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All events take place at the Writers House, 3805 Locust Walk, Philadelphia (U of P).
Sunday, 2/1
Please note that some of the discussions and classes listed below are open to the public and some require advance registration or enrollment. Call 215-746-POEM or e-mail wh@writing.upenn.edu for more info.
Monday, 2/2
- Click here to see praise for
Andy Wolk's
Screenwriting and Directing Symposium
- Time TBA (Room 202): Screenwriter and director (and Penn alumnus) Andy Wolk begins
a three-day Symposium on Writing for Film, Theatre, and TV.
Symposium participants meet with Mr. Wolk in the afternoon at the Writers House to discuss
their scripts and treatments.
The three-day Wolk Symposium has two components: a small "lab" for young screenwriters who will be selected in advance and will work closely with Mr. Wolk; other events are open to all (and free). For full information about all Andy Wolk symposium events click here.
Andy Wolk most recently directed the CBS hit A Town without Christmas starring Patricia Heaton and Peter Falk. Prior to that he wrote and directed the critically acclaimed and highly-rated Deliberate Intent for FX. Starting Timothy Hutton, it was called by the LA Times "taut, smart, provocative, well-acted and suspensefully directed." Mr. Wolk received his third Writer's Guild nomination for this movie. He also wrote and directed the much-lauded HBO drama Criminal Justice which made Time Magazine's "Ten Best" list and was named the best cable movie of the year. Starring Forest Whitaker and Rosie Perez, Criminal Justice also received the Silver Prize at FIPA in Cannes and was nominated for a Writer's Guild Award. Other cable movie credits include writing and directing The Defenders: Payback, Choice of Evils, and Taking the First, three movies for Paramount and Showtime starring Beau Bridges and E.G. Marshall and based on the classic 60s show. Other TV movies include Alibi, All Lies End in Murder, Mr. Rock 'N Roll, and Kiss and Tell. He has also directed The Sopranos and episodes of The Practice, NYPD Blue, Equal Justice and others. Andy Wolk's writing credits include Natica Jackson which starred Michelle Pfeiffer and won him the Writer's Guild Award. Most recently he adapted Elmore Leonard's Bandits for Miramax Films. Mr. Wolk's career started in the theater. For Lincoln Center he directed Shakespeare's Twelfth Night and The Winter's Tale, each of which had successful off-Broadway runs. He has had plays produced as a writer and director at Manhattan Theatre Club, LaMama, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Actors Theatre of Louisville and all over Europe.
Andy Wolk has also been a Creative Advisor for the Sundance Labs and the Artistic Director for the Labs in 1996. This three-day workshop is modeled on the Sundance Labs.
- Afternoon Session Film Writing Session with Film Students
- 7 PM, Arts Cafe: master class on working in film. Participation
by rsvp only. Go here
for more information.
Andy Wolk presenting at the Writers House, January 27, 2003
- 1-2:00 PM in Room 202: English 003.307 with Darren Jaspan (djaspen@english.upenn.edu)
- 2-5:00 PM in Room 202: English 116.301 with Marc Lapadula (lapadula@dept.english.upenn.edu)
- 2-5:00 PM in Room 209: English 115.302 with Lorene Cary (lorene.cary@verizon.net)
- 2-5:00 PM in Arts Cafe: English 285 with Al Filreis (afilreis@english.upenn.edu)
- 5:30-7:30 PM in Room 202: Penn and Pencil Club. For more information, or to join, contact John Shea at john.shea@uphs.upenn.edu.
Please note that some of the discussions and classes listed below are open to the public and some require advance registration or enrollment. Call 215-746-POEM or e-mail wh@writing.upenn.edu for more info.
Tuesday, 2/3
- 7 PM: The Writers House Alumni Writers Series presents Andy Wolk, screenwriter and director. An informal discussion of Wolk's work as screenwriter and director and about careers in writing for TV and film. Mr. Wolk will, in part, show excerpts from The Sopranos, Criminal Justice and other features. The program will be moderated by Writers House Faculty Director Al Filreis. For full information about all Wolk symposium events, click here.
