Programs to Support at the Kelly Writers House
A general gift to the Kelly Writers House will help support all of the following programs and projects. Designated gifts may also be directed towards a particular project. Gifts may be given to our "Friends" campaign -- which provides term support -- or to our endowment. To find out more about how you can help the Writers House, please contact John Carroll (johnpc@writing.upenn.edu).
Alumni Programs
A number of accomplished alumnipoets, fiction writers, editors, screenwriters, journalistsgenerously lend their wisdom and experience to Penn students each semester. Illustrious graduates visit the Writers House to do readings, run workshops, and lead discussions as part of our Alumni Visitors Series, and alumni also work with students "off-campus," providing advice and guidance to members of the Penn community via electronic connections forged through Writers House.
Alumni Visitors Series
Penn's accomplished literary alumni have led talks on everything from fiction and screenplay writing to making a career as a freelance journalist. Our monthly Alumni Visitors Series has hosted over fifty alumni so far, including award-winning novelists J. Robert Lennon and Jennifer Egan, literary agent Loretta Barrett, book publishers Caren Karmatz Rudy and Meg Lenihan, and alumni journalists Buzz Bissinger (Vanity Fair), Stephanie Tuck (InStyle), and Elliot Caplan (Hearst Publishing), among many others.
Alumni Virtual Book Groups
These online book discussion groups for Penn alumni and families allow Penn graduates to pursue their love of literature and learning long after they leave campus. Led by Penn faculty, the groups tackle contemporary and classic texts, engaging in rousing discussion (at all hours!) via e-mail.
Alumni Mentorships
The Writers House pairs Penn students with volunteer alumni mentors via email. Mentors who work as novelists, editors, publishers, literary agents, screenplay writers for film and television, poets, playwrights, feature writers, humanities teachers in public and private schools, journalists, administrators of arts organizations, university professors, freelance writers, spoken-word performers, arts activists, cartoonists, and in many other capacities, provide guidance and advice to current Penn undergraduates.
Our Art Gallery
Thanks in part to our new, continuous picture rail, the Writers House has proven to be an ideal space for salon-style two-and three-dimensional art shows. Student curators choose a wide range of exhibits each semester, from exhibits of work by Pennsylvania Academy artists to displays of students' pottery, paintings and sculpture and collections of broadsides and hand-made books. Students also work with departments and schools to create community exhibits, such as an ambitious show of sculpture and paintings by students from Edison-Fareira High School in Philadelphia. The House funds the modest costs of producing and promoting each show.
Collaborative Programming
The Writers House collaborates on a regular basis with dozens of Philadelphia organizations and Penn departments and programs each year, creating innovative public events that bring together new audiences and communities of writers. Recent collaborations have included: Loved Poems and Poems About Love, co-sponsored with the English Department, which brought together poets Ed Hirsch, John Timpane, Susan Stewart, Greg Djanikian, Herman Beavers, Kathy Lou Schultz and Bob Perelman to read their favorite love poems and discuss the love lyric tradition; a night of Songs and Poems of Protest and Power, co-sponsored by Philadelphia's Paul Robeson House; and a program on digerati, the web, and cyber-writing, co-sponsored by the School of Engineering.
Community Projects
Over the years the students, faculty, staff and alumni affiliated with the Writers House have put their desire to work with younger writers into action by creating a number of community projects. In addition to the occasional workshops on poetry and writing that Writers House students lead for local schools such as Drew Elementary School and the Powel School, we also sponsor several thoughtfully conceived and carefully managed ongoing community writing/mentoring projects, including:
Saturday Reading Cooperative
Student members of the Writers House planning committee created this groundbreaking literacy program, which benefits students from the Lea School, a West Philadelphia elementary school. Each Saturday, second graders meet at the House to read books and write poems, plays, and songs, tutored by a group of dedicated undergraduate and graduate students. The program combines the efforts of parents, teachers, and Penn students. Teachers help identify students, parents commit to bring their children every Saturday of the nine-month program, and Penn undergraduate and graduate students mentor the children in a one-to-one ratio. The children, their parents, their teachers, and Penn mentors join together several times each year to celebrate the children's writing and enjoy group readings. Parents, teachers and participants have praised this program, citing that the children's reading levels have increased and that students who attend have begun to participate more actively in their weekday classes. Over four years the Cooperative has begun to include children whose older siblings also participated in the program, creating a tradition and furthering an important relationship between Penn and members of its West Philadelphia community. (FUNDED 2001-2006)
Write-On
A follow up to the Saturday Morning Reading Cooperative, this program is funded in part by a grant from Gear Up, a national project to increase elementary school students' chances of going to college. Undergraduate Penn students, led by a coordinator who is an alumna of Penn's Graduate School of Education, lead 7th graders from the Lea School in creative writing exercises and small tutoring sessions once a week. The students and tutors also review students' writing homework and school papers, and twice a year the students perform their creative work for their families, teachers and friends in a ceremony at the Writers House.(FUNDED 2001-2006)
Philadelphia Writers Resource Website
This new project, still awaiting funding, will be a complete and interactive electronic destination for the thousands of individuals who wish to know more about literary arts activities, reading and publication opportunities, writing courses and workshops, publishers, agents, and community writing projects in the Philadelphia and surrounding counties. The goal of the Philadelphia Writers Resource Website is to create a community-wide web site that will serve as a virtual resource and touchstone for writers, readers, teachers and literary appreciators in the Philadelphia region. (A complete proposal is available upon request.)
