November 2017
Wednesday, 11/1
One Mic: Recognizing Resistance
7:30 PM in the Arts Cafe
Sponsored by: United Minority Council (UMC) and Kelly Writers House Speakeasy
watch: a video recording
listen: to an audio recording of this event
The United Minority Council (UMC) will host, in collaboration with Kelly Writers House Speakeasy, an open mic event centered on the theme, "Recognizing Resistance." UMC is a board representing twenty-nine affinity and cultural groups on campus that strives to facilitate interculturalism and to promote social justice at the University of Pennsylvania. This event is part of the wider Unity Month programming by UMC, a month of awareness and activism around minority experience at Penn and beyond. This open mic will revolve around the various innovative and creative means by which people practice resistance in their daily lives. We welcome all performances in the spirit of this theme, and we welcome all to come!
Thursday, 11/2
JOURNALISM IN CRISIS: YEVGENIA ALBATS & TRUDY RUBIN
Reporting on Russian Politics
12:00 PM in the Arts Cafe
RSVP: wh@writing.upenn.edu or 215-746-POEM
Supported by the Provost's Interdisciplinary Arts Fund and co-sponsored by Perry World House
Continuing our Journalism in Crisis series, award-winning Russian journalist Yevgenia Albats returns, accompanied by foreign affairs columnist for Philadelphia Inquirer Trudy Rubin. Albats and Rubin will discuss what it's like for Russian journalists to report on the political situation inside Russia. They'll consider Russian politics, and Putin's view of Trump and the world. There will be plenty of time for your questions.
Yevgenia Albats is editor-in-chief of the Russian political weekly The New Times. She is also an anchor with the Echo Moskva broadcasting and a recipient of several journalism awards worldwide. She received the Golden Pen Award in 1989, the highest journalism honor in the then-Soviet Union. She was an Alfred Friendly fellow in 1990 and a fellow of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University in 1993. Albats is the author of four books, including The State Within A State: KGB and Its Hold on Russia. Past, Present and Future. Albats has a PhD in political science from Harvard University. She has lectured at many universities in the US and Europe, including Yale University and Oxford University. She is a permanent professor at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow.
Trudy Rubin is the foreign affairs columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer, and a member of The Inquirer's editorial board. Her column runs regularly in many other newspapers around the United States. In 2017, Ms. Rubin was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in commentary and for the Overseas Press Club commentary prize, for her columns on global issues. She was also a Pulitzer finalist in 2001, for her columns on Israel and the Palestinians. In 2010 she received the Arthur Ross Award for distinguished analysis of foreign affairs from the American Academy of Diplomacy. In 2008 she was awarded the Edward Weintal prize for international reporting. She is the author of Willful Blindness: The Bush Administration and Iraq. Ms. Rubin has special expertise on the Middle East, South Asia, Russia and Eastern Europe. She appears frequently on radio and television and in recent years has traveled repeatedly to Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Egypt, Turkey, Tunisia, Lebanon, Israel, the West Bank, Russia, Ukraine, Western Europe and China.
A conversation with David Daley
Applebaum Editors and Publishers program
6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe
hosted by: Lorene Cary
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen: to an audio recording of this event
David Daley is the author of the national best-seller Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn't Count (Norton). He is the former editor-in-chief of Salon, a senior fellow at FairVote, and a digital media fellow at the University of Georgia. His work has also appeared in the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, The Atlantic, New York magazine, USA Today, and many other prominent publications. He also ran the pioneering online fiction journal FiveChapters for nine years, helping launch the careers of many of today's top novelists and fiction writers. He lives in western Massachusetts.
Storyboard workshop with Faryn Pearl
7:30 PM in the Arts Cafe
Co-sponsored by: the Alpha Delta Phi Society
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.
