broward College in Florida. He has spoken at many national conferences about his own work as well as the e-publishing industry.

January 28, 2014: Gabe Oppenheim

Boxing in Philadelphia is about a once-great American industrial city and the culture of hands (of pride in what a person could with his hands) it engendered. It's about the boxers who rose from these streets and what happened to them when the economy collapsed, the center caved in and the city became its own unique type of wasteland (dotted with the brick factories that had formerly made America's Baldwin locomotives, its dentures, its Stenson hats). It's about the hardest workers in a hard city — the fighters — and their efforts to survive. And it's about the city's — and the fighters' — current attempt to come back.

GABE OPPENHEIM has written a novella, as well as several short stories and screenplays. Born and raised in New York, he spent his college years in Philadelphia and continues to maintain a special bond with the City of Brotherly Love.

October 27, 2014: Roopika Risam

ROOPIKA RISAM (C'03) is Assistant Professor of World Literature and English Education at Salem State University. Her research examines intersections between postcolonial, African American, and US ethnic studies, and the role of digital humanities in mediating between the two. Her co-written book Postcolonial Digital Humanities is under contract with Northwestern UP and she is also working on a manuscript that positions W.E.B. Du Bois as a progenitor for postcolonial studies through renewed attention to his literary work. Her digital scholarship includes The Harlem Shadows Project, on producing critical editions of public domain texts; Postcolonial Digital Humanities, an online community dedicated to global explorations of race, class, gender, sexuality, and disability within cultures of technology; and Digitizing Chinese Englishmen, an experiment in postcolonial digital archival practices that examines the role of empire in 19th century digital scholarship in English. She is currently developing the prototype for A Cultural Atlas of Global Blackness, an interactive database and digital map that traces representations of blackness across temporality and geography. Her work has appeared in Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology and is forthcoming in First Monday, Left History, and the Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Inquiry.

October 14, 2014: Cecilia Corrigan

Cecilia Corrigan's (C'10) performances have been exhibited at MOMA, The New Museum, CAGE Gallery, as well as Brown, Yale, and the University of Iowa. Her writing has appeared in n+1, Mousse Magazine, The Capilano Review, LUMINA Journal, The Claudius App, The Journal, and The Henry Review, among others. Her book Titanic received the Madeleine P Plonsker Emerging Writer's Prize, and will be released this fall. Her chapbook True Beige was published in 2013 by Trafficker Press. She is also a comedian and screenwriter, having previously written for HBO.

September 22, 2014: Matt Flegenheimer

Matt Flegenheimer (C'11) is a metro reporter for The New York Times. He will soon begin covering City Hall, after two years writing about transportation in and around New York. He has also covered Occupy Wall Street, breaking crime news, and—as is the blessing and curse of many new metro reporters—quite a few animal stories. At Penn, he majored in economics.

May 11, 2013: Nick Spitzer

Nick Spitzer, host and creator of the radio show American Routes and 1972 Penn graduate with a degree in anthropology, joined us on May 11 as a part of our Alumni Visitors Series. He began his talk by explaining that he was drawn to radio as an undergraduate because of the intimacy it seeks with its listeners by way of live broadcasting, and because of its modern adaptation of a much older tradition of oral storytelling. Spitzer then focused his talk on the importance and connection of American “roots” and “routes” — roots being the spiritual and emotional art that represents the "soul" of a culture, and routes being the “metaphor of motion” that describes how such arts bring a people together. Throughout the event, Spitzer demonstrated the power of music in the American cultural imagination by playing short clips of blues, soul, jazz and pairing them with stories about musicians such as Ray Charles, Willy Nelson, and even Mayor Michael Nutter, and national catastrophes such as Hurricane Katrina.

April 10, 2013: Ariel Djanikian

Ariel Djanikian graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2004 and holds an MFA in fiction writing from the University of Michigan. She lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, with her husband and daughter. The Office of Mercy is her first novel. www.arieldjanikian.com

February 20, 2013: Dan Fishback

2012-13 Penn ArtsEdge Resident Dan Fishback has been writing and performing in New York City since 2003. Major works include The Material World (2012), thirtynothing (2011) and You Will Experience Silence (2009), all directed by Stephen Brackett at Dixon Place. Fishback has received grants from the Franklin Furnace Fund (2010) and the Six Points Fellowship for Emerging Jewish Artists (2007-2009). He is a resident artist at the University of Pennsylvania (2012-2013) and at the Hemispheric Institute for Performance & Politics at NYU (2012), and has enjoyed previous residencies at BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange (2010-2012), Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony. Also a performing songwriter, Fishback began his music career in the East Village's anti-folk scene. His band, Cheese On Bread, has toured Europe and North America in support of their two full-length albums, "Maybe Maybe Maybe Baby" (2004) and "The Search for Colonel Mustard" (2007), the latter of which was re-issued in Japan in 2010 on Moor Works Records. As a solo artist, Fishback has released several recordings, including "Sweet Chastity" (2005, produced by César Alvarez of The Lisps), and his latest, "The Mammal Years" (2012, produced by Casey Holford). He was a member of the movement troupe Underthrust, which collaborated with songwriter Kimya Dawson on several performances and videos. Fishback frequently teaches workshops on performance composition and queer performance culture. He blogs at thematerialworld.tumblr.com; his regular website is danfishback.com.

Max Steele is a performer and writer. He has presented work at the New Museum, Rapture Cafe, Deitch Projects, Envoy Enterprises, and the Queens Museum of Art. He writes the psychedelic porno poetry zine Scorcher, and is an Artist in Residence at Brooklyn Arts Exchange.

Erin Markey creates conceptual musical performances for stage and video. She is the recipient of NYFA's 2012 Cutting Edge Artist Fund Grant, and has presented work at venues around the world, including Joe's Pub (The Public Theater), P.S. 122, San Francisco Film Society and The New Museum. She has toured the United States with the Sister Spit Tour and The Sex Workers' Art Show. Markey is a company member of Half Straddle, has performed in Young Jean Lee's Theatre Company and starred in the NYC premiere of Tennessee Williams' Green Eyes (Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Performance by a Lead Actress).

February 6, 2013: Sensible Nonsense

In her eloquent introduction to this program Sensible Nonsense founder and former KWH work-study student Arielle Brousse reminded us of the legitimate artistry of our best-loved childhood stories — those books so captivating that you’d cart a picnic-basket’s worth of new ones home every week, so cherished that you thought about “losing” the library’s copy, or so resonant that you contemplated “potential misguided memorial tattoos” at the death of a favorite youth author. In this union of intelligent reflection and relatable nostalgia, it was clear that for these readers, children’s literature transcends its recommended age limits. Jess Bergman began with the origins of her love for “hurt-so-good catharsis,” The Velveteen Rabbit, while Isaac Kaplan invoked the power of oral storytelling by recounting his mother’s inventive “Pickle Car” saga about “an average, everyday, human-sized pickle” that just wanted to become a car. Chava Spivak-Brindorf traced her history of children’s-lit-derived lessons, lending insight into what Arielle called Chava’s “idealism that doesn’t wait around.” Victoria Ford described her very own “bad cases of stripes” (similar to the trials of lima-bean-loving Camilla Cream), and bonded with Penn professor Kathy DeMarco Van Cleve over South Carolina connections and young family members’ obsessions with Ninjago. The night concluded with an after-school-snack-laden reception. Get involved at http://sensiblenonsense.us.

February 5, 2013: Junior Fellow: Grace Ambrose

Junior Fellow Grace Ambrose invited 50 current and ex-Philadelphians to write about an object of their choice from the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Taking shape as an edition of 50 postcards, the writings will comprise an alternate history and guide to the museum's holdings, seen through the eyes of the artists, writers, musicians, and friends who live alongside them. At this launch event, learn about the conceptualization of this project, mail art, and the history of the postcard. Grace's presentation will be followed by a reading by CAConrad of his poetry inspired by paintings on view in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Contributors to "A People's Guide" include the following and more: Sam Allingham, Lily Applebaum, Rayne Betts, Robyn Campbell, Anthony Campuzano, Kristina Centore, CAConrad, Johann Diedrick, Julia Factorial, Becket Flannery, Lucy Gallun, Thomson Guster, Dylan Hansen-Fliedner, Josh Herren, Alex Klein, James La Marre, Mary Lattimore, Trisha Low, Egina Manachova, Alexis McCrimmon, Mike Mckee, Max McKenna, Steve McLaughlin, Linda Pastan, Rachel Pastan, Molly Seegers, Jon Shapiro, Alex Tyson, Laura Reeve, Nicholas Salvatore, Ingrid Schaffner, Herb Shellenberger, Frank Sherlock, Henry Steinberg, Zoe Strauss, Valeria Tsygankova, Catherine Turcich-Kealey, Alejandro Valdes, Michael Thomas Vassallo, Adelina Vlas, Artie Vierkant, Jenna Weiss, Sara Wilson, Dan Yemin, and Jeffrey Ziga.

The JUNIOR FELLOW AWARD is open to any recently graduated Penn student, especially students who have been deeply engaged with Penn's writing community. If you are graduating from Penn this year, or if you have graduated from Penn in the last two years, please consider applying for this small but very sweet fellowship. For more information, please visit: http://writing.upenn.edu/wh/involved/awards/juniorfellow/#apply

December 6, 2012: PENN APPÉTIT 5TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION

“It all started with my crush on Tom Devaney,” said Penn Appétit founder Emma Morgenstern at this celebration of the magazine’s fifth anniversary. It was in Devaney’s food writing class that the germ that sprouted Penn Appétit was planted for Morgenstern, whose reminiscences of photo shoots in “dirty, dirty Harrison” and moldy fudge hinted at the escapades and camaraderie that the PA staff shares. Since Morgenstern’s days, the magazine has garnered countless accolades – no surprise, said current editor Eesha Sardesai, “because everyone loves food” – thanks to an impressive lineage of editors-in-chief, all of whom returned for the night’s festivities. Following Morgenstern at the podium were Editor #2, Elise Dihlman-Maltzer, whose strategy was to make a point and retreat to let people get to the sensational reception food, and Editor #3, Alex Marcus, who, with a healthy dose of wonder, explained that not only does Penn Appétit surface in prospective students’ admissions essays, but that the food photographers at Cornell’s Crème de Cornell use “Penn Appétit” as an adjective to describe expert shots. The editors were reminded of the incredible talent that the magazine attracts as readings by Abigail Koffler, Monica Purmalek (reading Chelsea Goldinger), and Katie Behrman dazzled listeners with mouthwatering details on New York pizza, frozen chicken, and fresh French bread. Nicole Woon and Jillian De Filippo rounded out the literary portion with poems from multiple contributors on everything from the Lee Ahn Food Truck to the transcendence of Kool Aid, while Creative Director Maggie Edkins added that illustrations and cover photos associated with the magazine would be on display for all to salivate over.

November 15, 2012: Springsteen Fest

Al Filreis, Greg Djanikian, and Anthony DeCurtis join forces once again to bring us our second Song Symposium, this time on the works of Bruce Springsteen. One by one, this Writers House musical triumvirate and six of their friends will lead us through an analysis of a different song by New Jersey’s poet laureate. Like last year, you can expect a mix of crowd-pleasers and deep cuts as these nine cut loose and follow Bruce’s runaway body of work along all of its hairpin turns and detours, from Asbury Park to Nebraska, 57th Street to Highway 9.

October 27, 2012: Memoir Writing: Buzz Bissinger, Cynthia Kaplan, Beth Kephart, and James Martin

H.G. "Buzz" Bissinger is among the nation's most honored and distinguished writers. A native of New York City, Buzz is the winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the Livingston Award, the American Bar Association Silver Gavel Award and the National Headliners Award, among others. He also was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. He is the author of four highly acclaimed nonfiction books: Friday Night Lights, A Prayer for the City, Three Nights in August, and his newest, Father's Day, his memoir about his twin sons. Born 13 weeks premature in 1983 and weighing less than two pounds, Bissinger's sons have lived diametrically opposed lives. After obtaining his master's in education from the University of Pennsylvania, Gerry is now a public school teacher while Zach, because of oxygen deprivation at birth, suffered trace brain damage and struggles every day with enormous learning disabilities.

Cynthia Kaplan is the author of two collections of humorous essays, "Why I'm Like This: True Stories" and "Leave the Building Quickly." Her humor pieces have appeared in many newspapers, magazines and anthologies. She is the the co-host, with CBS Sunday Morning's Nancy Giles, of the comedy anthology series The New Jack Paar Show and has appeared in comedy and rock clubs throughout the country. She has written for film and television and recently released a comedy album, Fangry. She has never appeared on Law & Order.

Beth Kephart is the award-winning author of fourteen books—five memoirs, a book of history and prose poetry, a corporate fable, and seven young adult novels. Three more books are set for release in 2013, including Handling the Truth (Gotham), a book about the making of memoir, and its consequences. Kephart teaches creative nonfiction at Penn during the spring semesters, is the strategic writing partner in a boutique communications firm, and reviews widely. Her book blog, beth-kephart.blogspot.com, has twice been named a top author blog by the BBAW. Her essays are widely anthologized. Kepharts most recent book, Small Damages, a novel set in southern Spain, was released this past summer by Philomel to starred reviews.

James Martin, SJ, is a Jesuit priest, contributing editor at America, the national Catholic magazine, and author of several books, including The New York Times bestseller The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything, and My Life with the Saints and Between Heaven and Mirth, both named by Publishers Weekly as "Best Books" of the Year. He is a frequent commentator in the media on matters of religion and spirituality, and has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. He has appeared in venues as diverse as NPR's "Fresh Air with Terry Gross," PBS's "Newshour with Jim Lehrer" and Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report." Before entering the Jesuits in 1988, Father Martin graduated from Penn's Wharton School of Business and worked for six years in corporate finance. During his Jesuit training he worked at a hospice for the sick and dying in Jamaica run by Mother Teresa's sisters, with street-gang members in the housing projects of Chicago, and for two years in Nairobi, Kenya, helping East African refugees start small businesses.

October 3, 2012: A Performance by Caroline Rothstein

Caroline Rothstein is a New York City-based writer, performer, and eating disorder recovery advocate, who specializes in spoken word poetry, theater, creative nonfiction, journalism, and performance art. She has performed and facilitated workshops at poetry venues, theaters, colleges, universities, schools, and organizations around the United States for more than a decade. A longtime activist for eating disorder recovery, she hosts the widely viewed YouTube video-blog "Body Empowerment," sharing her own recovery story as a means to promote positive body image worldwide. Since 2000, she has served as a Resource Person for the National Association for Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders (ANAD), and currently sits on the Board of Directors for the NORMAL nonprofit organization. Her award-winning one-woman play "faith" about her experience with and recovery from an eating disorder debuted as part of Culture Project's Women Center Stage 2012 Festival, and received Outstanding Overall Production of a Solo Show in the 2012 Planet Connections Theatre Festivity.

Caroline was a member of the 2010 Nuyorican Poets Cafe slam team, which placed second at Poetry Slam Incorporated's National Poetry Slam 2010. A former member of and director for The Excelano Project, a nationally-acclaimed spoken word poetry organization at the University of Pennsylvania, she was the 2004 and 2006 UPenn Grand Slam Champion, a five-time College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational finalist, and helped coach the UPenn slam team to CUPSI championships in 2007 and 2009. Upon graduating in 2006, Caroline was honored for her work with an event in her name at the Kelly Writers House called "The Caroline Rothstein Annual Oral Poetry Event." As a poet and journalist, Caroline has been published in various literary journals, anthologies, and publications, and self-published three books of poetry: After Leo Tolstoy 2011), This Book Wrote Itself (2009), and What I Learned in College (2006). She has a B.A. in classical studies from the University of Pennsylvania, and an M.S. from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism.