Discusssion Groups
Each year we host a number of topic-based discussion groups, which bring together Penn's expert faculty, students and alumni, and our Philadelphia audience, for dialogue outside the bounds of the traditional classroom. Our many discussion groups include:
Twentieth Century Reading Group
A cross-disciplinary discussion group composed of interdisciplinary faculty, graduate students and others concerning modernism
The Play's the Thing
An open-ended monthly play reading and roundtable about writing for theater
Women's Long Poems
Started by an undergraduate poet and a graduate student who were interested in researching and writing in this form
Experimental Poetry Group
Founded at the inception of the Writers House by a community of peoplefaculty, graduate and undergraduate students, and local poetswhose work explores the intersection of contemporary culture and contemporary poetry.
Film-Related Programs and Projects
Film programming at the Writers House reflects Penn students' longstanding fascination with both film theory and the practice of filmmaking. Film-related programs, all founded by Penn undergraduates, include a monthly visitors' series for filmmakers, producers and screenwriters, an ambitious web-based film review, and a popular discussion group for future Hollywood magnates. The film programming at Writers House has been so vital that Penn's first Undergraduate Film Advisory Board, the student committee that advises Penn's new undergraduate film studies minor, was founded primarily by Writers House film activists. Film-related projects at Writers House include:
Talking Film
A student-inspired, student-created series of workshops and seminars, featuring experts in the art of screenwriting, film criticism, and film art. The Writers House has hosted visits by a wide range of screenwriters, filmmakers, directors and film and television producers, including Jon Avnet (Risky Business, Fried Green Tomatoes), Harry Birckmayer (Party Girl), Andy Wolk (Sundance Film Festival, The Practice) Alec Sokolow (Toy Story), and Alex Sichel (All Over Me). Talking Film regularly attracts Penn's Film Studies faculty and film studies students and has been one of the most energized co-curricular activities at Penn.
Dial F for Film
An online film review of contemporary movies, founded and run by undergraduate students.
The Hollywood Club
The Hollywood Club gathers students and others who are interested in pursuing careers in contemporary film and television. This past year, the group hosted weekly meetings and several "networking nights," during which members exchanged information about contacts, jobs and internships in the entertainment industry. We predict that members of this group will see their budding film careers blossom quickly.
Our Kitchen
Food plays a central role in many of the activities of the Writers House, as writers and readers gather for intimate, intellectual conversation over tea, at dinner, and for dessert. The coffee is perking all day in our renovated kitchen, and in the evenings, eminent writers sit around our large dining room table and chat informally with Penn undergrads over Writers House lasagna and salad—usually well into the evening. Our kitchen is an exciting—indeed, a crucial—aspect of the House, and your support will help stock the House with food, supplies and equipment.
New Media Projects
Since the first days of the project, when Writers House founding members imagined a space for writers by designing a virtual "house" on the web, innovative uses of technology have been at the heart of the Writers House project. Indeed, the Writers House embraces technology as a medium for both artistic and programmatic innovation, and the creation of community. Technological innovations have supported the House in all of its missions, and the students whose curiosity and enthusiasm propel the House continue to develop new ways to employ new media in the service of the arts. Our ongoing new media projects in need of support include:
Webcast Workshop
Most recently, the Writers House has begun producing many of its programs live and on the Internet. During these simultaneous Internet broadcasts, viewers from around the country tune, e-mail, and even call in, conversing with our visiting writers, Penn faculty and students, and other members of the live audience via the Internet. Our first program, July 8, 1999, presented a discussion of William Carlos Williams' "To Elsie;" more recently we have hosted webcast readings and conversations with David Sedaris, John Updike, Grace Paley, Tom Wolfe, and June Jordan, among many others.