Friday, 11/3
Saturday, 11/4
Homecoming Open House
2:00 PM - 4:00 PM throughout the first floor
rsvp: whhomecoming@writing.upenn.edu or call (215) 746-POEM
Renew your acquaintance or get to know this lively and innovative home for writers of all ages and genres as you join members of the Writers House community for informal conversation, coffee, and light refreshments. Advance registration is not required, but we'd love to hear from you. RSVP to whhomecoming@writing.upenn.edu or call (215) 746-POEM
A CONVERSATION WITH ALEC SOKOLOW
Hartman Screenwriting Series
4:00 PM in the Arts Cafe
rsvp: whhomecoming@writing.upenn.edu or call (215) 746-POEM
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV: part 1, part 2
listen to an audio recording of this event
hosted by: Kathy 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.
Sunday, 11/5
Monday, 11/6
A lunch talk with Ben Yagoda
Povich Journalism Program
12:00 PM in the Arts Cafe
rsvp: wh@writing.upenn.edu
hosted by: Dick Polman
Now more than ever, journalists are thinking about the importance of accuracy and credibility of reporting. Join us for a lunch talk with Ben Yagoda, journalist, film critic, and author of a dozen books including The Arts of Fact. Yagoda will discuss the issue of accuracy across all journalistic modes, in a freewheeling conversation moderated by Dick Polman.
Ben Yagoda is the author or coauthor of twelve books, including Will Rogers: A Biography, About Town: The New Yorker and the World It Made, Memoir: A History, and The Art of Fact: A Historical Anthology of Literary Journalism. He has worked as the film critic of the Philadelphia Daily News, an editor at Philadelphia Magazine, and since 1992 as a professor of journalism at the University of Delaware. He has contributed to the New York Times Magazine, Esquire, The American Scholar, Smithsonian, and magazines that start with every letter of the alphabet except K, Q, X, and Z. He conducts a blog called Not One-Off Britishisms, and contributes a weekly post to the Chronicle of Higher Education blog about language and writing, Lingua Franca. He lives in Swarthmore PA.
Hub Meeting
5:00 PM
rsvp: jalowent@writing.upenn.edu
Join us for a meeting of the Hub, the core of engaged faculty, students, staff, and volunteers who help make things happen at Writers House. Anyone is welcome to become a Hub member by participating in Hub activities and helping out. Members of the Hub plan programs, share ideas, and discuss upcoming projects.
Tuesday, 11/7
On Elie Wiesel: Alan Rosen and Al Filreis in conversation
Wexler Program in Jewish Life and Literature
12:00 PM in the Arts Cafe
rsvp: wh@writing.upenn.edu or call (215) 746-POEM
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV: part 1, part 2
listen to an audio recording of this event
Dr. Avraham (Alan) Rosen is the author or editor of twelve books. He is most recently the author of The Wonder of Their Voices: The 1946 Holocaust Interviews of David Boder (Oxford UP, 2010; updated paper edition 2012), and Sounds of Defiance: The Holocaust, Multilingualism and the Problem of English (U of Nebraska P, paper 2008); and the editor of Elie Wiesel: Jewish, Literary, and Moral Perspectives (Indiana UP, 2013, finalist, National Jewish Book Awards) and Literature of the Holocaust (Cambridge UP, 2013, also a finalist, National Jewish Book Award). His new book, Keeping Time Sacred, Making Time Holy: The Holocaust's Jewish Calendars, is due to appear in the coming months. His current writing, including two books and a number of articles, focuses largely on the legacy of his teacher and mentor, Elie Wiesel. He was a research fellow of the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah from 2006-2009. He has also held fellowships at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; the International Institute for Holocaust Research, Yad Vashem; the Katz Center for Advanced Jewish Studies, University of Pennsylvania, and the Archives for the History of American Psychology, University of Akron. In 2013, he served as the Wilkenfeld Scholar in Holocaust Education in Sydney, Australia. He has taught at universities and colleges in Israel and the United States, and lectures regularly on Holocaust Literature at Yad Vashem's International School for Holocaust Studies and other Holocaust study centers. Recent lecture venues include Yale University, the University of Pennsylvania, and a keynote address at a Leeds University conference on "Jewish Exile and the Arts." In Fall, 2017, he is scheduled to receive the Susan Herman Award for Leadership in Holocaust and Genocide Awareness from Kean State University.