September 19, 2012: Careers in Journalism and New Media

Ruth Davis Konigsberg (C'90): Senior Editor at Time magazine, author of The Truth About Grief (Simon & Schuster), former editor at Glamour and New York, and former contributing writer at Elle and New York Observer.

Matt Flegenheimer (C'11): reporter, New York Times; freelance writer, SportsIllustrated.com; Nora Prize winner.

Melody Kramer (C'06): associate producer, "Fresh Air;" freelance writer, National Geographic; former producer at "Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me;" Kroc Fellow at NPR; Nora Prize winner.

Eliot Kaplan (C'78): executive director and talent acquisition for Hearst Magazines; former editor-in-chief Philadelphia magazine and managing editor GQ.

Stephen Fried (C'79): author; lecturer, CPCW; adjunct professor, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism; former senior writer and editor, Philadelphia; former contributing editor Vanity Fair, GQ, Glamour, Ladies Home Journal.

September 11, 2012: New Queer Jewish Writing: Dan Fishback and Ezra Berkley Nepon

Dan Fishback (C'03) is the 2012-2013 ArtsEdge Resident at the University of Pennsylvania. He has been writing and performing in New York City since 2003. Major works include The Material World (2012), thirtynothing (2011) and You Will Experience Silence (2009), all directed by Stephen Brackett at Dixon Place. Fishback has received grants from the Franklin Furnace Fund (2010) and the Six Points Fellowship for Emerging Jewish Artists (2007-2009). He is a resident artist at the Hemispheric Institute for Performance & Politics at NYU (2012), and has enjoyed previous residencies at BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange (2010-2012), Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony. Previous works include No Direction Homo (P.S. 122, 2006), Please Let Me Love You (Dixon Place, 2006), Waiting for Barbara (Galapagos Art Space, 2006), boi with an i (Collective: Unconscious, 2004), and Assholes Speak Louder Than Words (Sidewalk Cafe, 2004). Also a performing songwriter, Fishback began his music career in the East Village's anti-folk scene. His band, Cheese On Bread, has toured Europe and North America in support of their two full-length albums, "Maybe Maybe Maybe Baby" (2004) and "The Search for Colonel Mustard" (2007), the latter of which was re-issued in Japan in 2010 on Moor Works Records. As a solo artist, Fishback has released several recordings, including "Sweet Chastity" (2005, produced by César Alvarez of The Lisps), and his latest, "The Mammal Years" (2012). He was a member of the movement troupe Underthrust, which collaborated with songwriter Kimya Dawson on several performances and videos. Fishback's essay, "Times Are Changing, Reb Tevye," was featured in the anthology "Mentsh: On Being Jewish & Queer" (Alyson Books, 2004). His visual installation, "Pen Pals," was featured in the 2011 Soho exhibition of the Pop-Up Museum of Queer History, for which he later served on the Selection Committee. Fishback frequently teaches workshops on performance composition and queer performance culture. He blogs at thematerialworld.tumblr.com; his regular website is www.danfishback.com. Before graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in 2003, Fishback wrote a weekly column for the Daily Pennsylvanian, was heavily involved in anti-war activism, and organized events at Kelly Writers House.

Ezra Berkley Nepon is a West Philadelphian writer, performer, and organizer. Nepon recently returned from an East and West Coast tour with her new book Justice, Justice Shall You Pursue: A History of New Jewish Agenda, published by Thread Makes Blanket Press and distributed by AK Press. Other creations include the full-length play Between Two Worlds: Who Loved You Before You Were Mine which used themes from The Dybbuk to think about relationships between queer generations in the wake of the AIDS epidemic ("a love letter to the ghosts among us"), and Little Orphan Gender Revolutionary Annie – a 4-act song-cycle about the gender binary oppression of the girls' orphanage, told through toy theater/green screen magic. Nepon is pursuing an MA in Goddard College's Transformative Language Arts Program, and working on a thesis about New Yiddish Theater-maker Jenny Romaine and radical faerie theater-troupe The Eggplant Faerie Players. Visit: www.ezraberkleynepon.wordpress.com.

April 26, 2012: Genji Amino

Junior Fellow and Penn alum, Genji Amino came to the Writers House to read his poetry. Jessica Lowenthal's introduction focused on the competitiveness of becoming a Junior Fellow, the ways in which Amino's project was transformed from a discussion with Penn students to a conversation with Philadelphians, and on Amino's character as a man of communities and ideas. Amino's poetry reading toyed with language in unexpected and creative ways. As Lowenthal said of Amino in her introduction, a Junior Fellow prize is the Writers House's way of saying, "We want you to continue your writing life"; any reader of Amino's works would certainly say the same.

April 11, 2012: Travel Writing in the 21st Century: Rachel Friedman (C'03, G'07)

Distinguished travel writers David Farley, Matt Gross, and Penn alum, Rachel Friedman visited the Writers House to talk about travel writing in our modern world. The discussion was introduced and moderated by Penn professor and travel writer, Rolf Potts. These writers discussed their unique paths into travel writing, from books to freelance to individual areas of expertise they've honed throughout their journeys. Friedman, for example, took the "backwards" route, as she says: unlike many travel writers, she had her book, The Good Girl's Guide to Getting Lost, published before she went into freelance travel writing. The writers also chatted about the various misconceptions surrounding travel writers, the frugality travel writers come to know well, and the difficulties of traveling with other people when working on a creative piece.

April 9, 2012: Lew Schneider (C'83)

The Writers House was honored to welcome TV writer, Lew Schneider to the Kelly Writers House. Our own Kelly Diamond introduced him, noting that while he did not want to be framed as a Hollywood success story, she believes he's "pretty awesome". Schneider has won two Emmy awards, has twenty nine writing credits for Everybody Loves Raymond, and is a writer for the hit show, American Dad. Schneider spoke about his time at Penn, referencing that he ultimately "majored in Mask and Wig". He discussed his time practicing comedy, his move to Los Angeles, and the journey he took to becoming a sitcom writer. Joking on his path to success, in his own words: "if you love screwing around and you think you're great at it, sitcom writing might be the path". The audience had the treat of watching a few clips from Everybody Loves Raymond, as well as Schneider's commentary on how the writing process evolved for these hilarious episodes.

March 29, 2012: How to be a Famous Author: Lynn Rosen

Penn alum, Lynn Rosen visited the Kelly Writers House as part of the Kauders Series. Max McKenna introduced her, referring to her as a "book publishing guru", and noting her mentor-ship of young writers at the Writers House. Rosen spoke about her time spent as an editor, then a literary agent, then an editor again, then a writer, and so forth. After discussing all of the obstacles one faces as a writer, Rosen went on to share her coveted insights into the publishing world, in case, as she joked, she hadn't talked the audience out of becoming writers. She broke down the process a book goes through in publishing, beginning with the author and ending with the reader, in a practical chart for the audience to easily understand. Audience members asked many questions throughout the event, as they appreciated her candidness and useful advice on getting published.

March 27, 2012: Emergency Poetry Reading: Julia Bloch

Sarah Dowling introduced the last event in the Emergency Reading series. Penn alum and a founder of the Emergency Reading Series, Julia Bloch, was invited to share poetry from her book, Letters to Kelly Clarkson. Carolina Maugeri, an expert in mixed media art forms who Sarah and Julia had felt for a long time should be a part of Emergency Reading also read from her work, showing electronic slides of her poetry and art as well. A brief question and answer session followed, which noted both poets' dealings with pop culture, a mutual skepticism of American Idol, and an admiration for the each other's works. A gluten-free reception followed this insightful, memorable event, which concluded this important series in Kelly Writers House program history.

February 17, 2012: Howard Marks

Since the formation of Oaktree in 1995, Howard Marks has been responsible for ensuring the firm's adherence to its core investment philosophy, communicating closely with clients concerning products and strategies, and managing the firm. From 1985 until 1995, Mr. Marks led the groups at The TCW Group, Inc. that were responsible for investments in distressed debt, high yield bonds, and convertible securities. He was also Chief Investment Officer for Domestic Fixed Income at TCW. Previously, Mr. Marks was with Citicorp Investment Management for 16 years, where from 1978 to 1985 he was Vice President and senior portfolio manager in charge of convertible and high yield securities. Between 1969 and 1978, he was an equity research analyst and, subsequently, Citicorp's Director of Research. Mr. Marks holds a B.S.Ec. degree cum laude from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania with a major in Finance and an M.B.A. in Accounting and Marketing from the Graduate School of Business of the University of Chicago, where he received the George Hay Brown Prize. He is a CFA charterholder and a Chartered Investment Counselor.

February 9, 2012: Jewish Writers You Wish You Knew About: Andrew Zitcer (C'00, MA'04)

CURF Summer Intern, Alexa Bryn put together a program of seven students and faculty members, who each discussed a Jewish writer you've probably never heard of that they think you should know more about. Adriel Koschitzsky, Sam Apple, Sarah Gracombe, Al Filreis, Kate Herzlin, Max Apple and Penn alum, Andrew Zitcer each had approximately seven minutes to speak. Each of these presenters gave background on their respective writers, and then shared some of their work with the audience. Topics and reactions spanned across a wide spectrum, from audience members singing along to Avrom Goldfaden's lullaby "Rozhinkes Mit Mandlen" to Al Filreis giving a heartfelt analysis of Primo Levi's The Periodic Table, a core book in his Holocaust class and one of his favorite books of all time. Such an inspiring evening of Jewish writers could only be rivaled by the reception, which featured a spread of some favorite Jewish foods!

November 5, 2011: Veronica Jurkiewicz (C'04) and Cheryl J. Family (C'91): the Creative Economy

As part of the Creative Ventures program, Cinema Studies and English professor, Peter DeCherney moderated this event focusing on creativity and how it drives the American economy. The panel guests were varied experts in the field, and included: 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. As the event was held on Homecoming Weekend, many parents attended the discussion, and were interested to learn about the value of non profit, the necessity for creativity in fields outside of the arts, as well as research within the artistic world.

October 27, 2011: Thomson Guster (C'10): Fiction Flash Mob

Thomson Guster is a writer and the editor of Heat Map, a magazine of fictional music writing. His first published work is forthcoming in Strange Attractors: Investigations in Non-Humanoid Extraterrestrial Sexualities. Devoted to loosening up the concept of fiction and exploring the territory between game design and conceptually-driven process writing, Thomson is excited to see what comes out of Flash Fiction Flash Mob.

September 20, 2011: Careers in Journalism and New Media

Stephen Fried (C'79, 34th Street co-editor '77-'78) is an adjunct professor at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and the author of five acclaimed books, including Appetite for America: Fred Harvey and the Business of Civilizing the West—One Meal at a Time (which the Wall Street Journal named one of the Top Ten Books of 2010) and Thing of Beauty: The Tragedy of Supermodel Gia (which introduced the word "fashionista" into the English language.) A two-time winner of the National Magazine Award, Fried has written for Vanity Fair, GQ, The Washington Post Magazine, Rolling Stone, Glamour, Ladies' Home Journal, Parade and Philadelphia Magazine. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife, author Diane Ayres.

Eliot Kaplan is the Executive Director, Talent Acquisition for Hearst Magazines, a unique position of scouting and recruiting the world's top editors, writers and art directors for the company's 19 magazines and start-up ventures. These magazines include Cosmopolitan, Esquire, Elle and O:The Oprah Magazine. His role includes career development, succession planning, new-project evaluation, compensation overview and process streamlining. Prior to this job, Kaplan had a distinguished career in magazine editing. In his seven years as editor-in-chief, Philadelphia Magazine won two National Magazine Awards (the field's Pulitzer)and was nominated a total of five times, including, for the first time in the magazine's history, in the General Excellence category. Before joining Philadelphia, Kaplan was managing editor of Gentlemen's Quarterly. As the No. 2 editor to Art Cooper, in charge of story assignment, editing and personnel, he helped transform the Conde Nast publication into one of the most influential and successful magazines in the country. Kaplan, who graduated from Penn in 1978, was a co-editor of 34th Street, a sports writer and op-ed columnist.

Melody Joy Kramer graduated from Penn in 2006 with a degree in English. While at Penn, she edited and wrote for the Punch Bowl Humor Magazine and wrote a weekly humor column in the Daily Pennsylvanian. After graduating, she became a Kroc Fellow at NPR in Washington DC, where she learned reporting, producing, booking and audio-editing skills. She then moved to Chicago, where for almost two years, she directed, wrote for and helped produce Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, NPR's humor show. Mel then moved back to Philadelphia and started working at Fresh Air with Terry Gross. She currently helps produce the radio show and writes/produces all of Fresh Air's web content.

Randall Lane is the editor of Forbes Magazine. Previously, he was editor-at-large at Newsweek and The Daily Beast, CEO and editor-in-chief of Doubledown Media, where he founded or relaunched six magazines, including Trader Monthly, Dealmaker, and Private Air, and co-founder and editor-in-chief of P.O.V. magazine, which was Adweek's "Startup of the Year." A National Magazine Award finalist, he has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Vanity Fair and was the Washington bureau chief for Forbes. He is the author of The Zeroes: My Misadventures in the Decade Wall Street Went Insane.

Ashley Parker graduated from Penn in 2005, where she majored in English (Creative Writing concentration) and Communications. She wrote for The Daily Pennsylvanian, where she was the Assignments and Features Editor, as well as for 34th Street, where she was the Features Editor. During college, she interned at the New York Sun and The Gaithersburg Gazette. After graduating, she worked as New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd's research assistant, freelancing for every section of the paper during her five years with Maureen in the DC Buro. She became a full-time reporter for the Times last fall, moved to New York to work on the Metro desk, and recently started as a campaign reporter for the 2012 presidential election. Her photos have appeared in Vanity Fair ndash;a combination of luck and right place, right time prevailing over minimal talent.

September 15, 2011: Alicia Oltuski (C'06, G'06)

Alicia Oltuski, Penn alum and author of Precious Objects , spoke at the Writers House on a September Thursday. Max Apple's introduction referenced cherished memories of her as a student in his classes, speaking highly of her personality, high ambitions and impressive skills as a writer. Ms. Oltuski then read from her beautifully written book, which examines her own family history, and eloquently matches her family's workings in the diamond business with a need to be protective over one's own family. She answered questions regarding the line between fiction and nonfiction, the musicality of her language, and how long she had known she would be a writer instead of going into the diamond dealing business herself. The literary world is certainly better off for her choice to pursue writing over diamonds.

May 14, 2011: Jennifer Egan (C'85) and Sam Donsky (C'07): Alumni Authors Spotlight

Writers and Penn alums, Jennifer Egan and Sam Donsky came to the Writers House to read excerpts from their writings. English professor, Greg Djanikian introduced Sam, saying that Donsky's work can, "enlarge our notions of what poetry and high discourse can be." Donsky, in return, said that he wouldn't be writing poetry if it weren't for Greg. He also thanked Jennifer Egan for being a generous mentor, and the Writers House which he says he couldn't imagine his life without. After Donsky read some of his movie-titled poetry, English professor, Karen Rile introduced Egan, whose work she said she read for pleasure before she knew Egan was ever a Penn student. Having written works across multiple genres, Egan is a Pulitzer Prize winner who said that Penn has helped to shape her. The audience had the pleasure of hearing her read from the first chapter of her most recent book, A Visit from the Goon Squad.

