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People who visit the Kelly Writers House at the University of Pennsylvania for the first time invariably say, "I wish we had a place like this when I was in college!" When these visitors learn that the Writers House and the programs and projects we produce are free and open to Penn students, staff, faculty alumni, and to Philadelphians at large, they realize how innovative and exciting this program is. In just its ninth year of existence, the Kelly Writers House has already galvanized an artistic community of writers and people who support the writing arts at the University of Pennsylvania and beyond. So far as we know, the Kelly Writers House is unique.
Founded in 1995 by a group of students, faculty, staff and alumni, the Kelly Writers House is an actual 13-room house at 3805 Locust Walk on Penn's campus that serves as a center for writers of all kinds and from all disciplines. Each semester the Writers House hosts about 150 public programs and projects -- poetry readings, film screenings, seminars, web magazines, lectures, dinners, radio broadcasts, workshops, art exhibits, and musical performances. All of these events and projects are sponsored by the Writers House Planning Committee, a 60-member volunteer group of undergraduate and graduate students, Penn faculty and staff whose intellectual energy and collective spirit guides the House.
Each week over five hundred people come to the Writers House! Visitors include Penn undergraduates who take literature classes at the House, editors who use the House as the home base and production office for our many student-produced and nationally-distributed publications, Philadelphia-area writers who perform on the award-winning spoken-word radio show, LIVE at the Writers House, and audiences for our many literary events and performances. Guests of the Writers House include Pulitzer Prize-winning poets such as Jorie Graham and John Ashbery, film director and Penn alumnus Jon Avnet, folk music legend Dave Van Ronk, and literary journalist Gay Talese (who recently taught a course at the Writers House in Spring 1999 as our first Writers House Fellow).
As a space that enables artistic innovation and intellectual experimentation, the Kelly Writers House has already been recognized for its unique contribution to Penn and the city. The first of the so-called "hubs" -- co-curricular sites designed to enrich the undergraduate experience -- Writers House has become a model for other like-minded projects, including its younger, sister hub, Civic House. Within the region, too, we are delighted to receive coverage of our programs in publications such as The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Daily Pennsylvanian, among others. Most recently, writers affiliated with the House were invited to publish poems on the Commentary page of The Philadelphia Inquirer for the month of April in 1999, marking National Poetry Month.
Renovations, funded through the generous support of Penn alumnus Paul Kelly (C'62, WG'64), have readied the Writers House for the 21st century. Now that the capital project is completed, the Writers House is in the process of preserving the heart of its mission, its programs. With initial support from the Provost's Office and Penn's Agenda for Excellence, we have been able to identify the foundation we will need to survive and thrive well into the 21st century. To reach our goals we have initiated both a "Friends" program, which funds projects from term to term, and an endowment campaign to secure the future of the Kelly Writers House in the long term.
"Friends" of the Kelly Writers House give gifts that may support specific projects or general programming, semester by semester. Friends' gifts have helped fund our Writers House Junior Fellows project, bought books for the library for a few months, and paid for the coffee that is always percolating in the kitchen.
Gifts to our endowment directly support all of the rich and varied offerings of the Writers House, now and in the future. There are a number of naming opportunities available, including fully endowing specific programs such as publications or new student initiatives, and naming the rooms in which programs take place. First patrons of our endowment include the Hillcrest Foundation, the Alice Cooper Shoulberg Foundation, The Roxanne and Scott Bok Endowed Visiting Writers Series Fund (click here to read Roxanne Bok's words on the Kelly Writers House), and the Parents Fund for the Class of '99. Gifts to our endowment insure that this dynamic program space and meeting place for writers and readers continues to grow and thrive.
For more information about how you might be able to support the Writers House, please contact Jessica Lowenthal, Director (jalowent@writing.upenn.edu). We look forward to hearing from you!