Born and raised in Los Angeles, educated in Boston under the direction of Elie Wiesel, he lives in Jerusalem with his wife and four children.
Holly Melgard, Amanda Silberling, and Orchid Tierney
Whenever We Feel Like It Series
6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe
watch: a video recording of this event
listen to an audio recording of this event
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.
Holly Melgard is the author of the Poems for Baby trilogy (Colors for Baby, Foods for Baby, and Shapes for Baby), The Making of The Americans, Black Friday, Reimbursement, Holly Melgard Reads Holly Melgard (Troll Thread), Cats Can't Taste Sugar (Gauss PDF), and Catcall (Ugly Duckling Presse, October 2017). Along with Joey Yearous-Algozin, she's co-authored Liquidation, White Trash (Troll Thread) and Holly Melgard's Friends and Family (Bon Aire Projects). She is currently writing her PhD dissertation on "Poetics of Ubiquitization: Textual Conditions of/for the Ubiquitous Computing Age" in the Buffalo Poetics Program, designing and co-editing Troll Thread press, teaching writing at CUNY, and living in Brooklyn, NY.
Orchid Tierney is from New Zealand/Aotearoa/Philadelphia. Her chapbooks include Brachiation (Dunedin: GumTree Press, 2012) and The World in Small Parts (Chicago: Dancing Girl Press, 2012), and a full length sound translation of the Book of Margery Kempe, Earsay (TrollThread, 2016). Other work, poetry, photography, and reviews have appeared in Western Humanities Review, Empty Mirror, Journal of Modern Literature, among others. She co-edits Supplement, an annual anthology on Philadelphia writing.
Amanda Silberling is a senior at the University of Pennsylvania studying English and Fine Arts. Her poems and not-poems have appeared in The Rumpus, decomP, Reality Beach, Paper Magazine, Consequence of Sound, and others. Her first film "We're Here, We're Present: Women in Punk" debuted this summer on VICE. She still plays Pokémon Go.
Wednesday, 11/8
Artist Erica Baum in conversation with Al Filreis
Creative Ventures Program
6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV: part 1, part 2
listen to an audio recording of this event
Erica Baum (b. 1961, New York; lives and works in New York) received her BA from Barnard College and her MFA from Yale University. Current and recent museum exhibitions include Arcades: Contemporary Art and Walter Benjamin, The Jewish Museum, New York; For the Love of Things: Still Life, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY, 2016; Photo-Poetics: An Anthology, Kunsthalle Berlin and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 2015; Reconstructions: Recent Photographs and Video from the Met Collection, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2015; After Dark, Mamco, Geneva, 2015; and the 30th Bienal de São Paulo: The Imminence of Poetics, São Paulo, Brazil, 2012. Recent solo exhibitions include The Following Information, Bureau, New York, 2016; Stanzas, Galerie Crevecoeur, Paris, 2015; The Paper Nautilus, Bureau, New York, 2014; Erica Baum, Kunstverein Langenhagen, Langenhagen, Germany, 2013; and Naked Eye Anthology, Bureau, New York, 2012. Her work is held in the public collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York; Centre National des Arts Plastiques, Paris; FRAC Ile de France, Paris; and the Yale Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut. 2017 two-person exhibitions include Until it Makes Sense with Ajit Chauhan at SVIT, Prague AAa:Quien Erica Baum and Libby Rothfeld Bureau, New York ; Strange Days, Le Plateau, Frac Île-de-France, Paris, Tuer La Marionette at CACBM, Paris France.
Thursday, 11/9
Lunch with Beth Kissileff
Wexler Family Series
12:00 PM in the Arts Cafe
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen to an audio recording of this event
rsvp: wh@writing.upenn.edu
The Wexler Family Series presents projects and programs that focus on Jewish literature, life, culture, and literature, such as discussions of contemporary Hebrew novels, Holocaust remebrance events, and the occasional Yiddish poetry slam.