The Kelly Writers House Website
Writers House students do all of the web design for the House as well, learning by making as they create pages, encode our web-based sound archives, and experiment with the literary possibilities of the web as part of their work-study duties. In November of 2000, the Writers House website, with its RealVideo and RealAudio archives of our events, was named a Yahoo "Pick of the Week."
Writers House Listservs
Through its extensive listservs and ever-expanding website, the Writers House has created dozens of networks among current Penn students, alumni, and writers and readers from Philadelphia and beyond. The many communities supported by Writers House listservs include: Philadelphia poets; local fans of film and screenwriting; local nonfiction and fiction writers; directors of regional literary arts organizations; and writers in search of professional opportunities.
Publishing and Literary Journals
From its inception, the Writers House has recognized that young and emerging writers, editors and publishers benefit tremendously from being introduced to the work of their field: reading and critiquing other writers' work; editing and publishing literary journals; doing readings; submitting work for publication. Via our support of student and professional literary journals, we help provide students and others with opportunities to explore their interest in writing, editing, publishing as both a vocation and a career.
The Creative Publishing Room
The Writers House creative publishing room is busy from morning until night, as the staff from a wide range of journals use our meeting space and state-of-the-art computers, scanners and printers to produce the latest issues of a wide range of excellent magazines. By providing space and technical support to Penn's established student magazines, including Penn Review and Punchbowl, Writers House has given literati at Penn one central location for meeting to review submissions, scan art, layout journals, and host production celebrations. Your support allows us to provide our student publishers and editors with a state-of-the-art production facility.
New Publishing Ventures
Writers House is also the catalyst, incubator and financial supporter of a number of exciting new Penn publishing projects, including the nationally distributed literary journals Xconnect, Combo, and Phillytalks, an acclaimed small press, Handwritten Press, and Speakeasy, a new anthology of work by performers in our bi-weekly open mic night. While Xconnect is now supported by a very generous donation to our endowment, your gift will allow us to continue to fund our many other Writers House-sponsored publications, including:
Speakeasy Anthology
Aprint journal (and soon-to-be CD anthology) that celebrates many participants in a bi-weekly open mic night held at the Writers House
Handwritten Press
Described as "one of the very best art printers in the U.S.," which publishes 3-4 books of contemporary literature per year in micro editions
PhillyTalks
A highly respected dialogue with contemporary poets, which features responses by two poets, each to the other's poetry, in each issue; PhillyTalks is available online and currently reaches over 1,000 non-paying "subscribers" internationally
Combo
A poetry journal that features up-and-coming writers along with some of their accomplished mentors. Combo has had a tremendous impact on the writing community, especially among poets 35 and under, because it gives these younger poets substantial space in which to showcase their work, while also publishing more established poets who attract a wider audience to the journal
Online Literary Review
A recent project founded by undergraduate students and faculty members which aspires to be comparable to an online New York Times Review of Books.
Individual Series and Projects
A very generous donation from Roxanne and Scott Bok, which created our Visiting Writers Endowment Fund, funds many of our individual readings each year. However, each year we host additional programs that the planning committee, or others involved with the House, create, which are in need of funding for honoraria, and other production and promotion costs. Current projects and series include:
PhillyTalks
A dialogue with contemporary poets, rhe Philly Talks newsletter, now published online, features responses by two poets, each to the other's poetry. Philly Talks, the event, presents a reading by the poets, a panel discussion, and a public dinner. The panel format and dinner act as an invitation to extend the conversation to the audience.
Theorizing in Particular
This interdisciplinary lecture series highlights current methods of cultural analysis and criticism. Each evening is roughly formatted around a 50-minute presentation and a half-hour question-and-answer session followed by informal discussion and refreshments. Recent guests in this series include Slavoj Zizek and Daniel Libeskind.
Speakeasy
The House's famous student-run bi-weekly open mic night features emerging poets, fiction writers, musicians and others "on stage" in the Arts Café at the Kelly Writers House.
Poets and Painters
Each semester, the House presents two or three programs in this series, bringing together a poet and a painter for a reading and talk. Most recently, John Moore, the Chair of Penn's Graduate School of Fine Arts and a landscape painter, joined Geoffrey Young, Yale professor, poet and publisher of the influential small press, The Figures, for an evening of discussion about the connections between their work over the years.
Fund for One Annual Literary Program
Each of our literary eventsa reading, a lecture, or a seminar, often including dinner with the visiting writeris a marvelous production. For each event, typically a dozen or so students, faculty and staff come together to envision the program, invite the guest, reserve lodgings, order books, inform interested professors and their students about the author's work, make posters, send out listserv announcements, and set the stage. The hard work pays off as each week hundreds of people visit the Writers House to enjoy our readings, meet with writers, and discuss contemporary literature over pasta and salad. Your gift will fund one literary event from start to finish.