April 11, 2011: Arielle Brousse (C'07) and Lee Huttner (C'10): 7-Up on Seven

In Seven-Up's Seventh Annual event, seven Penn folks spoke for approximately seven minutes each on topics relating, appropriately enough, to the number seven. This particular Seven-Up included two Penn alums: Lee Huttner on Dante's Magnificent Seven; and Arielle Brousse on the Seven Deadly Sins. Other topics and speakers in this event included Zach Carduner on his experience riding Septa’s #7 bus, Randall Couch on the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove, Tim Corrigan quizzing the audience on sevens in film, Eric Karlan on sevens in baseball, and the world premiere screening of a film by seven-year old McCreary twins, Caleb and Malcolm. In typical Writers House style, the event was followed by a seven-themed reception of foods, including seven layer dip, seven different types of fruits, and so on.

April 7, 2011: Thomson Guster (C'10): Junior Fellows Presentation

The Kelly Writers House celebrates Gertrude Stein with "Nothing Elegent – A Stein Celebration." In true salon fashion, this event will feature a variety of "acts" – Stein read aloud, musical performances, interactive theater, academic engagement, visual arts and special "historical" guests. A reception to follow will feature foods from the time, including recipes from the Alice B. Toklas Cookbook. This is a community event, and we want to invoke the creative spirit of that time period, so all ideas and people are welcome.

April 5, 2011: Marilyn Johnson (C'76): CPCW literary journalism program

Join us for a roundtable discussion of work by Kimberly Eisler (C'11) and Maggie McGrath (C'11), winners of the 2010-2011 CPCW Literary Journalism Fellowship: "The Stock in Bonds: The Fraternal Roots of Wall Street" (by Kim Eisler) and "The Long and Rusty Road: New York City's High Line made it look easy, but converting old rails into soaring urban parks is a tough job" (by Maggie McGrath). Joining the discussion will be: journalists and guest editors Marilyn Johnson (C'76) and Kate Buford.

April 2, 2011: Suzanne Maynard Miller (C'89): Playwriting workshop

Suzanne Maynard Miller's plays include Young Love, Flirting With the Deep End (Dramatic Publishing, 2007); Beatrice; The Handwriting, the Soup, and the Hats; and Abigail’s Atlas. Her work has been produced in Los Angeles, Seattle, Providence, New Haven and at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

Maynard Miller has taught playwriting and expository writing at Brown University and at the Rhode Island School of Design. She has been an artist-in-residence at public schools in Seattle, Providence, Brooklyn, and the Bronx and a playwright-in-residence at Annex Theater in Seattle, where she was a company member from 1989-1996. Maynard Miller has also led playwriting workshops for incarcerated women and was a founding member of Kidswrite, a Seattle-based literacy program for fifth graders. Currently, she teaches in the English Department at the New York City College of Technology/CUNY.

A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania (BA, 1989), Maynard Miller received her MFA in playwriting from Brown University in 1998. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two daughters.

March 14, 2011: Nina Godiwalla

Wharton alum Nina Godiwalla was introduced by Mingo Reynolds for her visit to the Writers House. Nina talked about her time at Wharton, traveling across the bridge to the Kelly Writers House to work on her writing while feeling torn between the creative and business worlds. Later, after working on Wall Street and experiencing its sexist environment, she realized that she had a story to tell. As a second generation American, she had a unique perspective on trying to achieve the American dream. In this fascinating lunch talk, she also discussed her unusual route to publishing her book, Suits: A Woman on Wall Street (which some describe as theThe Devil Wears Prada of investment banking), the legal issues she has faced for writing it, as well as her family's view on her choice to pursue writing rather than to stay in the business world. Godiwalla is the founder of MindWorks, which trains business professionals in meditation and stress management.

February 22, 2011: Stephanie Sherman

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

    • Having graduated Penn in 2003, alum Stephanie Sherman visited the Writers House to talk about her thrift-store-turned-living-museum, Elsewhere. Erin Gautsche introduced Ms. Sherman, as this was the first event in the Creative Ventures program which Erin spearheaded. Ms. Sherman discussed her time at Penn romanticizing about being a writer, and how some practice with collaborative fiction and a spring break visit to North Carolina shaped her future career. Utilizing her friend's grandmother's thrift store, she and her friend founded Elsewhere as a space to play, experiment, and invite artists to live in residencies. The audience was naturally very curious about this innovative idea, asking about the closed system model of the living museum, as well as how materials could become part of the set. These questions also led Sherman to discuss the performance theatre in what they do, and how they look to interact with the community.

    March 30, 2010: Kathy DeMarco (C'88)

    A celebration of the publication of "Drizzle."

    March 29, 2010: Jo Piazza (C'02)

    A lunchtime discussion with Nate Chinen about his award-winning jazz and pop writing.

    March 25, 2010: Nate Chinen (C'97)

    A lunchtime conversation of Jo Piazza's upcoming book and her contributions to New York Daily News, CNN, Fox News, AOL, Slate, and The Daily Beast.

    March 3, 2010: Doug Glanville

    A lunch talk with sportswriter Doug Glanville about sports, his career, and his contributions to ESPN, New York Times, and various other publications.

    February 25, 2010: Howard Marks (W'67)

    A discussion Howard Marks' distinguished career in the financial industry and his widely-read memos.

    January 25, 2010: John Carroll (C'05)

    A taping of WXPN radio program LIVE at the Writers House discussing Carroll's new collaborative effort Philly Fiction 2.

    November 19, 2009: Greg Maughan (C'06)

    A panel discussion featuring local Philadelphia comedians and comedy writers - along with a special guest or two - discuss the day to day aspects of trying to do.

    November 9, 2009: Lisa DePaulo (C'82)

    A lunch discussion of Lisa DePaulo's career as a political writer and GQ correspondent.

    November 7, 2009: Next page in book publishing: Buzz Bissinger (C'77), Dennis Drabelle (G'66, L'69), Matthew Algeo, (C'88), David Borgenicht (C'90), and Stephen Fried (C'79)

    Readings by top alumni non-fiction writers followed by a provocative panel discussion about the future of the book business and ambitious writing.

    October 5, 2009: Becca Kantor

    Returning to the Writers House just one semester after she graduated, Becca Kantor joined us to interrupt our Monday blues with fantastical descriptions of “an island with [a] limestone castle,” something which had held a “firm grip in [her]…imagination” since early childhood. Becca had the opportunity to make this fantasy her reality for a summer when the Writers House sponsored her trip to the Baltic, enabling her to uncover details about her grandfather, Louis I. Kahn’s, young life there. Before beginning her formal presentation, Becca gave a shout-out to the fabulous meal Erin Gautsche had cooked for the event. “Estonian food,” she mused. “How fun!” With the prospect of a full stomach, she walked us through the regional and family history uncovered during her travels, as well as many of the sites themselves. These included old family residences, museums, and photographs, all of which she used to aid and inspire her culminating project: a novel about her grandfather’s origins. Quoting him, she read to the audience, “I'm always looking for a source, a beginning. I like English history, I have volumes of it, but I've never read anything but the first volume...my only real purpose is to read volume zero which, of course, has not yet been written.” Accordingly, Becca’s “idea to create a novel based on Lou's relationship with Estonia, in a sense, was an attempt to write Lou's own volume zero… Like Lou,” she continued, “I believe that beginnings have the potential to shape the nature of a thing or person." Certainly, we feel privileged to have been exposed to this project in its beginning—and are confident that the form it takes will be just as fascinating as its content, whatever shape that may be.

    2008-2009

    May 16: Nick Spitzer (C'72)

    A presentation of "American Routes: Songs and Stories from the Road."

    April 23: Matthew Abess (C'08)

    A lunchtime discussion of The Topography of Testimony with students and friends of the Writers House.

    April 7, 14: Wystan Curnow

    Wynstan Curnow discussed an exhibit he is currently curating of works by four international painters, called "Let Us Possess One World," as well as his role as an advisor/collaborator to the New Zealand conceptual artist Billy Apple. He participated in an episode of PoemTalk and gave a presentation on curating as a cultural practice. He came back a week later to read some of his work at the Writers House.

    November 1: Extreme Sportswriting with Stefan Fatsis (C'85), Buzz Bissinger (C'77), Jon Wertheim (Law '97), and Stephen Fried (C'79)

    A raucous, full-contact panel discussion about the future of sports and journalism.

    October 3: Gerald M. Stern (W'58)

    A discussion of his new book, The Scotia Widows: Inside Their Lawsuit Against Big Daddy Coal.

    September 25: Ellen Yin (W'87, WG'93)

    A conversation about Ellen Yin's restaurant Fork and her new cookbook Folklore.

    2007-2008

    May 17: Christina Davis (C'93, G'93), Michael Jennings (C'71), Jay Rogoff (C'75), and J. Allyn Rosser (C'88 GR'91)

    A poetry reading featuring former students of Penn Professor Dan Hoffman.

    April 22: Moira Moody (C'06)

    A presentation and discussion based on a "scrapbook of Philadelphia" created by alumna Moira Moody.

    April 17: Monica Weymouth (C'07)

    A discussion of the present and future of the THE PHILADELPHIA CITY PAPER, independent journalism outlet for over 26 years.

    April 16: Deb Burnham (G'76, GR'89)

    A reading of Old English poems and new poems inspired by Old English.

    April 11: Randi Hutter Epstein (C'84)

    A lunch discussion with Randi Hutter Epstein, MD, an adjunct professor of journalism at the The Graduate School of Journalism, Columbia University as well as a medical journalist who has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Daily Telegraph and several national magazines.

    April 10: Caroline Tiger (C'96)

    A lunch talk with Caroline Tiger, freelance journalist and author and a former managing editor of Philadelphia magazine.

    April 4: Kate Lee (C'99)

    A lunch conversation with Kate Lee, who has been at ICM for six years and has worked with several high profile clients in her tenure.

    March 26: Julie Buxbaum (C'99)

    Julie Buxbaum is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard Law School. After practicing law in both New York and Los Angeles, she quit her job as a litigator to write full time, and joined us for a mentor lunch program to discuss her projects.

    March 3: Dan McQuade (C'04) and Matt Rosenbaum (C'06)

    Alumn Dan McQuade and Matt Rosenbaum joined us for our annual 7 up program, on rock, contributing a commentary on Rock, Papers, Scissors and a reading of the Rocky Horror Picture Show, respectively.

    February 28: Beth Kephart (C'82)

    Co-sponsored by the Creative Writing program, local, critically acclaimed author Beth Kephart joined us for a lunch conversation.

    February 27: Nancy Cordes (C'95)

    Dick Polman hosted a lunch talk with journalist and Penn alumna Nancy Cordes.

    October 26: Randi Hutter Epstein

    A lunch discussion with Randi Hutter Epstein, MD, an adjunct professor of journalism at the The Graduate School of Journalism, Columbia University as well as a medical journalist who has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Daily Telegraph and several national magazines.

    October 23: Ariel Djanikian (C'04), Phil Sandick (C'03), Alicia Oltuski (C'06), and Yona Silverman (C'06)

    Former students of beloved writing professor Max Apple Ariel Djanikian, Phil Sandick, Alicia Oltuski, and Yona Silverman, followed by Max himself, joined us for toasts and read excerpts from his new book The Jew of Home Depot and Other Stories.

    October 20: Michael Bamberger (C'82), Cynthia Kaplan (C'85), and Stephen Fried (C'79)

    A panel discussion of three nationally-known alumni authors discussing personal writing and reading from their new memoirs

    October 5: Lynn Rosen

    A lunch with Lynn Rosen who has had a wide-ranging twenty-plus year career in book publishing as an editor, literary agent, book packager, and author.

    2006-2007

    September 13: Greg Manning

    a lunch program with alumnus, memoirist, and former Daily Pennsylvanian Executive Editor Greg Manning. He has worked as a reporter, an editor, and in senior marketing positions in the financial information industry at Telerate Systems Incorporated, as a Partner at Market Data Corporation, and as a Senior Vice President of Euro Brokers, which was based at the World Trade Center

    September 14: Jennifer Egan

    A reading and conversations with novelist and journalist, Jennifer Egan. Finalist for the National Book Award, she has published short fiction in The New Yorker, Harper's, Zoetrope and Ploughshares, among others, and her journalism appears frequently in The New York Times Magazine.

    September 23: Clarissa Sligh

    A roundtable discussion about bookmaking and collection. Clarissa Sligh discusses making photographic based images, artists' books' and text based installations

    October 4: Judith Rodin

    A discussion with the first Penn alumna - and the first woman - to be named President of the University. Judith Rodin is currently President of the Rockefeller Foundation, which works to expand opportunities for the disadvantaged, and has published more than 200 articles and chapters in academic publications and authored or co-authored eleven books.

    October 10: Maury Povich (C'62)

    A celebration of Dick Polman's appointment as Povich Writer-in-Residence at the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing, honoring donor and tv personality, Maury Povich.

    October 28: Jean Chatzky (C'86), Lisa DePaulo (C'82), Buzz Bissinger (C'76), Stephen Fried (C'79)

    The Kelly Writers House community is proud to present its second annual Homecoming Celebration of Alumni Nonfiction Writers! This year features a panel discussion on "The Real Life of a Non-Fiction Writer.

    November 30: Cassidy Hartmann (C'05), Dan McQuade (C'04)

    Hosted by Anthony DeCurtis, this event featured writers from Philadelphia Weekly, including columnist Cassidy Harman and award-winning blogger Daniel McQuade.

    February 7: Nate Chinen (C'97)

    Formerly the Assistant Coordinater here at the Writer's House, music critic Nate Chinen participated in a conversation with Gary Giddins. Nate has contributed to the New York Times, the Jazz Times, Weekend America, as well as a nationally syndicated radio program and various other publications.

    February 19: Jack Truten (GR'93)

    A discussion of narrative medicinde presented by Word.doc.

    February 20: Greg Djanikian (C'71)

    Book release of Greg Djanikian's poetry collection So I Will Till the Ground. Djanikian is Director of the Creative Writing Program.

    February 22: Jamie-Lee Josselyn (C'05)

    Memoirist and hub member Jamie Lee Josselyn contributed to the annual 7-Up program in 2007 on the topic of "bitter".

    March 29: Hank Herman (C'71)

    Prize-winning juvenile fiction writer Hank Herman discussed how he found himself as a kids' sports fiction novelist after being a career magazine editor, humorist, and non-fiction writer; how to use your own experiences as material for great kids' fiction books; how to stick to a kid's point-of-view in your writing -- and other elements of the craft of juvenile fiction writing

    April 9: Lee Eisenberg (C'68 ASC'70)

    Lee Eisenberg served as editor in chief at Esquire before overseeing creative development at TIME magazine. He joined us for a rountable discussion with Daniel Okrent and CPCW Literary Journalism Fellowships.

    May 12: Michael Hyde (C'95), Courtney Zoffness (C'00), Laura Dave (C'98)

    These three former Penn students joined us on alumni weekend for a Celebration of Young Alumni Fiction Writers.

    2005-2006

    April 26, 2006: Greg Manning

    A lunchtime conversation with Greg Manning, author of the New York Times bestseller, LOVE, GREG & LAUREN: A Powerful True Story of Courage, Hope, and Survival.

    November 19, 2005: Dan Fishback

    Dan Fishback, a performance artist/singer-songwriter from New York City, will present "PLEASE LET ME LOVE YOU", a one-man show about "finding love in every evil and evil in every love."

    November 16, 2005: Wyatt Mason

    A Rimbaud translation event featuring Seth Whidden and Penn alumnus Wyatt Mason. Modern Library has published, in three volumes, Mason's translations of the complete works of Arthur Rimbaud.