Beth Kissileff holds a PhD in comparative literature and literary theory from Penn and has taught at Carleton, the University of Minnesota, Smith and Mount Holyoke. Her novel Questioning Return was started when she finished her dissertation and decided to write the novel she had always wanted to. Of course, the novel turned out to be about... a graduate student writing her dissertation! Kissileff currently works as a freelance journalist; she has also edited and contributed to Reading Genesis a collection of essays by academics on the first book of the Bible. Her short story collection I'm Not Here for Myself is under review for publication and she is at work on a second novel. She is a third generation Penn graduate.
Rachel Tashjian: From Vanity to Vice
5:00 PM in the Arts Cafe
Sponsored by: RealArts@Penn
Hosted by: Anthony DeCurtis
RSVP: wh@writing.upenn.edu or (215) 746-POEM
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen to an audio recording of this event
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!).
Friday, 11/10
Saturday, 11/11
Sunday, 11/12
Monday, 11/13
The Significance of Speculative Fiction
12:00 PM in the Arts Cafe
co-sponosored by: The Creative Writing Program
hosted by: Carmen Machado
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV: part 1, part 2
listen to an audio recording of this event
In contemporary literature, "realism" is often used as shorthand for "literary." The implication is that serious writing happens only within a faithful representation of reality. But this is a strictly modern idea—and a false one. Literature is historically filled with ghosts, gods, magic, talking animals, and the walking dead. Some of the most powerful and popular storytelling of our time has examined the nuances of the human condition in our own future, in alternate realities, and on other worlds. In this panel, four award-winning genre authors—Sam J. Miller (author of The Art of Starving), Lara Donnelly (author of Amberlough), Maria Dahvana Headley (author of Magonia), and Alice Sola Kim (winner of the Whiting Award)—will discuss how they use science fiction, fantasy, and horror to explore and examine fiction's emotional questions.
Lara Elena Donnelly is the author of glam spy thriller Amberlough. Her other work has appeared in or is forthcoming from venues including Strange Horizons, Escape Pod, Nightmare, and Uncanny. Lara is a graduate of the Alpha and Clarion workshops. You can find her online at laradonnelly.com
Alice Sola Kim is a writer living in New York. Her work has appeared in McSweeney's, Tin House, BuzzFeed Reader, Lightspeed, The Village Voice, Lenny, and other publications. She is a winner of the 2016 Whiting Award.
Sam J. Miller is a writer and a community organizer. His debut novel The Art of Starving (YA/SF) was published by HarperCollins in 2017, and will be followed by Blackfish City from Ecco Press in 2018. His stories have been nominated for the Nebula, World Fantasy, and Theodore Sturgeon Awards, and have appeared in over a dozen "year's best" anthologies. He's a graduate of the Clarion Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Workshop, and a winner of the Shirley Jackson Award. He lives in New York City, and at www.samjmiller.com
Maria Dahvana Headley is a #1 New York Times-bestselling author & editor, most recently of the novels Magonia, Aerie, Queen of Kings, and the internationally-bestselling memoir The Year of Yes. With Kat Howard she is the author of The End of the Sentence, and with Neil Gaiman, she is co-editor of Unnatural Creatures. Her short stories have been included in many year's best anthologies, including Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, edited by Karen Joy Fowler and John Joseph Adams, and have been finalists for the Nebula and Shirley Jackson Awards. Upcoming are The Mere Wife, a contemporary novel adaption of Beowulf from Farrar, Straus & Giroux; a short story collection from same; and The Combustible, a queer superhero novel from HarperCollins. Find her at @MARIADAHVANA on Twitter, or www.mariadahvanaheadley.com.
City Planning Poetics 4: Urban Memory
Simone White and Randall Mason
6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe
Sponsored by: Creative Ventures
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen to an audio recording of this event
Simone White is the author of Dear Angel of Death (coming later this year from Ugly Duckling Presse), Of Being Dispersed, and House of Envy of All the World, the poetry chapbook, Unrest, and the collaborative poem/painting chapbook, Dolly, with Kim Thomas. Her poetry and prose have been featured in NYTimes Book Review, Harper's Magazine, BOMB Magazine, Chicago Review, and Harriet: The Blog. She has been the recipient of the 2017 Whiting Award, Cave Canem Foundation fellowships, and recognition as a New American Poet for the Poetry Society of America, in 2013. She works as Program Director at The Poetry Project and teaches writing and American literature at The New School, Eugene Lang College.