New Initiatives
Each semester, new students, faculty, staff and alumni come to the Writers House with great untried ideas. A sophomore in Comparative Literature who is passionate about literary criticism starts a series featuring Penn's best theorist/critics. A local journalist, a Penn alumna, wants to create a discussion group for Philadelphia-area freelance journalists. An English department graduate student imagines a forum in which poets talk about the social and aesthetic influences of their work. A staff member starts a national literary journal. Over the years Writers House has given the initial support to all of these projects and more. Your gift will help fund our new initiativescreative ventures that are at the heart of the Writers House mission.
Supporting Our Student Participants
The heart of the Writers House is its student communitythose undergraduate and graduate students who use the House as home base and do the work required to keep it running and thriving. While all of our programs are sponsored, managed, and enjoyed by current Penn students, the Writers House Planning Committee also supports its student members and the entire student body at Penn specifically by offering jobs, internships, grants for projects, and fellowships to interested young writers, budding arts administrators and teachers, and others. Your support will allow us to continue to offer these special opportunities to Penn's literary activists:
Student Interns
As the site of Penn's ultimate practicum, the Writers House has already, in its short history, sponsored specific apprenticeships for over one hundred students. These students may be writers and artists, or they may simply come to the house with a passion for reading or an interest in arts management, arts funding, and humanities programming. Currently, over a dozen students form the paid staff, and many more volunteer interns comprise the House's unpaid staff. These student staffers do the real work of the House: curating literary programs, creating new publications, developing marketing strategies, and managing our annual friends campaign, among many other duties. In the process of shaping the culture of the Writers House, the students gain immeasurable work experiencein addition to spending time with their favorite faculty members, fellow students, and of course the eminent writers we welcome to the House as our guests.
The Writers House Junior Fellow
A competition is held among graduating Penn seniors who apply for the Kelly Writers House Junior Fellowship. The recipient of this honor helps to create new programs at the House, and at the same time is given study space to write and create new art. The Junior Fellow program encourages excellent Penn students to stay in the Philadelphia area as they develop their creative talents in the months immediately following graduation. In past years, Writers House Junior Fellows have published chapbooks of their poems, sponsored conferences on pseudonymous poetry and language, art and abstraction, and organized an art and performance exhibit that traveled to the Philadelphia Art Alliance.
Writing Groups and Workshops
Penn offers a slew of excellentindeed, inspiringclasses in writing and literature. Students, staff and alumni who have availed themselves of these courses often want to continue to pursue their creative work after the formal schooling is done, and so the Writers House helps members of the Penn community organize a wide range of informal writing workshops. These workshops are free and open to Penn staff, faculty, students and alumni as well as writers from the Philadelphia area, and include among others:
Manuck! Manuck!
A fiction writing group, founded by Penn undergraduates, which includes about 20 writers who meet weekly to share and discuss stories and novels by participants in the group
Suppose an Eyes
A poetry workshop organized by a student at the Graduate School of Education. Among the members are several Penn alumni who have published books, a number of undergraduate students, and creative writing instructors
WHSong
A workshop for fledgling songwriters and lyricists
Hubverse
An online workshop for members of the Writers House Planning Committee
Non-Fiction Workshop
Founded by a Penn alumna, with 30 members, which meets bi-weekly to discuss members' freelance articles, query letters, and creative nonfiction
Penn and Pencil Club
A workshop for poets, playwrights and fiction writers, founded by 30 or so members of Penn's professional staff. This productive workshop celebrated its fourth year in 2001!
WXPN 88.5FM Collaborations
Since 1996, the Writers House has enjoyed a lively collaboration with WXPN 88.5 FM, Penn's acclaimed public radio music station. Through this collaboration we continue to share the resources of WXPN with student producers and student and local writers even as we broaden the audience for Writers House programs via the radio and the web. Our current collaborative project with WXPN is:
"Live at the Writers House"
On WXPN 88.5 FM Our celebrated radio broadcast, "Live at the Writers House," emanates from the Writers House Arts Café one Monday each month. Featuring the new work of local musicians and writers, including Penn students, faculty and staff, as well as that of eminent featured guests, this show is hosted by WXPN's brilliant morning show host, Michaela Majoun. Students co-produce, direct and manage the show, with support from our friends at WXPN 88.5 FM. This is a major aesthetic and intellectual outreach for Penn, both to our XPN partners and the listening audience in the Delaware Valley and beyond. "Live" was named City Paper's "Best New Radio Show" in 1998.