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Once a year since 2002, Susan and Louis Meisel have sponsored a benefit at the Louis K. Meisel Gallery at 141 Prince St. in SoHo to raise money in support of the Kelly Writers House Young and Emerging Writers Fund. Because of the generosity of Louis and Susan, who have donated the use of their gallery and the costs of a delicious reception, 100% of the receipts from this annual benefit go directly toward the Kelly Writers House young writers fund.
We wish to thank the Meisels for their inspiring support of this annual event, for their support of the Kelly Writers House Art Gallery, and for their generous contributions to our furniture budget, which has allowed us to purchase bookcases and a beautiful leather couch.
Lee Eisenberg (C'68) spent seventeen years at Esquire, where he served as editor-in-chief through the 1980s. In 1995, Eisenberg was hired to oversee creative development at Time magazine. He helped launch Time for Kids, a newsmagazine for children, and was involved with many of Time's initial online activities. He also worked on a number of special issues and projects, including a two-year Time-CBS News collaboration known as The TIME 100, which culminated with the selection of Time's Person of the Century. In 1999, Eisenberg was appointed Executive Vice President and Creative Director at Lands' End, where he oversaw all creative and marketing activities. In 2003, he was promoted to the company's Office of the President, and served as Chief Creative and Administrative Officer. He resigned in March 2004 to begin work on The Number (Free Press), a New York Times bestseller about secure financial planning. Eisenberg has written numerous magazine articles and columns, as well as several other books. Titles include The Ultimate Fishing Book (Houghton Mifflin), Atlantic City: 100 Years of Ocean Madness (Clarkson Potter,) and Breaking Eighty (Hyperion Press). His work has appeared in Fortune, Money, and The New York Times, among many other publications.
Max Apple, beloved Penn writing professor and member of the Writers House community, has published three collections of stories, The Oranging of America, Free Agents and most recently, The Jew of Home Depot. He is the author of two novels, Zip and Propheteers, and two books of nonfiction, Roommates and I Love Gootie. Roommates was made into a film as were two other screenplays, Smokey Bites the Dust and The Air Up There. Five of his books have been New York Times Notable Books. His stories and essays are widely anthologized and have appeared in Atlantic, Harper's, Esquire, and many literary magazines and in Best American Stories and Best Spiritual Writing. His essay "The American Bakery" was selected by The New York Times as one of the best to appear in the first 100 years of the Book Review. He has received grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, The National Endowment for the Arts, and the Guggenheim Foundation. His Ph.D. is in 17th century literature. He has given readings at many universities and taught at Michigan, Stanford, NYU, Columbia, and Rice University, where he held the Fox Chair in English.
Kristen Gallagher (C'91, CGS'99), a Northeast Philadelphia native, has been a member of the Writers House community since the Spring of 1996. She received a Ph.D. from the Buffalo Poetics Program and is now Assistant Professor of English Literature at Fiorello H. LaGuardia Community College in New York. She recently won third prize in the "Reinventing Paul Friere" Essay Contest at the Paulo Friere Institute at UCLA. Her extended poetic work, No Goal, is available in several chapbooks. She is a member of the collective "Cheap Art for Freedom," a group that gives away cheap art and teaches the making of cheap art.
Moira Moody (C'06) is the current Writers House Junior Fellow. A lifelong Philadelphian, she came to Penn via the Mayor's Scholarship Program and majored in English. After graduating, she spent the last year as an AmeriCorps member at YouthBuild, a high school for dropouts. In 10 months she completed 1,700 hours of community service and 5,000 push-ups. Moira worked as an undergraduate staffer at the Writers House, and continues to participate in a house-sponsored fiction group and in the Writers House Planning Committee. Her writing has appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Pennsylvania Gazette, and The Philadelphia Public School Notebook.
Gabe Oppenheim (C'09) is a nonfiction writer currently working on a project about the history of Philadelphia boxers. He worked for several semesters as a weekly columnist at The Daily Pennsylvanian and has won a Columbia Scholastic Press Association award for writing about on-campus issues. Gabe won first place in the Creative Writing Program's 2007 prize in nonfiction. His writing has also appeared in Peregrine.
Pia Aliperti (C'07) is a poet currently working as an editorial assistant at Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group in Philadelphia. At Penn, she won several poetry prizes from the College Alumni Society and graduated with honors in creative writing. She worked at the Kelly Writers House as a project assistant during her senior year. Pia's work has recently appeared in The Penn Review, The F-Word, and Peregrine.
