Special gifts
Special gifts to the Writers House are significant term gifts that allow us to establish or support projects, programs, and positions that we hope to make permanent.
As we grow the Writers House endowment, we are also seeking term support for initiatives and ideas that demand urgent and immediate support. Special gifts like these provide several years of funding to new projects and ideas we feel will become fixtures here at the Writers House. This support often allows us to establish a financial and programmatic case for permanent support.
If you'd like to hear more about term gift opportunities, please contact our Assistant Director for Development, Arielle Brousse, at brousse@writing.upenn.edu.
We're especially delighted to celebrate the people and organizations that have made special gifts to the Writers House. Thank you, supporters and friends – gifts such as yours allow this dynamic program space and meeting place for writers and readers to grow and thrive! We are grateful for your enthusiasm, encouragement and support, and honored to describe your gifts here.
The Esther T. Saxon Term Fund, for support of literacy programs
Established by Penn alumni Brian (W'90)and Jerilyn Perman (C'91), the Esther T. Saxon Fund supports various literacy outreach programs, including "Write-On!," a program that welcomes West Philadelphia grade school children to the Writers House twice a week for fun, safe, and educational extracurricular writing activities.
The Kerry Sherin Wright Prize
The Kerry Prize is an annual award honoring the extraordinary achievement of Kerry Sherin Wright, our beloved director from 1997 to 2003. The prize is awarded each spring to a member of the Writers House Hub for a project that best captures the aesthetic capaciousness and literary communitarianism that is a founding idea of the Writers House and the hallmark of Kerry's work as its director. Many people have contributed to this prize, including JoseyFoo, Al Filreis (perennial gift), Max Apple, Jon and Barbara Brody Avnet, Herman Beavers, John Prendergast and Carole Bernstein, Lenya Bloom, Megan Bly, Edward J. Bonett, Meredith K. Broussard, Rebecca Bushnell, Vincent Curren, Larry Dark, Robert and Marcia Morgan D'Augustine, David Deifer, Greg Djanikian, Kalyani Fernando, Patricia Green, Lawrence Greenspun, Harry Groome, Paul Hendrickson, Elsie Sterling Howard, Faye Ip, Caren M. Lissner, Bob Lucid, Andrea Kushnick-Rubin, Teresa Leo, John MacDermott, Robert Perelman, Brian and Jerilyn Perman, Sheila Raman, John Richetti, Ron Silliman, Elizabeth Silver, Laurence and Karen Rile Smith, and Harris Steinberg.
National Italian American Foundation: annual Gay Talese Lecture Series
From 2000-2007, the National Italian American Foundation (NIAF) sponsored one public performance by an Italian American author of note, held at the Kelly Writers House. The annual Gay Talese lecture series featured many great writers, including Dana Gioia, Lisa Scottoline, Frank Lentricchia, and Gay Talese himself.
Kelly Writers House Fellows Fund
Funded annually by Paul Kelly (C'62 WG'64) since 1999, the Kelly Writers House Fellows Program enables us to realize two unusual goals: to make it possible for the youngest writers and writer-critics to have sustained contact with eminent authors in an informal atmosphere conducive to discussion, conversation, even disagreement and challenge; and to resist the distinction between working with great authors and studying literature. Recent KWH Fellows include Art Spiegelman, Jamaica Kincaid, Adrienne Rich, Richard Ford, and Jerome Rothenberg.
Gordon Walls (C'38) Creative Ventures
This all-purpose fund allows us to support new initiatives and ideas, such as publications, tutoring programs, and various community-led projects.
Roberts Alumni Book Groups
Launched in 2000, our Online Book Groups program has hosted more than twenty successful online discussion groups, with topics ranging from Shakespeare to the Warsaw ghetto uprising to the associations between mathematics and music. Through the generous support of Wharton alumnus and Penn parent David Roberts, we now feature month-long discussions on longer works, as well as five-day "close reading" groups on singular short stories or pairs of poems.
Joan Harrison Award
Thanks to the generosity of Joan Harrison (C'81), the Writers House offers a yearly stipend to support a student writer with financial need.