    November 5, 2005: Buzz Bissinger, Stefan Fatsis, Stephen Fried, Lisa Green, Eliot Kaplan, and Richard Stevenson

    In honor of Homecoming, the Writers House presents its first annual celebration of alumni nonfiction writers. A panel of nonfiction writers including Buzz Bissinger, Stefan Fatsis, Stephen Fried, Lisa Green, and Richard Stevenson discusses some of the legal and ethical controversies facing journalism and the future of nonfiction writing. Eliot Kaplan will give a short presentation about the Nora Magid Prize after the panel discussion.

    November 1, 2005: Susan Senator

    Susan Senator will host a reading and conversation in the Arts Cafe.

    2004-2005

    May 14, 2005: Jennifer Egan (C'85), Jeanne Murray Walker (GR'74), Greg Djanikian (C'71)

    A Celebration of Penn's Creative Writing Program

    A reading and celebration of Penn's Creative Writing Program and the generations of student and alumni writers who have found their voices within it! The program features three alumni of the program: Jennifer Egan, Jeanne Murray Walker, Greg Djanikian; and three undergraduate creative writers: Lindsey Palmer, Sam Donsky, and Jamie-Lee Josselyn. The reading is hosted by poet and Director of Penn's Creative Writing Program Gregory Djanikian (C'71).

    April 15, 2005: John Dorst (GR'83)

    The Ethnographic Writing Workshop Series presents "Stitching Up the Shallow Body: Metaphor, Theory, and the Poetics of Ethnography," with John Dorst

    Since completion of his graduate training in folklore/folklife, first at U.C. Berkeley (M.A. 1977) and then at the University of Pennsylvania (PhD 1983), John Dorst has been on the English Department and American Studies faculties at the University of Wyoming. His current research is concerned with the production and vernacular display of animal artifacts (e.g. animal trophies and other taxidermy), and with theoretical issues raised in doing ethnographic work on this topic. This research grows partly out of a museum exhibition, "Framing the Wild: Animals on Display", that he curated in 2002/03 for the University Art Museum and the Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson, WY. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002 in support of this research and is now working on a book. His books include Looking West(University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999) and The Written Suburb: An American Site, An Ethnographic Dilemma (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989).

    February 20, 2005: Nate Chinen (C'97)

    "Myself Among Others": Co-writing Jazz History: a conversation and reading with George Wein and Nate Chinen

    In addition to coauthoring the award-winning autobiography Myself Among Others, Nate Chinen is a columnist for JazzTimes magazine, a regular reviewer for the Village Voice, and the resident jazz critic for Weekend America, a syndicated public radio program. He's also a Penn English alumnus (Creative Writing with Poetry Emphasis) and a former Assistant Coordinator of the Kelly Writers House.

    December 13, 2004: Peter Nichols, John Prendergast (C'80)

    LIVE at the Writers House, "Writers at Work at Penn"

    Peter Nichols has worked at Penn for nearly 23 years. Currently, he is the editor of Penn Arts & Sciences Magazine, the alumni publication of the School of Arts and Sciences. Before that, he was a staff writer for Penn's Institute for Research on Higher Education, where he wrote reports for the Pew Higher Education Roundtable as well as case studies, proposals, and other materials. Peter is a Penn alumnus and earned his degree from the College of General Studies, taking advantage of the university's tuition benefit while working full time at Biddle Law Library. He is also a freelance writer--not to mention a husband and a dad of two boys.

    John Prendergast has published a novel, JUMP, and has had stories in magazines including Glimmer Train, The Bridge, The Ledge, and The Painted Bride Quarterly. As a journalist, he has written and/or edited articles on hunting dogs for the American Kennel Club's newspaper; on business and management issues for Pennsylvania Outlook and the Wharton Magazine; and on the environment, transportation, bridges and buildings, and other engineering-related subjects for Civil Engineering Magazine. He is currently editor of The Pennsylvania Gazette, the alumni magazine of the University of Pennsylvania.

    November 16, 2004: Hank Herman (C'71)

    Writing Fiction for Kids: A lunchtime conversation with Hank Herman; and Writing Your Own Column for Newspapers and Magazines

    Hank Herman is the author of Super Hoops, a prize-winning series of 15 basketball novels for kids published by Bantam Doubleday Dell. His other books for the juvenile market include Spin A Sport, a collection of sports stories and games published by Innovative Kids, and Marked Man And Other Soccer Stories, published by Roxbury Park/Lowell House. He is also an award-winning newspaper columnist: "The Home Team," his column in the Westport News, has taken several top honors from both the New England Press Association and the Connecticut Press Club. He writes primarily about sports and kids, and his work has appeared in national publications including The New York Times, Outside, Men's Health, Men's Fitness, Family Fun, Parenting, Ladies' Home Journal, and McCall's.

    November 9, 2004: Lisa Scottoline (C'77, L'81)

    The Fifth Annual Gay Talese Lecture, featuring author and Penn alumnus Lisa Scottoline, presented by the Writers House in conjunction with the National Italian American Foundation

    Lisa loves her job and it shows in her writing. Her bestselling novels, set in Philadelphia and featuring the all-female law firm of Rosato & Associates, have thrilled and entertained readers while succeeding in the near impossible... adding humor to the legal system. USA Today hails her writing as "sharp, intelligent, funny, and hip" and says that she "gives fans of legal thrillers a good, twisty plot, lively characters, and an all-around fun read."

    Lisa is a New York Times bestselling author and her achievements have been recognized by universities and organizations alike. In addition to winning the Edgar Award, mystery writers' highest honor, Lisa has been awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Laws from West Chester University and an Alumni Certificate of Merit by the University of Pennsylvania Law School. She also received the "Paving the Way" award from Women in Business and the "Distinguished Author Award" from Scranton University. All of Lisa's books draw on her experience as a trial lawyer as well as her judicial clerkships in the state and federal justice systems.

    Born, raised and schooled in Philly, Lisa went to (where else?) the University of Pennsylvania. She graduated magna cum laude in just three years earning her degree in English with a concentration in the contemporary American novel, and she was taught writing by professors such as National Book Award Winner Philip Roth. Lisa went on to attend the University of Pennsylvania's Law School, graduating cum laude in 1981, and landed a coveted clerkship for a state appellate judge.

    Always interested in writing, and a big fan of the hot new writers Grisham and Turow and the newly created legal thriller genre, Lisa realized that no women lawyers were writing legal thrillers, and decided to give it a shot. Three years later, Lisa had a finished book, a daughter starting school, and five maxed-out credit cards. Debt-ridden, Lisa took a part-time job clerking for a federal appellate judge. No more than a week later, her first novel, Everywhere That Mary Went was bought by HarperCollins' editor Carolyn Marino. Critically acclaimed, Everywhere That Mary Went was nominated by the Mystery Writer's of America for the Edgar Award, suspense fiction's premiere award, and the award went to...someone else. But, the very next year, Lisa's second book, Final Appeal was nominated for the Edgar and won!

    A lifelong Philadelphian, Lisa still lives in the Philadelphia area and enjoys writing about her hometown city. Her books have been translated into over twenty languages.

    November 1, 2004: David Koch (C'08)

    A lunchtime program with Dave Koch and Josh Melrod, editors of The Land Grant College Review

    Dave Koch graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1998. In the summer of 2002, he attended the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference in Middlebury, VT on a "waiter's" fellowship. He founded the Land-Grant College Review with Josh Melrod in April 2002 and has been working on it night and day ever since.

    October 16, 2004: Deborah Burnham (G'76, GR'89), Kerry Sherin Wright (C'87), Stefan Fatsis (C'85), Courtney Zoffness (C'00), Robert Shepard (C'83, G'83)

    Join the Writers House community as we host a Homecoming reading celebrating Penn alumni writers.

    Deborah Burnham (G'76, GR'89) teaches English and writing at the University of Pennsylvania. Her book, Anna and the Steel Mill won the First Book prize from Texas Tech University, and she has just finished another volume of poems, Jazz in the All-Night Laundromat. She is finishing a novel, Raising June, set in the midwest during the Viet Nam war. For over twenty years, she taught poetry at the Pennsylvania Governor's School for the Arts, where she created the writing program. A long-time resident of Powelton Village in Philadelphia, she makes gardens where they are needed and loves her compost piles.

    Kerry Sherin Wright (C'87) was the first Director of the Kelly Writers House. She holds MAs from Hollins College and Temple University, and received her PhD from Temple in 2002. She has published in Poet Lore, New England Review, Combo, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and Philadelphia Magazine, among other places. Kerry is currently the Director of a new Writers House at Franklin and Marshall College.

    Stefan Fatsis (C '85) writes about sports for The Wall Street Journal and talks about it regularly on National Public Radio's "All Things Considered." He is the author of Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players (2001). Word Freak was a New York Times bestseller and has been optioned for development as a feature film by Academy Award-winning director Curtis Hanson. The book also has helped make board games cool: Fatsis has been the color commentator for ESPN's first-ever television coverage of tournament Scrabble. He also is the author of Wild and Outside: How a Renegade Minor League Revived the Spirit of Baseball in America's Heartland (1995). He lives in Washington, D.C. with his wife, "All Things Considered" host Melissa Block, and their daughter, Chloe.

    Courtney Zoffness co-founded and ran the Writers House open mic series "Speakeasy: Poetry, Prose and Anything Goes" in 1997. After graduating from Penn in 2000 with a BA cum laude in English and Fine Arts, Courtney worked as a writer for MTV Networks, a columnist for Manhattan's Our Town and West Side Spirit newspapers and as Managing Editor of The Earth Times in New York. She received a full scholarship to attend the Masters program in fiction at Johns Hopkins University in 2002, and stayed on as a Lecturer of creative writing. This fall she began the MFA program at the University of Arizona as a Teaching Fellow. Courtney has published nonfiction in periodicals such as Ladies' Home Journal, The Earth Times Monthly and the Scarsdale Inquirer, poetry in the anthology Forever and a Day, and fiction in Redivider and The Pedestal Magazine. She is currently at work on a collection of short stories that she hopes to complete while a Resident Writer at the Vermont Studio Center in 2005.

    Robert Shepard C'83, G'83 is a California-based literary agent and has been a publishing professional for 20 years. He takes particular pride in having remained immersed in books from the moment he took his degrees in English, first serving as a research assistant to President Emeritus Martin Meyerson, then during his nine years at Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, and especially since founding his own literary agency, which is now celebrating its 10th anniversary year. "One way or another," he notes, he's also come to represent a number of Penn alumni authors, including today's panelist Stefan Fatsis C'85, the author of WORD FREAK and WILD & OUTSIDE. Among other alumni with books on his list are financial columnist Jean Sherman Chatzky C'86, art historian Robert Wojtowicz C'83, Gr'90, and music writer Richie Unterberger C'82. He is particularly proud that one of his clients, Washington Post reporter Anthony Shadid, won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting; Anthony's book about the people, history, and life of Baghdad will be published next year. A member of the Authors Guild, Robert represents both narrative and practicalnon-fiction works and writes and teaches frequently about books and writing. At Penn, where he was news editor of the Daily Pennsylvanian, he serves as secretary and past co-chair of PennGALA and as a member of the Penn Alumni Communications Committee, which oversees publications including the Pennsylvania Gazette. He lives in Berkeley, California with his partner, Bob Numerofyet another Penn alum.

    October 7, 2004: Roy Vagelos (C'50)

    A conversation with Roy Vagelos about his new book, Medicine, Science, and Merck, co-authored with Louis Galambos

    Roy Vagelos grew up a "wise-cracking kid" in an immigrant Greek family living through the hard times of the 1930s in New Jersey. He left the family restaurant business to attend Penn, and graduated from the College in 1950. After several academic positions in medical schools, and time at the National Institutes of Health, he became a distinguished science administrator at Merck. Eventually he became Merck's CEO.

    After developing a medication for another purpose that was ultimately found to cure River Blindness, a devastating disease occurring primarily in underdeveloped countries unable to pay for such medications, Merck donated the medicine to the World Health Organization for free distribution. Vagelos worked closely with former U.S. president Jimmy Carter on the River Blindness crisis, and Carter has cited him many times publicly for his boldness, leadership, and generosity.

    In his memoir Roy Vagelos has two stories to tell - one about the growth and development of medical science in business and the other about the dream of the ethnic American realized - and these stories are social, national, and intellectual rather than merely personal in nature. In 1997 Vagelos made a $10 million gift to establish the Roy Vagelos Scholars in Molecular Life Sciences at Penn, including an endowment and a scholarship fund. As Chairman of Penn's Trustees, Vagelos made undergraduate financial aid his highest priority. Under his leadership, Penn's capacity to offer undergraduate financial aid became greater and stabler than before.

    2003-2004

    May 15, 2004: Leslie Bennetts (C'70), Buzz Bissinger (C'76), Beth Kephart (C'82), and Stephen Fried (C'79)

    "The Art of Fact": An Alumni Panel Discussion on Literary Journalism

    Join Penn alumni in publishing - Leslie Bennetts (C'70), Buzz Bissinger (C'76), Beth Kephart (C'82), and Stephen Fried (C'79) - for a lively discussion on literary journalism and the current state of creative nonfiction writing in books and magazines

    April 24, 2004: Adrienne Mishkin (C'03)

    "A Year in Dialogue": A celebration of the work of 2003-2004 Writers House Junior Fellow Adrienne Mishkin

    Adrienne Mishkin graduated from Penn with a degree in English and the Biological Basis of Behavior in May of 2003. During her undergraduate years she was an active member of the hub and was one of the coordinators of the speakeasy open mic series. Since graduation, she has been working for the Hospital of the University, and has maintained strong ties with the house, including collecting and producing poetry about the house as part of the Junior Fellows program, and continuing to attend speakeasy and various hub functions

    April 14, 2004: Elizabeth Alexander

    Brave Testimony Reading Series

    Celebrated poet Elizabeth Alexander has taught and lectured on African American art and culture across the country and abroad for nearly two decades. She received a B.A. from Yale University, an M.A. from Boston University, and the Ph.D. in English from the University of Pennsylvania.

    Alexander is an acclaimed professor, who currently teaches in the English and African American Studies Departments at Yale University. She has taught at Haverford College, the University of Chicago, where she won the University's top teaching prize, and Smith College, where she was the Grace Hazard Conkling Poet-in-Residence and first director of the Poetry Center at Smith College. In the summers, she is a faculty member at Cave Canem Poetry Workshop.

    Her play, Diva Studies, was produced at the Yale School of Drama in May 1996.

    Her most recent collection of essays on African-American poetry, painting, and popular culture, The Black Interior, was published in January 2004. In her introduction to this work, she describes "the black interior" as "an idea, a metaphor, of...black life and creativity behind the public face of stereotype and limited imagination." Widely touted, her book examines a wide spectrum of subject matter, from the role of literary heavyweights such as Gwendolyn Brooks and Michael Harper to Denzel Washington's career as complex black male icon to the collective memory of racial violence.

    Her three previous collections of poetry include Antebellum Dream Book, The Venus Hottentot, and Body of Life. Her poems, short stories, and critical writing also have been published in such journals and periodicals as the Paris Review, Signs, Callaloo, American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, The Village Voice, The Women's Review of Books, and The Washington Post. In addition, her poems are anthologized in dozens of collections. Her work is distinguished by its examination of history, gender, and race.