Gabe Crane (C'08) spent last summer paddling and blogging down the Mississippi River in a canoe. His blog, called The Mississippi Project, was sponsored by the Kelly Writers House and the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing. Gabe is an editor at 34th Street Magazine and has written for The Next American City and other publications. He was a 2006-2007 recipient of the CPCW's Eisenberg Literary Journalism Fellowship.
Paul Hendrickson was the 2005 recipient of the Provost's Award for Distinguished Teaching at the University of Pennsylvania. His most recent book, Sons of Mississippi, won the 2003 National Book Critics Circle Award in general nonfiction, among numerous other accolades. The book is a study of the legacy of racism in the families of seven Mississippi sheriffs of the 1960s. Before Penn, Hendrickson worked for thirty years in daily journalism. He was a staff feature writer at the Washington Post from 1977 to 2001. Eventually, he needed to try to find a place--a home--where he could continue to work on books and the occasional magazine article and to be involved with gifted, creative people. So now, luck beyond dream, he finds himself conducting writing workshops at Penn in advanced nonfiction. His other books, in addition to Sons are: Seminary: A Search, Looking for the Light: The Hidden Life and Art of Marion Post Wolcott; and The Living and the Dead: Robert McNamara and Five Lives of a Lost War. Paul is deep into his next book, which has to do with Ernest Hemingway.
Charles Bernstein is the Donald T. Regan Professor of English at Penn and is a member of the Writers House hub, or planning committee. He has published three collections of essays - My Way: Speeches and Poems, A Poetics, and Content's Dream: Essays 1975-1984 and is the author of over twenty collections of poetry, including With Strings, Republics of Reality: 1975-1995, Dark City, Islets/Irritations; and Controlling Interests. Bernstein is the editor of several collections: Close Listening: Poetry and the Performed Word, 99 Poets/1999: An International Poetics Symposium, and The Politics of Poetic Form: Poetry and Public Policy, the audio CD Live at the Ear, and the poetics magazine L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, whose first issue was published in 1978. Bernstein is executive editor of the Electronic Poetry Center and co-director (with Al Filreis) of PennSound.
Alice Elliott Dark (C'76) is a short story author and novelist. She is the author of two story collections, Naked to the Waist and In the Gloaming, and one novel Think of England. Her short story "In the Gloaming" was selected by John Updike for inclusion in the Best American Short Stories of the Century and was made into a film by HBO. She has been awarded an O. Henry Award and her stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, The New York Times and The Washington Post. Dark has led workshops at the Writer's Voice in New York City, Bard College, Manhattanville College, and Rutgers University.
Nate Chinen (C'97), who has a background in jazz drumming, has written music criticism and reviews for JazzTimes, the Village Voice, and Weekend America, a syndicated public radio program. He has co-authored Myself Among Others: A Memoir, the autobiography of jazz impresario and Newport Jazz Festival founder, George Wein. Nate is an alumnus of the Creative Writing Program (his specialty was poetry) and he is a former Writers House Assistant Coordinator, member of the Writers House "Hub" and was the co-founder of the Virgin House Band, which played regularly at the Writers House during his undergraduate days.
Phil Sandick (C'03) comes to "Writers House New York 2006" all the way from Madison, where he is currently pursuing an M.F.A. in Fiction Writing and is teaching an undergraduate writing seminar at the University of Wisconsin. A beloved member of the Writers House community, Phil worked as an Assistant Program Coordinator, the Assistant to the Faculty Director, and the Assistant Director for Development, in addition to having been a member of the hub, co-coordinator of Radium (the fiction writing workshop), and a coach in the "Write On!" program for Philadelphia middle school students. In 2004-2005, Phil was awarded the Hub's Kerry Sherin Wright Prize for his proposal to bring poet Hal Sirowitz to the Writers House.
Tahneer Oksman (C'01) is a Brooklyn-based poet and fiction writer with an M.A. from the University of Chicago's Program in the Humanities, where she wrote a thesis entitled "Behind the Veil: The Poetics of Depression." A longtime member of the Writers House community, Tahneer worked at 3805 Locust Walk as the Assistant to the Faculty Director in 2001-2002. Her writing has appeared in Xconnect, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and elsewhere -- and she graced us with her presence and a wonderful speech at our recent 10th anniversary celebration, where she said that it was the memory of her powerful experience at the Writers House that brought her back to Penn after five years away.