Randall Mason plays several roles at Penn's School of Design: Executive Director of PennPraxis; Associate Professor of City & Regional Planning; and Chair of the Graduate Program in Historic Preservation. His published work includes: The Once and Future New York, on the origins of historic preservation in New York City (University of Minnesota Press, 2009, winner of the Society of Architectural Historians' Antoinette Forester Downing Award), and North Brother Island: The Last Unknown Place in New York City (with photographer Christopher Payne, Fordham University Press, 2014). Mason's professional practice includes projects at many scales, addressing planning, preservation and public space issues, commissioned by organizations including the Brookings Institution, Getty Conservation Institute, William Penn Foundation, the City of Philadelphia, and the National Park Service. His education includes a PhD from Columbia University (urban planning/urban history), MS from Pennsylvania State University (geography), and BA from Bucknell (geography). He worked previously at the Getty Conservation Institute, University of Maryland and Rhode Island School of Design, and was the recipient of the 2012-13 National Endowment for the Arts Rome Prize.
Tuesday, 11/14
Poetic Research on the Body: Adam Dickinson & Katie Price
A Poetry Reading and Conversation
12:00 PM in the Arts Cafe
rsvp: wh@writing.upenn.edu
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV: part 1, part 2
listen to an audio recording of this event
Canadian poet Adam Dickinson and Philadelphia poet Katie Price take their biological bodies as sites of productive poetic research. What do we learn about language from examining the metabolic, genetic, and immunological writing that takes place within our own bodies? How are our bodies read and written by medical practitioners, pharmaceuticals, industries, and chemicals? In what ways does the world around us write our bodies? The writers will stage a conversation -- interspersed with poetry -- about the relationship between literature and our bodies.
Katie L. Price's writing—critical, creative, and other—has appeared in such venues as Fence, the Journal of Medical Humanities, and Canadian Literature. She is the author of two chapbooks, Sickly and BRCA: Birth of a Patient, both published by above/ground press; serves as Interviews Editor for Jacket2, and co-founded the Philadelphia Avant-Garde Studies Consortium. She currently works and teaches at Swarthmore College.
Adam Dickinson's poetry has appeared in literary journals and anthologies in Canada and internationally. He has published three books of poetry. His most recent book, The Polymers, was a finalist for the Governor General's Award for Poetry, the Trillium Book Award for Poetry, and the ReLit Award. His forthcoming book Anatomic involves him testing his blood and body for chemicals and microbes in order to reframe the body as a being overwritten by toxic chemicals yet constantly subject in necessary ways to the biosemiotic interference of other microbial lifeforms. He teaches poetics and creative writing at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario.
Dwight Garner and Stephen Metcalf
in conversation with Al Filreis
6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV: part 1, part 2
listen to an audio recording of this event
Dwight Garner is a book critic for the New York Times and a columnist for Esquire. His work has appeared inHarpers, TNR, the Oxford American and many other publications.
Stephen Metcalf is the host of the Slate Culture Gabfest, a podcast. He is currently writing for the Guardian, the Atlantic, Slate, and the New Yorker.
Wednesday, 11/15
INTERFACES: Work by Rachel Blau DuPlessis
Brodsky Gallery Opening
6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe
watch: a video recording of this event via PennSound
listen: to an audio recording of this event
The Brodsky Gallery is an art gallery integrated with the ground floor of the Writers House. Through exhibiting a diverse array of art media and cross-disciplinary programming, the Brodsky Gallery seeks to engage Penn students and the broader Philadelphia community with the interrelationships between literary and visual arts. Thanks to the generosity of Michael and Heidi Brodsky, whose support makes our gallery space possible, the Brodsky Gallery is a permanent project of Kelly Writers House.