    April 12-13, 2004: Dayton Duncan (C'71)

    A brunch and conversation with writer and documentary filmmaker Dayton Duncan

    Dayton Duncan is an award-winning writer and documentary filmmaker. He has written nine books, including Out West: A Journey Through Lewis & Clark's America (a Book-of-the-Month Club alternate selection and finalist for the Western Writers of America's Spur Award), Grass Roots: One Year in the Life of the New Hampshire Presidential Primary, and Miles from Nowhere: In Search of the American Frontier. His most recent book is Scenes of Visionary Enchantment: Reflections on Lewis & Clark, a collection of essays released in conjunction with the Lewis & Clark bicentennial. He has also written two books on the American west for young readers, and has published articles in The New York Times, the Boston Globe, and many other publications. Duncan has worked for many years with documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, as a consultant for Burns's documentaries "The Civil War," "Baseball," and "Jazz." He is the writer and producer of "Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery," a four-hour documentary broadcast in November 1997 that won a Western Heritage Award from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame, a Spur Award from the Western Writers of America, and a CINE Golden Eagle, among others. He is the co-writer and producer of "Mark Twain," a four-hour film biography of the great American humorist which was broadcast on PBS in 2002. His most recent collaboration with Burns is "Horatio's Drive," about the first transcontinental automobile trip. Duncan served as chief of staff to New Hampshire governor Hugh Gallen, deputy national press secretary for Walter Mondale's 1984 presidential campaign, and national press secretary for Michael Dukakis's 1988 presidential campaign. Duncan graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1971, and was also a Fellow at Harvard's Shorenstein Center for Press, Politics, and Public Policy. President Clinton appointed him chair of the American Heritage Rivers Advisory Committee and Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt appointed him as a director of the National Park Foundation. He holds honorary doctorates from Franklin Pierce College and Drake University. For the last thirty years he has lived in New Hampshire with his wife, Diane, and their two children.

    March 31, 2004: David Stern

    Workshop on Screenwriting Structure and "Now that I have this great idea, what do I do with it?" A Conversation on circulating screenplays with alumnus, screenwriter, playwright and director David Stern

    David I. Stern began his career working in the New York theater for Director/Lyricist Richard Maltby, Jr. During his tenure with Maltby, he worked on the Broadway productions of Miss Saigon, Nick & Nora, and Big as well as a myriad of other smaller projects. Simultaneously, he began his theater writing career. He wrote the Rodgers and Hammerstein revue Some Enchanted Evening, the plays Dreams & Stuff and Finders of Lost Luggage, the NPR radio program The 1990s Radio Hour and a Half, and the musical Snapshots. David took a small detour into directing with the New York revival of Starting Here, Starting Now (nominated for a MAC Award) and a stint with The American Project at Circle in the Square. After his six years in New York, David migrated west to Los Angeles. There he wrote the television movie Geppetto for The Wonderful World of Disney, as well as numerous feature films including: The Muppets Return for Jim Henson Productions, Wish for director Ivan Reitman and Dreamworks, Gettysburgville for director Jon Turtletaub and Disney, and Old Friends for Revolution Studios. He is currently writing The Magic Brush for Miramax, Betting the Farm for Sony Pictures Animation, and is creating the television series Omega Dome for Fox Sports.

    March 20, 2004: Dan Fishback

    Dan Fishback is a songwriter and performance artist from New York City who often waxes sentimentally about his good times at the Kelly Writers House. His band, Cheese On Bread, just released its first album, "Maybe Maybe Maybe Baby." His first one-man performance piece, "Assholes Speak Louder Than Words" will premiere in New York this February. He is currently recording his solo material, and hopes to be done early this summer, leaving enough time to campaign for whoever will yoink the presidency from George W. Bush.

    March 1, 2004: Lorene Cary (C'78)

    LIVE taping

    Lorene Cary is the author of two novels, The Price of A Child (1995), Philadelphia's and Buffalo, NY's One Book, One City choice for 2003, and Pride (1998), and a best-selling memoir, Black Ice (1991). In 1998 Cary founded Art Sanctuary, a unique and successful arts series that brings excellent black artists to speak, perform and give workshops at the Church of the Advocate, a National Historic Landmark Building in North Philadelphia. Currently a senior lecturer in creative writing at the University of Pennsylvania, where she was a 1998 recipient of the Provosts Award for Distinguished Teaching, Cary has received The Philadelphia Award for civic service, a Pew Fellowship in the Arts Fellowship and honorary doctorates from Colby College in Maine, Keene State College in New Hampshire, and Chestnut Hill College in Philadelphia. She lives in Philadelphia with her husband, the Rev. Robert C. Smith, and daughters Laura and Zo

    February 21, 2004: Beandra Davis

    Art Gallery Reception: "Through Her Eyes: Works in Photography and Prose"

    Beandrea Davis is a photographer and writer interested in using art to promote greater social justice in our world. She graduated from University of Pennsylvania in May 2003 with a degree in Afro-American Studies and French. Rooted in the belief that creating images with a camera or a pen is an inherently political act, she is interested in documenting individuals and communities who live on the margins of our society. She lives in the Cobbs Creek section of West Philadelphia.

    February 2, 2004: Andy Wolk

    Screenwriter and director (and Penn alumnus) Andy Wolk begins a three-day Symposium on Writing for Film, Theatre, and TV. Symposium participants meet with Mr. Wolk in the afternoon at the Writers House to discuss their scripts and treatments.

    Andy Wolk directed the CBS hit A Town without Christmas starring Patricia Heaton and Peter Falk. Prior to that he wrote and directed the critically acclaimed and highly-rated Deliberate Intent for FX. Starting Timothy Hutton, it was called by the LA Times "taut, smart, provocative, well-acted and suspensefully directed." Mr. Wolk received his third Writer's Guild nomination for this movie. He also wrote and directed the much-lauded HBO drama Criminal Justice which made Time Magazine's "Ten Best" list and was named the best cable movie of the year. Starring Forest Whitaker and Rosie Perez, Criminal Justice also received the Silver Prize at FIPA in Cannes and was nominated for a Writer's Guild Award. Other cable movie credits include writing and directing The Defenders: Payback, Choice of Evils, and Taking the First, three movies for Paramount and Showtime starring Beau Bridges and E.G. Marshall and based on the classic 60s show. Other TV movies include Alibi, All Lies End in Murder, Mr. Rock 'N Roll, and Kiss and Tell. He has also directed The Sopranos and episodes of The Practice, NYPD Blue, Equal Justice and others. Andy Wolk's writing credits include Natica Jackson which starred Michelle Pfeiffer and won him the Writer's Guild Award. Most recently he adapted Elmore Leonard's Bandits for Miramax Films. Mr. Wolk's career started in the theater. For Lincoln Center he directed Shakespeare's Twelfth Night and The Winter's Tale, each of which had successful off-Broadway runs. He has had plays produced as a writer and director at Manhattan Theatre Club, LaMama, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Actors Theatre of Louisville and all over Europe.

    November 8, 2003: Suzanne Maynard Miller (C'89)

    Suzanne Maynard Miller's plays have been produced in Seattle, Los Angeles, New Haven, Providence and at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. She currently works with Open Classroom (an artist-in-residency program in the New York City public schools), and is guest teaching at Hunter College. In addition, Suzanne has taught playwriting at Brown University, the Rhode Island School of Design, in the Seattle and Providence public schools, and in Rhode Island's Adult Correctional Institution. Suzanne is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and received her MFA in playwriting from Brown University, where she studied with Paula Vogel. She lives in Brooklyn.

    November 8, 2003: Allie D'Augustine (C'02)

    Allie D'Augustine is a freelance writer who lives in the Bella Vista area of South Philadelphia. A 2002 graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and Writers House Junior Fellow for 2003-2004, she is currently pursuing a master's degree at Penn. She has written articles for a number of publications, including the Philadelphia Inquirer, HealthState magazine, and the Pennsylvania Gazette. Her poetry has been published in the Philadelphia Inquirer and in Joss magazine.

    November 4, 2003: Greg Djanikian (C'71)

    Greg Djanikian is the Director of the Creative Writing Program and Associate Undergraduate Chair of the English Department. He has published four collections of poetry, The Man in the Middle, Falling Deeply into America, About Distance, and most recently, Years Later.

    November 4, 2003: Susan Stewart (GR'78)

    Susan Stewart teaches the history of lyric poetry, aesthetics, and the philosophy of literature in the English department at Penn. Her most recent books of poetry are Columbarium, just published this summer, and The Forest. Her books of criticism include Poetry and the Fate of the Senses, Crimes of Writing and On Longing. Next year the University of Chicago Press will publish her collected essays on art: The Open Studio: Essays on Art 1987-2003. In the Fall of 2000 she delivered the Beckman Lectures at the University of California, Berkeley. Professor Stewart was named a MacArthur Fellow in 1997.

    October 29, 2003: Robert Cort (C'68 G'70 WG'74)

    Robert Cort has produced fifty-two films, including Runaway Bride, The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, Mr. Holland's Opus, Save the Last Dance, and Against the Ropes, starring Meg Ryan, which Paramount will release in the fall. A true Hollywood insider, for years Cort contemplated writing a history of the motion picture industry. When he finally put pen to paper, the result was ACTION! (Random House, 2003), a page-turning drama set against the last half century of the movie business. Prior to his career in the movie industry, Cort earned an MBA from the Wharton School, worked as a management consultant for McKinsey & Company, and served a two-year assignment with the Central Intelligence Agency. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Rosalie Swedlin, a manager of writers and directors.

    October 20, 2003: Adrienne Mishkin (C'03)

    Adrienne Mishkin graduated from Penn with a degree in English and the Biological Basis of Behavior in May of 2003. During her undergraduate years she was an active member of the hub and was one of the coordinators of the speakeasy open mic series. Since graduation, she has been working for the Hospital of the University, and has maintained strong ties with the house, including collecting and producing poetry about the house as part of the Junior Fellows program, and continuing to attend speakeasy and various hub functions

    October 20, 2003: Phil Sandick (C'03)

    Phil Sandick graduated in May from the University of Pennsylvania, where he majored in English. He is an Assistant Program Coordinator at the Kelly Writers House. As an undergrad, he sang as a tenor with Penny Loafers, a co-ed a cappella group on Penn's campus. Last year, Phil was involved with "Write On" at the Writers House, where he served as a writing coach with students from the Lea School. He also writes fiction and short stories.

    October 10, 2003: John Edgar Wideman (C'63)

    Roundtable Conversation featuring John Edgar Wideman, Daniel Wideman and Albert French.

    October 7, 2003: Dave Koch (C'98)

    Dave Koch graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1998 and now attends the MFA program at Washington University in St. Louis, where he's also been awarded a teaching fellowship. Last summer, he attended the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference in Middlebury, VT on a "waiter's" fellowship. He founded the Land-Grant College Review with Josh Melrod in April 2002 and has been working on it night and day ever since.

    September 29, 2003: Lee Passarella

    A lunch program with poet and Atlanta Review editor Lee Passarella, who also works as senior technical writer for a major producer of accounting software and teaches English part-time at Georgia Perimeter College in Lawrenceville, Georgia.

    September 20, 2003: Katie Haegele (C'98)

    Katie Haegele is a contributing editor for the Philadelphia Weekly, where she writes a book column. Her creative non-fiction has appeared in the Utne Reader, Adbusters, and MediaBistro.com. She received a BA in linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1998.

    2002-2003

    May 16, 2003: Alumni Faculty Exchange

    Penn's Office of Alumni Relations and the Kelly Writers House invite Penn alumni of all ages to meet and reconnect with some of the University's most well-regarded Professors.

    Herman Beavers, Associate Professor of English and Director of the Afro-American Studies Program; Robert F. Lucid, Professor Emeritus of English; Karen Rile, Lecturer; Witold Rybczynski, Martin & Margy Meyerson Professor of Urbanism and Professor of Real Estate; and Nancy S. Steinhardt, Professor of East Asian Art in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies and Curator of Chinese Art at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania.

    May 1, 2003: Philadelphia Alumni Club

    Penn's Philadelphia Alumni Club and Kelly Writers House present a book discussion group, open to all Philadelphia-area alumni, led by Kelly Professor of English and Faculty Director of the Writers House Al Filreis. Filreis will lead an informal discussion of the new novel by Frederick Busch, A Memory of War.

    April 24, 2003: Lew Schneider

    Lew Schneider

    Lew Schneider, comedy writer for Everybody Loves Raymond and other series, will lead an informal workshop on comedy writing.

    Lew Schneider began his professional career in Chicago following his graduation from the University of Pennsylvania in 1983. While taking classes in improvisational technique at the Second City Players' Workshop, he started performing as a stand-up comedian. He toured extensively for five years, appearing clubs and colleges across the country prior to relocating to New York in 1988. In the fall of 1989, Lew landed his first regular television job as the host of the Nickledodeon game show, "Make the Grade." The next year he was cast as the lead in a CBS Summer series entitled "Wish You Were Here..." Following that short run he was cast as a series regular on the Fox Network comedy, "Down The Shore". During breaks in production he continued to perform live and starred in his own HBO half-hour comedy special. He began writing for television in 1993. His credits include: the ill-fated "George Wendt Show,"the "John Larroquette Show" and "The Naked Truth." He currently serves as a writer and executive producer on the CBS comedy, "Everybody Loves Raymond." Lew, his wife, Liz Abbe, and their three sons, make their home in Pacific Palisades, California.

    April 18, 2003: Jennifer Snead

    Jennifer Snead presents a preceptorial on J.R.R. Tolkien.

    April 9, 2003: Kate Northrop

    Kate Northrop joins Daniel Nester in a reading, part of the Kelly Writers House Local Spotlight Series, co-sponsored by Poets Among US.

    Kate Northrop's poems have appeared in The Massachusetts Review, The American Poetry Review, Raritan, and other journals. Her first full length collection, Back Through Interruption, won the Stan and Tom Wick poetry award and was published in October 2002 by Kent State University Press. She is a graduate of both the Iowa Writers' Workshop and the University of Pennsylvania and teaches creative writing at West Chester University.

    April 7, 2003: Andrew Zitcer

    Andrew Zitcer joins other writers and musicians for an episode of Live at the Writers House titled "The Experimental Poetry Show."

    Andrew Zitcer is an artist and community arts activist based in West Philadelphia. His interests include community arts, city planning, poetry, music and digital art practices. He works for the University of Pennsylvania as a coordinator of cultural events and advisor to student groups; he studies in the Department of City and Regional Planning. Andrew is a founder of the Foundation Community Arts Initiative, and recently curated "sense data" at the Painted Bride Arts Center.

    April 4, 2003: Jon Avnet

    Jon Avnet (see bio. above) joins others in the First Annual Entertainment Symposium.

    March 19, 2003: Dennis Barone

    Dennis Barone is a Professor of English at Saint Joseph College in West Hartford, Connecticut. He is the author of three books of short fiction: Abusing the Telephone (Drogue Press, 1994), The Returns (Sun & Moon Press, 1996), and Echoes (Potes & Poets Press, 1997). Echoes received the 1997 America Award for most outstanding book of fiction by a living American writer. He is also the author of a novella, Temple of the Rat (Left Hand Books, 2000), and he is editor of Beyond the Red Notebook: Essays on Paul Auster (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995). Most recently Quale Press published The Disguise of Events, a chapbook (July, 2002). Left Hand Books published his selected poems, entitled Separate Objects, in 1998. His essays on American literature and culture have appeared in journals such as American Studies, Critique, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, and the Review of Contemporary Fiction. A graduate of Bard College, he received his Ph.D. in American Civilization from the University of Pennsylvania in 1984, and in 1992 he held the Thomas Jefferson Chair, a distinguished Fulbright lecturing award, in the Netherlands.