Aichlee Bushnell is the current recipient of the Behrman Family Scholarship for a Young Writer. A sophomore Creative Writing and Comparative Lit major, Aichlee is a member of the Writers House staff and planning committee. Also a Mayor's Scholar, she is an alumna of the Alliance and Understanding program and is currently the corresponding secretary of the United Minorities Council. Aichlee has performed in Penn's benefit production of The Vagina Monologues, and last spring was awarded honorable mention in the Phi Kappa Sigma fiction contest. Aichlee has read her poetry at the October Gallery in Philadelphia and has performed with poets Sonia Sanchez and Amiri Baraka.
Cecilia Corrigan, a poet, is a sophomore Creative Writing and Religious Studies major from Narberth, PA. An assistant editor at Xconnect magazine, Cecilia's writing has appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer and 34th Street Magazine. She is a member of the Writers House Planning Committee, the Philomathean Society, iNtuitions Experimental Theatre, and Amnesty International, and has co-hosted a poetry-based radio show on Penn's WQHS entitled "Shrimp Cracker Valentine." Cecilia is currently writing a play under the mentorship of Charles Bernstein which will be produced in Philadelphia this winter.
Anthony DeCurtis, a member of Penn's Creative Writing faculty and Writers House regular, and contributing editor at Rolling Stone, where he has written for more than twenty years, and worked on staff for nine years (1986-1995) as a writer and senior editor. His Rolling Stone cover subjects include U2, R.E.M., Janet Jackson, Sting, the Rolling Stones, George Harrison, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, Garth Brooks, Jerry Garcia, Whitney Houston, Steve Winwood and Billy Joel. He has written or produced several shows for television as well. Every fall term, Anthony teaches his writing seminar, "The Arts & Popular Culture," at the Writers House. His newest book is In Other Words : Artists Talk About Life and Work.
Brilliant novelist, short-story writer, and essayist Jennifer Egan (C'85) is author of The Invisible Circus and Emerald City, was a Thouron Fellow and has been a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her stories and nonfiction have appeared in The New Yorker, GQ, Mademoiselle, Ploughshares, and The New York Times Magazine. She lives in New York City. Her novel, Look at Me (2002), is about the modern tyranny of image over substance. She has read from her work at the Writers House several times.
Hank Herman (C'71 and Penn parent) is the author of Super Hoops, a prize-winning series of 15 basketball novels for kids published by Bantam Doubleday Dell. "The Home Team," his column in the Westport News, has taken several top honors. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Outside, Men's Health, Men's Fitness, Family Fun, Parenting, Ladies' Home Journal, and McCall's. Hank's newest book is ACCEPT MY KID, PLEASE! A Dad's Descent into College Application Hell.
Kenneth Goldsmith has taken Penn's writing community by storm. He is teaching a new year-long undergraduate seminar that is a collaboration of the Writers House, the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing, and the ICA (Penn's Institute for Contemporary Art). A BFA in sculpture, a visual artist of great range, Kenny publishes as an innovative poet and has created and edits what is by far the most comprehensive web site of visual, concrete and sound poetry (UbuWeb). Among Goldsmith's books and compact discs include Tizzy Boost, No. 111 2.7.96-19.20.96, and Fidget. Fidget is Goldsmith's transcription of every movement made by his body during thirteen hours on Bloomsday (June 16), 1997. Recent works include Day, which consists of a retyping of one day's New York Times. Kenny's writing has been called some of the "most exhaustive and beautiful collage work yet produced in poetry" by Publishers Weekly. He is also the host of a weekly radio show on New York City's WFMU. At Penn, he is a senior editor of PennSound, our new online poetry archive. Kenny's dad, Ted, graduated from Penn in 1959.
Lorene Cary (C'78, G'78) is one of the most distinguished of all Penn alumni writers. She has been affiliated with the Writers House project since its founding in 1995-96. And she is the founder and currently the director of Art Sanctuary, a North Philadelphia-based project that promotes, supports and celebrates urban black arts. As a member of Penn's Creative Writing faculty, she has taught a series of fiction and creative non-fiction workshops, and special seminars in which students study contemporary writing and teach that writing in community schools and churches. Her novel The Price of a Child was chosen as Philadelphia's "One Book, One City" text for 2003. Black Ice is her best-selling memoir. She has just completed a new novel for young adults which her readerly daughter Zoe calls "a report book."
Janine Catalano, in Penn's senior class ('06), is a member of the Writers House staff and a two-time veteran of the Writers House Fellows Seminar. She is currently the Food & Drink editor at 34th Street magazine, treasurer of Penn for Choice, and a Ben Franklin Scholar. Janine has also been awarded a 2005-06 Penn Humanities Forum Fellowship for a project investigating the relationship between word and image in the poetry of Ferlinghetti and Eliot.