Collage poems as an inter-art practice characterize recent work by Rachel Blau DuPlessis, featured at the Brodsky Gallery through December 21, 2017. These collage poems, in serial groups like Churning the Ocean of Milk, Life in Handkerchiefs, and Numbers, are charged by DuPlessis's mix of aphorism, aesthetic perception, and sociopolitical comment. A bright visuality, intense poetic commentary, and a confrontative intertextuality combine in these personable and evocative works on paper, which negotiate the afterlife of debris by vibrant uses of its traces. INTERFACES will open on November 15 with an illustrated talk by DuPlessis on selected collage poems, and a reading from her newly-released Days and Works.
Rachel Blau DuPlessis, poet, critic, collagist is the author of Drafts (written 1986 through 2012). Post-Drafts books include Interstices (2014), Graphic Novella (2015), Days and Works (2017), as well as Numbers (a collage poem from Materialist Press) and Around the Day in 80 Worlds (BlazeVOX), both slated for 2018. Her critical books include The Pink Guitar, Blue Studios, and Purple Passages—a trilogy on gender, poetry and poetics. She has edited the Selected Letters of George Oppen, and The Oppens Remembered, coedited The Objectivist Nexus, and has written on Oppen, Zukofsky and Niedecker.
Thursday, 11/16
ZINE WORKSHOP
Co-presented by Radical Tea and The Soapbox
6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe
RSVP: wh@writing.upenn.edu or 215-746-POEM
Radical Tea, in collaboration with The Soapbox: Community Print Shop & Zine Library, will host an open zine-making workshop. Led by book artist Nicole Donnelly, participants will get an introduction to the history of zine-making and self-publication, have the opportunity to read zines from The Soapbox's collection of 2,500 handmade publications, and share written and visual ideas in a hands-on zine-making experience. Open to everyone! Please RSVP at wh@writing.upenn.edu to reserve your spot.
Nicole Donnelly is a book and paper artist, shadow puppet enthusiast, and independent teacher from Philadelphia, PA. She is the founder of paperTHINKtank where she collaborates with printmakers, poets, letterpress, and book artists; a board member of The Soapbox: Community Print Shop & Zine Library; and the President of IAPMA (International Association of Hand Papermakers and Paper Artists). She holds an MFA in painting, and her artwork is focused on the environmentally sustainable possibilities and beauty of handmade paper.
Friday, 11/17
Saturday, 11/18
Sunday, 11/19
Monday, 11/20
Tuesday, 11/21
Wednesday, 11/22
Thursday, 11/23
Friday, 11/24
Saturday, 11/25
Sunday, 11/26
Monday, 11/27
LIVE at the Writers House
7:00 PM in the Arts Cafe
listen: to an audio recording of this event
LIVE at the Writers House is a long-standing collaboration of the people of the Kelly Writers House and of WXPN (88.5 FM). Six times annually between September and April, the Writers House airs a one-hour broadcast of poetry, music, and other spoken-word art, along with one musical guest -- from our Arts Cafe onto the airwaves at WXPN. "LIVE" is broadcast on WXPN. "LIVE" is made possible through the generous support of BigRoc and is produced by Alli Katz.
Tuesday, 11/28
Wednesday, 11/29
Thursday, 11/30
RealArts@Penn internships info session
Everything you need to know and more
12:00 PM in the Arts Cafe
RSVP: wh@writing.upenn.edu
watch: a video recording
listen: to an audio recording of this event
Have you been dreaming of the perfect summer internship? The one that will change your life forever? RealArts@Penn can help make that dream a reality! RealArts@Penn offers paid summer internships in publishing, TV and film, journalism, public relations, talent management, music, theater, and museums. Premier partner/host organizations have included Viacom, McSweeney's, Downtown Bookworks, Pitchfork Media, 20th Century Fox and Principato-Young Entertainment. The project draws upon a vast network of creative alumni who help enable hands-on and face-to-face interactions between students and the people who make arts and culture their business. Join us for an informal conversation with past RealArts interns to learn more about the project and the application process.