    March 3, 2003: Allie D'Augustine

    Allie D'Augustine (C '02) took part in a Live at the Writers House program. This program aired on 88.5 WXPN later in March.

    Allie D'Augustine writes poetry and prose. Her next nonfiction piece will be on the New York School of poets. Allie lives in Philadelphia and has a full schedule of poetry readings this spring, at Molly's Bookstore, the Kelly Writers House, and Robin's Bookstore.

    February 25, 2003: O.J. Lima

    O.J. Lima took part in a panel titled "Conversing with Critics: Reviewers Discuss Craft & Career" along with Anthony DeCurtis, Carrie Rickey, and Ken Tucker. The event was cosponsored with Career Services.

    Orlando J. Lima was an English major at the University of Pennsylvania (C '94). After his undergraduate education, he studied at the Teachers College of Columbia University, from which he graduated in 1996. Mr. Lima has extensive 8-year experience working in magazine publishing. He has done work with VIBE Magazine and Seventeen Magazine, working with and focusing on the editorial services of both, most times those that focused on the music industry. During this time, Mr. Lima appeared on various panels on television and radio stations commenting about his views on music, hip hop and popular culture, including popular music stations MTV and VH1. He has also traveled to various Universities lecturing about his views on music, hip hop and popular culture, including the University of Pennsylvania. Along with other works he has published in magazines, Mr. Lima contributed to the New York Times best-seller, Tupac Shakur (Crown).

    February 6, 2003: Harry Groome

    Harry Groome was featured along with Diane Ayres in the Local Spotlight Series. Harry Groome is a Penn graduate (College '63) and holds an MFA in Writing from Vermont College. His stories, poems, essays and articles have appeared in numerous publications and anthologies, including Aethlon, American Writing, Field & Stream, Fine Print, Gray's Sporting Journal and the Red River Review. He is the winner of the 2000 Authors in the Park Short Story Writing Contest, and a finalist for the William Faulkner Short Story Award (1997). Harry has recently finished his first novel, Wing Walking, and a story of his will be featured at the InterAct Theater on March 10th. He lives in Villanova with his wife, Lyn, and their two Labrador retrievers.

    February 3, 2003: Allie D'Augustine and Kerry Sherin Wright

    Allie D'Augustine (C '02) and Kerry Sherin Wright (C '87) took part in a Live at the Writers House program. This program aired on 88.5 WXPN later in February.

    Allie D'Augustine writes poetry and prose. Her next nonfiction piece will be on the New York School of poets. Allie lives in Philadelphia and has a full schedule of poetry readings this spring, at Molly's Bookstore, the Kelly Writers House, and Robin's Bookstore.

    Kerry Sherin Wright is the Director of the Kelly Writers House, and recently received her Ph.D. from Temple University. She has given readings at the Unitarian Church NotCoffeehouse Series, the Highwire Gallery, Hollins College, and Temple University. Her publications include poems in Poet Lore, Mandorla: New Writing from the Americas, Combo, Capital, New England Review, fiction, freelance articles (most recently in Philadelphia Magazine), and reviews in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

    February 3, 2003: Blake Martin

    Blake Martin, recent graduate of the College, took part in a Live at the Writers House titled "Writers for Peace". Blake is a writer and photographer living in Philadelphia. His recent stories are born from his time as a foster care social worker here in Philadelphia.

    January 27-29, 2003: Andy Wolk

    Screenwriter, director, and Penn alumnus Andy Wolk visits for a three-day Symposium on Writing for Film, Theatre, and TV. For more details about the various programs occuring during those days, please see the calendar.

    Andy Wolk most recently directed the CBS hit A Town without Christmas starring Patricia Heaton and Peter Falk. Prior to that he wrote and directed the critically acclaimed and highly-rated Deliberate Intent for FX. Starting Timothy Hutton, it was called by the LA Times "taut, smart, provocative, well-acted and suspensefully directed." Mr. Wolk received his third Writer's Guild nomination for this movie. He also wrote and directed the much-lauded HBO drama Criminal Justice which made Time Magazine's "Ten Best" list and was named the best cable movie of the year. Starring Forest Whitaker and Rosie Perez, Criminal Justice also received the Silver Prize at FIPA in Cannes and was nominated for a Writer's Guild Award. Other cable movie credits include writing and directing The Defenders: Payback, Choice of Evils, and Taking the First, three movies for Paramount and Showtime starring Beau Bridges and E.G. Marshall and based on the classic 60s show. Other TV movies include Alibi, All Lies End in Murder, Mr. Rock 'N Roll, and Kiss and Tell. He has also directed The Sopranos and episodes of The Practice, NYPD Blue, Equal Justice and others. Andy Wolk's writing credits include Natica Jackson which starred Michelle Pfeiffer and won him the Writer's Guild Award. Most recently he adapted Elmore Leonard's Bandits for Miramax Films. Mr. Wolk's career started in the theater. For Lincoln Center he directed Shakespeare's Twelfth Night and The Winter's Tale, each of which had successful off-Broadway runs. He has had plays produced as a writer and director at Manhattan Theatre Club, LaMama, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Actors Theatre of Louisville and all over Europe. Andy Wolk has also been a Creative Advisor for the Sundance Labs and the Artistic Director for the Labs in 1996. This three-day workshop is modeled on the Sundance Labs.

    December 2, 2002: Michael Barsanti

    Michael Barsanti (recent Penn PhD in English) took part in a Live at the Writers House titled "Civic Culture - Art Culture - Philadelphia Culture Makers". Barsanti is the Associate Curator at the Rosenbach Museum & Library, where he works primarily with literary things. He has curated exhibitions and taught classes there on a wide variety of subjects, including portrait photography, wartime poetry, James Joyce manuscripts, and Shakespeare forgeries. He occasionally teaches classes at Penn on modernism and writing.

    November 20, 2002: Susan Shreve

    Susan Shreve has written 12 novels, the latest of which, Plum & Jaggers was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux and is out now in paperback from Picador. She's also written 25 children's books for Knopf and co-edited four anthologies of original works of fiction on race, justice, progress and education. She is a professor of English in the MFA program at George Mason University and was a visitor for three years at Princeton in fiction and four years at Columbia Graduate School of the Arts. She is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania. She's presently working on a new novel A Student of Living Things.

    November 19, 2002: Josey Foo

    Josey Foo Josephine Foo (Josey Foo), a Chinese native of Malaysia, immigrated to the United States in the mid-1980s. She was an undocumented alien for a few years after attending college and worked in New York City in carpentry, restaurant work, and other trades. The undocumented period ended when she received her M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Brown University in 1990. In 1997 she obtained a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania and now works as a lawyer-advocate in Shiprock on the Navajo Nation. Portions of her first book of prose, poems and a picture story of a three-legged traveling beagle, Endou (Lost Roads) were included in The Best American Essays 1995. Her second book Tomie's Chair will be out from Kaya in Spring, 200February An evening-length concert dance piece set to her poems is forthcoming from the Leah Stein Dance Company, funded by DanceAdvance and the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance. She is published in various journals including The World, The American Voice, Open City, Upstairs At Duroc's (Paris), and the Philadelphia edition of The American Poetry Review. In addition to the NEA, she has received a fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and an Eve of St. Agnes Poetry Award. A two-time Yale Series of Younger Poets finalist, she lives in Farmington, New Mexico where she and her husband Richard Ferguson run Crooked Shelf Books.

    November 6, 2002: John Norton

    John Norton's recent output might be called borderworks, pieces that deny easy categorization into poetry or prose. An experimental novella Re: Marriage (San Francisco: Black Star Series) was published in 2000. A book of prose poems and sketches The Light at the End of the Bog (San Francisco: Black Star Series, 1989, 1992) won an American Book Award. Both books are distributed by Small Press Distribution. A critical introduction to The Bog as well as excerpts have appeared in a variety of publications including The Before Columbus Poetry Anthology: Selections from the American Book Awards 1980-1990 published by W. W. Norton. A language-oriented chapbook Posthum(or)ous was published by e. g. press. Other pieces have appeared in a variety of literary and online magazines, including New American Writing, CrossConnect, Kayak, Oxygen, Beatitude, Blue Unicorn, Onthebus, and Processed World. Works in progress include Nondisclosure Statements, an aleatory hypertext narrative, and Mental Reservations, a collection of new and selected poems.

    From 1990 through 1996 John was Board President of Small Press Traffic Literary Arts Center, a non-profit organization in San Francisco. He currently serves on the Board of the Irish Arts Foundation. John Norton did graduate work in eighteenth-century literature at the University of Pennsylvania (M.A., Ph, D) and taught at the University of California, Riverside. He currently works as a technical marketing writer and editor.

    October 23, 2002: Meredith Stiehm

    Meredith Stiehm was a writer and producer for the television series "ER" from 2000 to 200February As Co-Executive Producer of "ER" in 2001, she received an Emmy Award Nomination for Outstanding Drama Series. As a writer and producer for "NYPD Blue" from 1996 to 2000, she received Emmy nominations for Outstanding Drama Series in 1999 and Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series, with David Milch, in 1998. She also wrote for "Northern Exposure" and "Beverly Hills, 90210" from 1994 to 1996.

    Last year, Stiehm wrote "A Fair and Even Chance," a television movie for ABC/Disney, about the first national spelling bee in 1908. Her co-writer was her sister Jamie Stiehm, a reporter for The Baltimore Sun. She has also written plays produced in Los Angeles, among them "Little Rosa", "Holiday House/Between the White Curtains" and "Hallelujah Junction." Her 1993 musical, "Rules For Girls" was nominated by the LA Weekly as Musical of the Year.

    Stiehm was born in Madison, Wisconsin and grew up in Santa Monica, California. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1990 with a B.A. in English/Playwriting. She lives in Santa Monica, California.

    October 18, 2002: Jon Avnet

    In a talk titled "The Holocaust, the media, the power of propaganda," Jon Avnet will discuss his own film, Uprising, and other Holocaust-related films, their depictions of the events and their relevance to events of today, and the power of propaganda and the media from Goebels to the today's media as a government-controlled mouthpiece.

    Originally from Brooklyn, New York, Jon Avnet attended Penn in the late 1960's. Since then, he has gone on to become a successful feature film producer and director. Included in his directing credits are such successes as "Red Corner" (1997) with Richard Gere, "Up Close and Personal" (1996), featuring Michele Pfeifer and Robert Redford, and the critically acclaimed film "Fried Green Tomatoes" (1991), starring Kathy Bates and Jessica Tandy. Over the past twenty years, Avnet has also produced a number of hit movies including "Risky Business" (1983), "Tango and Cash" (1989), "The Mighty Ducks" (1992), "The Three Musketeers" (1993), as well as the recent blockbuster "George of the Jungle" (1997). His recent film, Uprising, about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, was aired onNBC in the fall of 2001.

    October 14, 2002: Paul Green

    The Paul Green School of Rock Music will provide music for Live at the Writers House. If you can't make this live recording, the show will be aired on October 20, 2002, on 88.5 WXPN.

    The Paul Green School of Rock Music is an interactive, performance based music school that operatives from the premise that the best way to learn to do anything, particularily music, is by doing it. The school therefore stages numerous concerts throughout the year featuring our students, all of which aspire to be real rock concerts, complete with professional equipment, light shows, and, when appropriate, smoke machines.

    The school's founder, Paul Green, recent Penn alumnus, less invented the idea than stumbled upon it. As a guitar teacher putting himself through college he began to have his students jam with one another on weekends. Noticing how much better they were learning music theory when thus applied, and excited by how good they were getting at actually playing, he staged his first concert in Old City on a First Friday in October 1998. It was an instant sensation, and the resulting press, word of mouth, and good will got the ball rolling towards the school's present condition.

    Currently The Paul Green School of Rock Music has over 100 students, taught by 14 fabulous teachers, who perform dozens of shows each year in front of thousands of fans.

    September 30, 2002: Tom Hartman

    Tom Hartman joins Scott Edward Anderson in reading from Ducky Magazine, which they edit.

    Writer and editor Tom Hartman is the founding editor of DUCKY. Previously a Senior Editor at Painted Bride Quarterly, his poems, essays, reviews and other writings have appeared in La Petite Zine, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia City Paper and elsewhere. His interview with novelist Martin Amis appeared in DUCKY's inaugural issue. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University, Mr. Hartman is also the curator of the Nick Virgilio Poetry Project at Rutgers University--Camden.

    September 25, 2002: Jeremy Sigler

    Poet Jeremy Sigler will join current Penn graduate student Matt Hart to read from their poetry as a part of the Alumni Visitor Series.

    Jeremy Sigler is a writer, artist, and a teacher. He is the author of two books of poetry, To and To (1998), and Mallet Eyes (2000), both of which were published by Left Hand Books, a press which was founded by the late Fluxus artist, Dick Higgins. Sigler received his undergraduate degree in Painting from The University of Pennsylvania in 1991, and his MFA in sculpture from UCLA in 1996. Sigler's poetry has appeared in The Hat and Pierogi Press, and his prose has appeared in The Brooklyn Rail and index magazine. He has also published illustrations in the Dutch architecture magazine, Hunch. Sigler has shown his art work at Printed Matter, Artists' Space and Tricia Collins Gallery in New York. He is currently collaborating on a book with the painter Dan Walsh, which will be shown at Paula Cooper Gallery in the spring. He has also done collaborative art works with painters Jonathan Lasker and Peter Halley, and game designer Eric Zimmerman. He teaches at Yale University and the Maryland Institute College of Art and lives in Brooklyn, New York.

    September 24, 2002: Kate Egan

    Kate Egan (Penn MFA '01) will join with other short video and film collaborators for "SIGHT: Poetry in Collaboration with Video and Film" curated by the St. Mark's Poetry Project and hosted by Joanna Fuhrman.

    2001-2002

    April 8, 2002: Lisa Scottoline

    New York Times best-selling author Lisa Scottoline read from her recent fiction and held a conversation and Q&A about practical publishing and the writing career.

    Lisa Scottoline is a New York Times best selling author who writes legal thrillers, which draw on her experience as a trial lawyer at a prestigious Philadelphia law firm and also her clerkships in the state and federal systems of justice. She is an honors graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and its law school, where she was associate editor of the Law Review. Scottoline won the premier award in suspense fiction, the Edgar Award, for her second legal thriller, Final Appeal. Her books are used by bar associations for the issues of legal ethics they present and she has lectured on the subject at law schools around the country. Her book Rough Justice was People Magazine's "Page-Turner of the Week" and Legal Tender was chosen as Cosmopolitan Magazine's premier book club selection. A native Philadelphian, she lives with her family in the Philadelphia area.

    April 2, 2002: Vladislov Toderov

    Vladislov Todorov visited the house as a guest lecturer for the Kelly Writers House Theorizing series.

    Vladislov Todorov currently lectures in literature and cultural history at the University of Pennsylvania. Recently published work includes Red Square, Black Square: Organon for Revolutionary Imagination (Suny, 1995), and two collections of essays and creative works in Bulgarian, The Adam Complex (1991) and The Paradox of Theater and Other Figures of Life (1998). He has also contributed to a representative collection of experimental prose, Post-theory, Games, and Discursive Resistance: The Bulgarian Case (SUNY, 1995). A piece of short fiction, "The Four Luxemburgs," appeared in Postmodern Culture (1993); philosophical critical essays have been published by journals including the Yale Journal of Criticism, L'infini and College Literature. His work has been translated into French, German, Russian, Czech and Hungarian. He holds a Ph.D. in Aesthetics (1987) from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and a Ph.D. in Russian Studies (1996) from the University of Pennsylvania.