Yona Silverman, a native Manhattanite, is also a Penn senior ('06). A writer of fiction and nonfiction, she is currently Editor-in-Chief of Penn's 34th Street magazine, where she previously served as Managing Editor. Her journalistic writing, for which she won a 2004 Gold Circle Award, has also appeard in Philadelphia Weekly. A 2003 Penn fellowship enabled her to complete a project titled "Daddy, I Have to Kill You," about Sylvia Plath and parenthood. She has been hailed by Penn's Max Apple as one of the finest writers among our current students.
One of Penn's most talented young poets, Sam Donsky, currently a junior (C'07), has taken every poetry writing workshop and poetics course Penn offers. As a sophomore, he took second prize in the College Alumni Society Poetry Contest for 2004-05, and of his poems judge Lawrence Raab remarked that they "are headlong dives into a rich accumulative syntax. They generate a lively sense of a voice leaping from one consideration to another." Sam is a member of the Writers House "hub" (or Planning Committee).
For pictures from this event, please click here.
Dan Fishback (C '03) is a politically charged songwriter and performance artist, now living in Astoria, Queens. Dan spent much of his undergraduate life at Writers House: as a member of the 2002 and 2003 Fellows Seminars, as a performer with his band Cheese On Bread, and as an active member of the Writers House Planning Committee. Additionally, Dan was one of the most popular and engaging columnists at The Daily Pennsylvanian. In spite of his passion for music, Dan continues to ghost-write memoirs and work on a play. We're glad to say that Dan regularly performs in Philadelphia and the Writers House.
A Writers House regular and member of the Hub, Jamie-Lee Josselyn (C '05) is a nonfiction writer and senior at Penn. In addition to writing for 34th Street Magazine and The Pennsylvania Gazette, she studies French and is working as Project Assistant to Al Filreis this semester. She is currently working on a prose documentary project on the life of her mother.
Beth Kephart (C'82) is the author of A Slant of Sun: One Child's Courage, Into The Tangle of Friendship, Seeing Past Z: Nurturing the Imagination in a Fast-Forward World, and other books. A recent National Book Award Finalist and National Endowment for the Arts Recipient, Beth has written for many journals, including New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic , Chicago Tribune, and Washington Post Book World. She has had her work anthologized, both shorts stories and nonfiction in Best American Sports Writing 2003 and 2001, Salon.com, and New York Times Writers on Writing among others.
Nicole Tabolt (C '06), is the first recipient of The Douglas W. Caterfino Endowed Scholarship Fund for a Young Writer. Her poetry which has appeared in The Rising Times, Teen Voices, and the Penn Review, often addresses city life and current political issues. After graduating, Nicole plans to return to her hometown of Boston to enter the field of education.
Edwin Torres is a spoken-word poet known for his affiliation with the Nuyorican Poets Cafe (his art is said to be somewhere between Finnegans Wake and I Love Lucy). Edwin is the author of Fractured Humorous, I Hear Things People Haven't Really Said, and the CD Holy Kid. New York Press pronounced him the Best Performing Poet, saying: "His bent for soul bending language play is without equal." Edwin's diverse influences range from avant-garde visual artists to the poetry of Wallace Stevens to modern sound experiments. Ethan Petitt of Nose Magazine writes that in Torres' poems, "words and meaning go ka-plunk like soft percussion." It is our honor to have Edwin speak on behalf of the Writers House at this event.
Suzanne Maynard Miller (C'89) is a playwright whose work has been produced in Seattle, Los Angeles, New Haven, Providence and at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. She is now working full-time on her writing in Brooklyn, having earlier taught playwriting at Brown and the Rhode Island School of Design. She was a member of the Andy Wolk Screenwriting Lab at the Writers House last winter.
This event was the second annual program at Meisel Gallery, a benefit for the Writers House "Young and Emerging Writers Fund." 120 friends of the Writers House, including many Penn alumni based in New York, attended. The event featured readings by Max Apple, Tom Devaney, Jessica Lowenthal, Jessica Ginsberg, Charles Bernstein, Ellen Umansky, and Kathleen DeMarco and was co-hosted by Al Filreis, Jennifer Snead and Blake Martin.
On November 7, 2002, the Meisel Gallery in Soho hosted the first "Writers House New York" event, featuring remarks and readings by Blake Martin, Greg Djankian (in the photo on the right), Kathy Lou Schultz, Paul Hendrickson, Kerry Sherin Wright, Herman Beavers, Al Filreis, and Lauren Rile Smith. One hundred and twenty New York-based friends of the Writers House, many of them Penn alumni, attended.