    April 1, 2002: Julie Gerstein and Jennifer Snead

    Alums Julie Gerstein and Jennifer Snead joined other writers and performers in April's month's taping of Live at the Writers House, a one-hour word and music radio show that tapes at the Kelly Writers House. The show aired at 11 PM on April 7 on 88.5 WXPN.

    March 19, 2002: Laura Goldstein

    Alumna Laura Goldstein joins two other local poets, Eli Goldblatt and Chris McCreary, for "Spring Local Spotlight #3.

    Laura Goldstein is a poet finishing up her M.A. in Creative Writing at Temple and received her undergraduate degree at Penn. She currently instructs an undergraduate poetry workshop at Temple and works as the Direct Service Coordinator for the Young Scholar's Program in Temple's Department of School and Community Partnerships. She is working on her first book of poetry and is in the process of planning a Philadelphia Poetry Collective in which area poets share their work and bring their expertise to the community.

    February 25, 2002: Jim Gladstone

    Jim Gladstone, the author of the new novel The Big Book of Misunderstanding, is a 1988 Penn graduate (SAS, American Civilization) and widely published critic and cultural commentator. His book critiques have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, and his coverage of travel, popular music, film, and the publishing world have appeared in over a dozen major daily newspapers and national magazines - from Billboard to P.O.V. As a Penn undergraduate, Gladstone was an editor at 34th Street, where his expose on shady dealings in the phone sex industry attracted the attention of the Philadelphia Inquirer and led to the start of his professional writing career. Gladstone maintains a home in University City, but currently lives in Paris where he is working on a second novel and several non-fiction book projects.

    February 13, 2002: Rachel Solar-Tuttle

    Rachel Solar-Tuttle's new book Number 6 Fumbles is being published in February 2002. She is a graduate of the College (1992) and of Penn's law school (1995). Students interested in writing as a career are invited to meet her and discuss her career as lawyer, freelance writer, and novelist.

    January 22, 2002: Sheryl Simons

    The Business of Writing: Sheryl Simons will discuss building a freelance writing career and provide an Overview of marketing, web-based strategies, contracts and copyrights. This program is designed as an introductory workshop. Handouts will be available.

    Sheryl P. Simons is a foreign correspondent with EPN World based in Paris and a regular contributor to Faulkner Information Services. She has interviewed many of the top executives in high tech including Patrick J. Spain, CEO of Hoover's Online, Peter DePasquale, CEO of DW Interactive, and Rob Granader, CEO of Marketresearch.com. Her publishing credits include: VAR Business Magazine, Intelligent Enterprise, InfoCommerce Reports, American Writer Magazine, Collaboratek, The Kauffman Group and SAP America's Portal. For radio, on behalf of Into Tomorrow with Dave Graveline, she has written more than 100 features which are heard in 660 US markets and 140 countries through the Armed Forces Radio Network. Representing the Philadelphia Local, she was a delegate to the National Writer's Union annual convention in 2001. She earned her MBA from the Wharton School.

    December 3, 2001: Brendan Cahill

    Alumnus Brendan Cahill joins new novelist Tom Coyne for a lunch and conversation, hosted by Karen Rile.

    After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania and working as an editor at Running Press in Philadelphia, Brendan Cahill joined Grove/Atlantic in the fall of 1998, where he acquires and edits literary fiction and non-fiction. He has edited over forty non-fiction titles for Grove Press and Atlantic Monthly Press in categories including history, biography, science, narrative journalism, and memoir and has worked with such non-fiction authors as Michael Herr, James MacGregor Burns, Anthony Loyd, and Madeleine Blais. The fiction writers he has edited include Stewart O'Nan, Tom Coyne, and Marc Nesbitt.

    November 13, 2001: Melissa Goldstein

    Melissa Goldstein's compelling first book Travels with the Wolf (Ohio State University Press, 2000) is an autobiographical account of her experiences with chronic illness, coming of age--becoming a young woman, a writer and a teacher in the presence of severe, often debilitating disease (lupus). The book explores relationships with family and friends as the illness progresses and records Goldstein's struggle to maintain independence and identity.

    September 23, 2001: Dickinson Alumni Writing Group

    Alumna Karen Nevers leads this Writing Group.

    2000-2001

    March 29, 2001: C.K. Williams

    An alumnus of the University of Pennsylvania, C.K. Williams is the author of over 15 books of poetry, essays, and translations from Sophocles, Euripides, and the French prose-poet Francis Ponge. He has edited The Selected and Last Poems of Paul Zweig, as well as The Essential Gerard Manley Hopkins. His many honors include Guggenheim and National Endowment Fellowships, an American Academy of Arts and Letters award for literature, and the PEN/Voekler Career Achievement Award in poetry. His poetry collection, Flesh and Blood won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1987, and his latest book of poetry, Repair, won the Los Angeles Times Book Award as well as the Pulitzer Prize for 2000. He teaches writing and literature at Princeton University. This event is co-sponsored by the Creative Writing Program, and the School of Arts and Sciences.

    March 23, 2001: Meg Lenihan and Caryn Karmatz-Rudy

    The Book Deal and Beyond: Alumni Speak about the Publishing Process

    A 1991 graduate of UPenn with a degree in English, Meg Lenihan began her publishing career in 1992 as promotion assistant at Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House. After 2 years of learning the publicity and marketing ropes, she moved onto Putnam Penguin where she worked as publicist for several bestselling authors including, Charles Kuralt, Bebe Moore Campbell and Anchee Min. A few years later, she moved onto Viking Penguin as a Senior Publicist, working on the publicity campaigns for authors such as Anna Quindlan and William Kennedy. After six years in the New York City publishing scene, Meg decided to make a change and moved across the country to San Francisco. There, she became the Associate Publicity Director at HarperSanFrancisco, an imprint of HarperCollins. At HarperSanFrancisco, Meg ran the publicity department, became more involved with various marketing activities, and worked on the publicity campaigns for celebrities such as Johnny Cash and Sidney Poitier. After two and half years at Harper, Meg decided to join the dot com arena. Currently, she is Senior Product Marketing Manager for Fatbrain.com, a subsidiary of Barnes & Noble.com. Meg is responsible for all merchandising and marketing activities on their General Interest and Business bookstores.

    Caryn Karmatz Rudy is a Senior Editor at Warner Books, a highly commercial trade publishing house in Manhattan. Her areas of focus are women's interest non-fiction and women's commercial fiction; over her six years in publishing she has worked on books ranging from Simple Abundance by Sarah Ban Breathnach and The Rules by Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider to a lot of novels and works of nonfiction. Caryn was an English major at Penn, and graduated in 1992.

    February 16, 2001: Stephanie Tuck, Eliot Kaplan, O.J. Lima, Beth Kwon, and Caroline Waxler

    Careers in Magazine Journalism: a mini-conference co-sponsored by Penn's Career Center. Each of the panelists will talk for about 5-10 minutes, focusing first on their own personal experiences in the magazine industry and sharing their insights about how to make a career in magazine journalism. Panelists will also speak about the magazine business itself: how they all perceive the role of magazines in our culture and economy, how they feel about being affiliated with the industry. Q&A will be followed be a reception.

    Stephanie Tuck is a senior editor at InStyle magazine. She began her career at W magazine as assistant beauty editor. She wrote and edited beauty stories and wrote feature stories for Women's Wear Daily. After that she was a freelance writer for the Boston Globe, Rolling Stone, Mademoiselle, YM and other magazines and the fashion/beauty editor at a test of teen Elle (the test failed.) In 1995 she become beauty editor of InStyle and in 1998 a senior editor.

    Eliot Kaplan is the Editorial Talent Director for Hearst Magazines, a unique position of scouting and recruiting the nation's top editors, writers and art directors for the company's 16 magazines and start-up ventures. These magazines include Cosmopolitan, Esquire, Harper's Bazaar and O:The Oprah Magazine. Kaplan himself has had a distinguished career in magazine editing. In his seven years as editor-in-chief, Philadelphia Magazine won two National Magazine Awards--the field's Pulitzer. Media Week named him one of a handful of "Young Editors to Watch" during the next generation, and alumni of his tenure went to work for more than a dozen national magazines, including Vanity Fair, New York, GQ, Men's Health, Sports Illustrated, Money, Men's Journal, ESPN and Cosmopolitan. Before joining Philadelphia, Kaplan was managing editor of Gentlemen's Quarterly. As a student at the University of Pennsylvania, Kaplan was co-editor of 34th Street, and was mentored by the late, great Nora Magid and her non-fiction English courses.

    O.J. Lima is from Providence, Rhode Island. He graduated from Penn with a BA in English and a minor in Spanish in 1994. He moved to NYC and earned an MA in education from Columbia Teachers College. He's done some middle school, high school and junior college teaching but mainly he has been working in magazine publishing for the past 6 years and change at Vibe, 17, Blaze magazines. He's been a research chief, music editor, managing editor and now a special projects editor.

    Beth Kwon is a staff writer at Fortune Small Business magazine, and a columnist for Time Out New York. She began her career in journalism as an intern at Philadelphia Magazine while she was at Penn. After graduation she taught English for two years in South Korea, then moved to New York and started working in the letters department at Newsweek. From there she moved into editorial and eventually covered technology, and wrote political and trend items for the front of the book Periscope section. Before coming to Fortune she made a brief stop at the online financial site TheStreet.com where she covered IPOs and Internet culture. Beth also publishes a personal zine, called BK1.

    Caroline Waxler is the Markets Writer at eCompany Now magazine in San Francisco. She joined the publication from Forbes in New York, where she had worked for five years, first as a reporter and then as a writer and stock columnist. She helped start eCompany--a spin-off of Fortune and one of the most successful magazine launches for Time Inc--defining the magazine's investing and personal finance coverage as its Markets Editor. Now that the magazine is past its launch phase, she will be focusing on writing finance and investigative feature stories. She began her journalism career at Penn as the editor of Punch Bowl and an intern at Philadelphia Magazine. After graduation, she worked in Newsweek's letters department, where she also contributed fashion trend pieces to the "Periscope" pages as well as wrote for the lifestyle section.

    November 11, 2000: Alice Elliott Dark and Larry Dark

    Join fellow alumni, participants in the College of General Studies Writers' Conference, and members of the Writers House community for a reception with two of Penn's distinguished writers. Hosted by the CGS Sixth Annual Writers' Conference and the Kelly Writers House.

    Alice Elliott Dark,CAS '76, is the author of two story collections, Naked to the Waist and In the Gloaming, the latter of which was made into two films. Her writing has appeared in Harper's, DoubleTake, The New Yorker, and in many anthologies, including Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards, and The Best American Short Stories of the Century.

    Larry Dark, CAS '81, is series editor of Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards. He was also the editor of four anthologies: Literary Outtakes, The Literary Ghost, The Literary Lover, and The Literary Traveler.

    October 4, 2000: Brian Peterson

    Brian Peterson was born in Harrisburg, PA on December 24, 1971, and resided there until leaving for the University of Pennsylvania to study computer science and engineering in 1989. While at Penn he became very involved in the National Society of Black Engineers, Positive Images (a tutoring/mentoring program), The Vision (an independent paper on campus focussing on African-American concerns) and W.E.B. DuBois College House (his dormitory for 4 years). He graduated from Penn in 1993 with a BSE in Computer Science and Engineering and a minor in African American studies. He remained in the Philadelphia area after graduation and began working at Penn in a computer/technical support position. He eventually shifted departments and became the coordinator for the Residential Computing Labs at Penn (the position he currently hold). In 1995 he began taking classes again part time, and in 1997 he received his Master's in Secondary Education, specializing in Mathematics. During his time in graduate school, and for a few years to follow, he was fortunate enough to "return home" so-to-speak by joining the residence staff of DuBois College House. There, he was an Education Fellow and Graduate Associate, responsible for assisting in organizing cultural and academic programs for approximately 180 residents, as well as the broader African-American community at Penn. In January 2000, through his connection with the DuBois College House, he, along with several undergraduate students, began an African-centered Saturday school for area junior high students called Ase (ah-shay). He was on the development team and functioned as the mathematics instructor for the program.

    September 19, 2000: Adam Sexton

    Adam Sexton is Dean of Faculty at Gotham Writers' Workshop, New York City's largest school of creative writing, and an alumnus of Penn's College of Arts and Sciences (B.A. in English, 1984). At Penn he wrote for the D .P. and 34th Street and the Summer Pennsylvanian for two years. Mr. Sexton received his MFA in 1993 from the Writing Division at Columbia University's School of the Arts. Since then he has been a teacher of writing at Rutgers, Marymount Manhattan College, and for Gotham; under the auspices of the latter he has taught 50 or so 10-week and One-Day workshops.

    This program will discuss and emphasize story structure. That is, what exactly makes a story a story, and how can a fledgling writer construct one that will satisfy an audience's expectations regarding the form? Following Mr. Sexton's lecture he will lead a writing exercise that guides students through the creation of an outline for a story they can write on their own, after which he will try to answer any questions the audience may have about the fundamentals of storytelling as well as questions about Master's programs in creative writing.

    1999-2000

    April 10, 2000: Cheryl Family

    Cheryl Family is currently Vice President/Editorial Director of MTV Networks. In additon to overseeing all of the company's off-air print, video and multimedia creative materials, she is the creator and Editor-in-Chief of The Pages, MTV Networks' award-winning global magazine, both in print and online. Her creative work for MTV Networks and Viacom has earned all of the top honors in the field, including the American Institute of Graphic Arts, the Broadcast Designers Association, Creative, Cable Television and Marketing Association and Promax awards. Ms. Family is also the author of Case #77 of the Nancy Drew Files, Danger on Parade, for MegaBooks/Simon & Schuster, and has created storylines for the Emmy-nominated Nickelodeon cartoon Doug. Her short story "Good Night, Pigskin" was a winner in Sassy Magazine's "Best Short Story in the World" contest, and appeared in the publication's July 1989 issue. Her magazine work has appeared in many publications, and she has done freelance advertising work for clients as diverse as Lifetime Television, Emporio Armani, Barnes and Noble and the Broadway show Rent, among many others. Ms. Family graduated cum laude from UPenn, where she was City Editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian. She recently served as Vice President of the newspaper's Alumni Board of Directors. Ms. Family also holds a Master of Arts Degree in Communications from New York University, where she was named a Centennial Scholar.

    March 21, 2000: Michael Bamberger

    Michael Bamberger is a Senior Writer for Sports Illustrated, which he joined in September 1995. Previously he worked for nine years as a general assignment reporter and sportswriter for the Philadelphia Inquirer and before that wrote for the (Martha's) Vineyard Gazette . His versatility as a writer and lucid, open style have quickly become the hallmark of his work. Before coming to Sports Illustrated, Bamberger published two books about golf: The Green Road Home (1986), about his experience as a caddie on the PGA tour, and To the Linksland (1992), about golf on the European tour and in Scotland. In March 1996, his play, Bart & Fay (based on the longtime friendship of Bart Giamatti and Fay Vincent), made its debut in Philadelphia. Bamberger was born and raised in Patchogue, New York, and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1982. He enjoys skiing and body-surfing and lives in the West Mount Airy section of Philadelphia with his wife Christine and their two children, Ian and Alina.

    February 11, 2000: Martin Cruz Smith

    Born in Reading, Pennsylvania in 1942 to John Calhoun Smith, a jazz saxophonist, and Louise Lopez Smith, a big band singer, Martin Cruz Smith chose to follow a different creative pursuit from that of his parents: creative writing. Along the difficult road to his first best seller, Gorky Park, in 1981, Smith held various jobs - from a newspaper writer for the Philadelphia Daily News to a Camden ice cream vendor to a cheesecake men's magazine editor and a Madrid salesman. Martin Cruz Smith entered the University of Pennsylvania with the intention of becoming a sociologist but switched to creative writing after failing statistics. Inspired by a trip to Russia in 1973, Martin Cruz Smith spent nine years researching and writing Gorky Park. Slowed by a false start with the publishing house that first bought the rights to the book, Smith was able to buy the book rights back and sell it to Random House to be published in 1981. Gorky Park was followed by Polar Star in 1989, Red Square in 1992 and now Havana Bay in 1999. Smith has also written Rose, a book about nineteenth century female mining workers in the town of Wigan in England and Stallion Gate, about the birth of the atomic bomb in New Mexico. He currently resides in California with his wife and three children. For the full text of this bio, click here.

    February 1, 2000: James Morrow

    James Morrow will be reading from his most recently published novel, The Eternal Footman, as well as a work in progress, The Last Witchfinder. He will also talk with students about the relationship between his academic studies as a Penn student and his career as a full-time novelist.

    A Philadelphia native, James Morrow was born in 1947. He holds a BA in English (Creative Writing) from the University of Pennsylvania and an MAT in Visual Studies from Harvard University. His novels blend satire, science fiction, and philosophy. This Is the Way the World Ends (1986), a nuclear war comedy, was the BBC's choice as best science fiction novel of the year. Only Begotten Daughter (1990), a sequel to the New Testament, won the World Fantasy Award. Towing Jehovah (1994), a Nietzschean nautical adventure about the death of God, also won the World Fantasy Award. Blameless in Abaddon (1996), a modern-dress retelling of the Book of Job, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. The Eternal Footman, the final volume in the Godhead Trilogy, has just been released in hardcover. Morrow's novel-in-progress is The Last Witchfinder, which chronicles the birth of the scientific worldview. He writes full time in State College, Pennsylvania, sharing accommodations with his wife, Kathryn, his ten-year-old son, Christopher, and two enigmatic dogs: Pooka, an SPCA Border Collie, and Amtrak, a Doberman mix that he and Kathy rescued from a train station in Orlando.

    January 25, 2000: The Craft of Screenwriting: an Alumni-Student Workshop

    This workshop features alumni screenwriters Stuart Gibbs and David Stern. Hosted by the Talking Film Series, Student Performing Arts, and the Kelly Writers House.

    Stuart Gibbs has written "Disaster Area" for Fox, "Witchhunt" for MGM, "See Spot Run" for Warner Brothers, and "Mickey's Three Musketeers" for Disney animation. Two of his films, "The Return of the World's Most Rotten Lover" and "Repli-Kate" are being financed independently by international investors, and he is at work on "The Random Games" for New Line Cinema. Despite all this, the only big budget feature work he's done that has made it to the screen was the lines he wrote for Bartok, the animated bat in Fox's "Anastasia." (They were pretty funny lines, though.)

    David Stern began his career working in the New York theater for Director/Lyricist Richard Maltby, Jr. During his tenure with Maltby, he worked on the Broadway productions of "Miss Saigon", "Nick & Nora", and "Big" as well as a myriad of other smaller projects. Simultaneously, he began his theater writing career. He wrote the Rodgers and Hammerstein revue "Some Enchanted Evening" (Tour), the plays "Dreams & Stuff" (John Houseman Theater) and "Finders of Lost Luggage", the radio program "The 1990's Radio Hour and a Half" (National Public Radio), and the musical "Snapshots" (Westport Country Playhouse, Virginia Stage). David took a small detour into directing with the New York revival of "Starting Here, Starting Now" (nominated for a MAC Award) and a stint with The American Project at Circle in the Square. After his six years in New York, David migrated west to Los Angeles. There he wrote "Geppetto" for The Wonderful World of Disney (starring Drew Carey and Julia Louis-Dreyfus), "The Muppets Return", and "Wish" (for director Ivan Reitman). He is currently writing "Gettysburgville" for Disney and director Jon Turtletaub. All that being said, David's proudest accomplishment is writing the December 1997 Harper's Magazine cryptic crossword puzzle with his co-conspirator, Stephen Schwartz.

    November 16, 1999: Alec Sokolow

    Alec Sokolow is a Penn alumnus, and he has written the scripts for Toy Story, which received an Academy Award Nomination for Best Original Screenplay, and the film Goodbye Lover which was screened at the Cannes Film Festival and released last year. He has written or co-written about twenty feature length screenplays, including an adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats and a sequel to The Mask.

    November 6, 1999: Alumni Perform Their Own Writings

    Not quite a "poetry slam," not quite a nightclub improv, not quite a coffee house, not quite a variety show, this informal evening program will feature a great range of talented alumni writers and spoken-word performers. Refreshments served from the famed Writers House kitchen. Hosted by Class of 1942 Professor of English and Kelly Writers House Faculty Director Al Filreis.

    October 28, 1999: Caren Lissner and Josh Piven

    "How to Get Published"

    Caren Lissner, CAS '93, has had fiction published in JANE Magazine and has published humorous essays and satire in the New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Harper's, Weatherwise Magazine and the Pennsylvania Gazette. She is the managing editor of a chain of weekly newspapers based in Hoboken, NJ. On the side, she is currently at work on a comic novel. At Penn, she was a beat reporter and columnist for the DP.

    Josh Piven, CAS '93, started out as the New Products Editor for Computer Shopper Magazine, then the Senior Editor for Computer Technology Review Magazine, and has written a book The Worst Case Scenario Survival Guide (Chronicle, 1999). He is currently a freelance journalist and writes for Business Philadelphia Magazine, Philadelphia Weekly, Success Magazine, and Travel and Leisure, among others.

    September 23, 1999: Jazz publisher Evan Sarzin

    Evan Sarzin is a publisher of jazz and, more recently, world music. He'll visit Writers House to talk about forms of music publishing, copyright vs. public domain issues, transcriptions and arrangements, improvisations and chord changes, the business of publishing and distribution, and writing and self-publishing. For more information about Gerard and Sarzin Publishing Company, visit their website.

    1998-1999

    March 30, 1999: Kathy DeMarco

    Kathy DeMarco is a writer and producer at John Leguizamo's film production company Lower East Side Films. Presented by Talking Film.

    March 24, 1999: Sabrina Eaton

    Sabrina Eaton graduated from Penn in 1985. While she was at Penn, she reported for the DP, was the Editor-in-Chief for Street, was named a Columnist of the Year, and interned at Inside Magazine and Time Incorporated, among others. After graduation Eaton worked for a number of small papers, eventually becoming the Washington correspondent for the States News Service, where she covered the Missouri delegation for the St. Louis Sun and other newspapers for a combined circulation of 800,000. She has been the Washington correspondent for the Cleveland, OH Plain Dealer since 1990, covering the Ohio Congressional delegation and politics.

    March 19, 1999: Caryn Karmatz-Rudy and Celina Spiegel

    Caryn Karmatz Rudy is a Senior Editor at Warner Books, a highly commercial trade publishing house in Manhattan. Her areas of focus are women's interest non-fiction and women's commercial fiction; over her six years in publishing she has worked on books ranging from Simple Abundance by Sarah Ban Breathnach and The Rules by Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider to a lot of novels and works of nonfiction. Caryn was an English major at Penn, and graduated in 1992. She is thrilled to be visiting Writers House for the first time and very jealous of those undergraduates who can benefit from this remarkable program.

    Celina (Cindy) Spiegel is Co-Editorial Director at Riverhead Books, a division of Penguin Putman. The nonfiction she has published includes Harold Bloom's Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, James McBride's The Color of Water, and the books of Kathleen Norris, the most recent of which is Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith. The fiction she has published includes Chang-rae Lee's Native Speaker, Pearl Abraham's Giving Up America, and The Romance Reader, Alex Garland's The Tesseract and The Beach, Aryeh Lev Stollman's The Far Euphrates, and Danzy Senna's Caucasia. Before coming to Riverhead in 1989 as a founding editor, she was an associate editor at Ticknor & Fields, and began her publishing career in the College Division of Random House/Knopf. She is also the co-editor, with Christine Buchmann, of the anthology Out of the Garden: Women Writers on the Bible and, with Peter Kupfer, of Great First Lines: Literature's Most Memorable First Sentences.

    February 28, 1999: J. Robert Lennon

    J. Robert Lennon is the author of The Light of Falling Stars, which won Barnes & Noble's 1997 Discover Great New Writers Award. His short fiction has appeared in Story, Fiction, and American Short Fiction. He lives with his wife and son in Ithaca, New York.

    January 18, 1999: Sherman Labovitz

    Sherman Labovitz

    Sherman Labovitz is the author of Being Red in Philadelphia: A Memoir of the McCarthy Era. He left the Communist Party in 1957 and became a college professor, establishing a program in social work at the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey. He will be introduced by Ira Schwartz, Dean of the School of Social Work. Click here for more on this program.

    December 7, 1998: Loretta Barrett

    Loretta Barrett is a literary agent. She returns to the Writers House for a special workshop on how to publish your writing. Co-sponsored by the School of Arts and Sciences.

    November 17, 1998: Stephen Fried

    Stephen Fried, author of Bitter Pills (Bantam, 1998), is an investigative journalist. His work has appeared frequently in Vanity Fair, The Washington Post Magazine, Glamour, GQ, and Philadelphia magazine, and his articles on drug safety brought him his second consecutive National Magazine Award, the highest honor in magazine journalism. His previous book was the widely praised Thing of Beauty: The Tragedy of Supermodel Gia. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife, the writer Diane Ayres. Please see his homepage for more information.

    October 31, 1998 - December 15, 1998: Alumni Art Exhibit

    Located in the Kelly Writers House, this exhibit features Scott Wright, John McGiff, Eva Mantell, Emily Steinberg, and others.

    October 30, 1998: Larry Dark and Tina Pohlmann

    Larry Dark has been the series editor of PRIZE STORIES: THE O. HENRY AWARDS since 1995. Before that he was the editor of four anthologies: LITERARY OUTTAKES (Ballantine, 1990), THE LITERARY GHOST (The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1991), THE LITERARY LOVER (Viking, 1993), and THE LITERARY TRAVELER (Viking, 1994). He has a B.A. in philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania (1981) and an MFA from Columbia University (1989). He lives in New Jersey with his wife, Alice Elliott Dark, a fiction writer and Penn graduate, and their son. Joining Larry on October 30 will be Tina Pohlman, a Penn alumna and Larry's editor at Anchor Books.

    PRIZE STORIES: THE O. HENRY AWARDS is an annual anthology of the year's best stories written by U.S. and Canadian writers and published in the approximately 250 U.S. and Canadian mag azines consulted for the series. The awards were established in 1919 and have been published by Doubleday since that time. The series editor, Larry Dark, chooses 20 stories each year from among the 3,000 or so he reads. Since 1997, the top-three prize win ners have been chosen from among these 20 stories by a three-member jury of writers. In 1998, the jurors were: Andrea Barrett, Mary Gaitskill, and Rick Moody.

    October 2, 1998: Jon Avnet

    Originally from Brooklyn, New York, Jon Avnet attended Penn in the late 1960's. Since then, he has gone on to become a successful feature film producer and director. Included in his directing credits are such successes as "Red Corner" (1997) with Richard Gere, "Up Close and Personal" (1996), featuring Michele Pfeifer and Robert Redford, and the critically acclaimed film "Fried Green Tomatoes" (1991), starring Kathy Bates and Jessica Tandy. Over the past twenty years, Avnet has also produced a number of hit movies including "Risky Business" (1983), "Tango and Cash" (1989), "The Mighty Ducks" (1992), "The Three Musketeers" (1993), as well as the recent blockbuster "George of the Jungle" (1997).

    October 1, 1998: Shawn Walker

    BERNADETTE MAYER CELEBRATION: Poet and alumna Shawn Walker joins poets Ange Mlinko, Shawn Walker, Lee Ann Brown and Bernadette Mayer for a tribute and reading. Walker is one of the founders and a long-time friend of the Kelly Writers House.

    September 23, 1998: Lorene Cary

    The New York Times Book Review calls Lorene Cary "a powerful storyteller, frankly sensual, mortally funny, gifted with an ear for the pounce [of] real speech," and describes The Price of a Child, Cary's novel about the Underground Railroad, as "a generous, sardonic, full-blooded work of fiction" (Knopf, 1995; Vintage, pap., 1996). Cary graduated with a B.A. and M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1978 and earned an M.A. in Victorian Literature at Sussex University in 1980. Cary is also the author of Black Ice and Pride, which tells the story of four strong-willed and accomplished black women who learn loss and triumph as maternal passion, addiction, betrayal, ambition, and violence transform their friendships and their lives.

    September 14, 1998: Nijmie Dzurinko

    In the season opener of LIVE at the Writers House, alumna Nijmie Dzurinko joins other artists, including the poet Rachel Blau DuPlessis.

    1997-1998

    May 21, 1998: Sharon Glassman

    Sharon Glassman, C '84, is a monologist. Her latest show, Brenda Builds a Pool, debuted at dance Theatre Workshop in New York in October of 1998.

    April 6, 1998: Jennifer Egan

    Jennifer Egan

    Jennifer Egan, author of The Invisible Circus and Emerald City (Picador USA), is a Thouron Fellow and a recent recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her stories & nonfiction have appeared in The New Yorker, GQ, Mademoiselle, Ploughshares, and The New York Times Magazine. She lives in New York City.

    March 30, 1998: Andy Robinson

    Since graduating from Penn in 1981, Andy Robinson has worked with a variety of social change organizations as a grantwriter, fundraiser, editor and community organizer. He currently serves as developmental consultant to The Wildlands Project, an international conservation group based in Tucson. Andy's book, Grassroots Grants: An Activist's Guide to Proposal Writing, was published in 1996 by Chardon Press.

    February 26, 1998: Buzz Bissinger

    Buzz Bissinger is Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of A Prayer for the City and Friday Night Lights, visited 2/26/98. (Co-sponsored by the School of Arts and Sciences College Alumni Society)

    February 25, 1998: John Prendergast and Carole Bernstein

    John Prendergast and Carole Bernstein John Prendergast is a novelist and the editor of the Pennsylvania Gazette. Carol Bernstein is a poet. Her first book of poems is Familiar.

    January 28, 1998: Loretta Barrett

    Loretta Barrett is a literary agent and the principle in Barrett Books. Co-sponsored by the School of Arts and Sciences.

    November 23, 1997: Andy Wolk

    Andy Wolk has written scripts for United Artists, MGM, Miramax, HBO and PBS. He received a Writers Guild Award and in 1996 was the artistic director for the Sundance Institute.

    November 7, 1997: Betsy Andrews and Eva Mantell

    Betsy Andrews, C'85, is a poet and artist whose poems have been published in Conjunctions, Phoebe and other magazines.

    Eva Mantell, C'85, is a writer and performance artist whose work has been exhibited at the Kitchen, Brooklyn Museum of Art, and LaMama, among other places.

    October 22, 1997: Gilbert Sandler

    Gilbert Sandler

    Gilbert Sandler, C'49, is a columnist for the Baltimore Sun.

    September 23, 1997: Mark Cohen

    Mark Cohen, C'84, is Executive Editor of Philadelphia Magazine.

    January 26, 1997: Diana Cavallo

    Diana Cavallo, C'84, is novelist and current member of the English department faculty at the University of Pennsylvania. Co-sponsored by the English Department.