- 1:30-4:30 PM in Room 202: English 145.301 with Paul Hendrickson (phendric@english.upenn.edu)
- 1:30-4:30 PM in Room 209: English 115.301 with Max Apple (maxapple@dept.english.upenn.edu)
- 5:15-7:30 PM in Room 209: The Eighteenth Century Reading Group. For more information contact Dahlia Porter or Jared Richman.
- 7:30 PM: Talking Film meeting. For more information contact: Wesley Barrow: barrow@seas.upenn.edu
- 7:30 PM in Room 209: The Fish Writing Group (for more information contact Nancy Hoffman)
Please note that some of the discussions and classes listed below are open to the public and some require advance registration or enrollment. Call 215-746-POEM or e-mail wh@writing.upenn.edu for more info.
Wednesday, 2/4
- 10-noon: Andy Wolk Symposium on Writing for Film, Theatre, and TV concludes with a final meeting for symposium participants. Arts Cafe. For full information about all Wolk symposium events, click here.
- 1-2:00 PM in Room 202: English 003.307 with Darren Jaspan (djaspen@english.upenn.edu)
- 2-5:00 PM in Room 202: English 155.301 with Paul Hendrickson (phendric@english.upenn.edu)
- 2-5:00 PM in Room 209: English 10.302 with Daisy Fried (daisyf1@juno.com)
Please note that some of the discussions and classes listed below are open to the public and some require advance registration or enrollment. Call 215-746-POEM or e-mail wh@writing.upenn.edu for more info.
Thursday, 2/5
- 1:30-4:30 PM in Room 202: English 135.301 with Lorene Cary (lorene.cary@verizon.net)
- 1:30-4:30 PM in Room 209: English 10.301 with Tom Devaney (tdevaney@writing.upenn.edu)
- 7-8:30 PM in Room 202: English 001.307, Reading in the Drawing Room group readings with Myra Lotto (mlotto@dept.english.upenn.edu)
Please note that some of the discussions and classes listed below are open to the public and some require advance registration or enrollment. Call 215-746-POEM or e-mail wh@writing.upenn.edu for more info.
Friday, 2/6
- 1-2:00 PM in Room 202: English 003.307 with Darren Jaspan (djaspen@english.upenn.edu)
Please note that some of the discussions and classes listed below are open to the public and some require advance registration or enrollment. Call 215-746-POEM or e-mail wh@writing.upenn.edu for more info.
Saturday, 2/7
Please note that some of the discussions and classes listed below are open to the public and some require advance registration or enrollment. Call 215-746-POEM or e-mail wh@writing.upenn.edu for more info.
Sunday, 2/8
Please note that some of the discussions and classes listed below are open to the public and some require advance registration or enrollment. Call 215-746-POEM or e-mail wh@writing.upenn.edu for more info.
Monday, 2/9
- 5:30 PM in the Arts Cafe: Planning Committee Meeting and Gathering
- 1-2:00 PM in Room 202: English 003.307 with Darren Jaspan (djaspen@english.upenn.edu)
- 2-5:00 PM in Room 202: English 116.301 with Marc Lapadula (lapadula@dept.english.upenn.edu)
- 2-5:00 PM in Room 209: English 115.302 with Lorene Cary (lorene.cary@verizon.net)
- 2-5:00 PM in Arts Cafe: English 285 with Al Filreis (afilreis@english.upenn.edu)
- 7:00-9:00 PM in Room 202: Write On! Coaches' Meeting (for more information email Rachel Kreinces.)
- 8:30 PM in Room 209: Flashlit meeting - for more information email Liz Cooper (coopere@sas.upenn.edu).
Please note that some of the discussions and classes listed below are open to the public and some require advance registration or enrollment. Call 215-746-POEM or e-mail wh@writing.upenn.edu for more info.
Tuesday, 2/10
- 5:00 PM: A reading with poet Anne-Marie Levine and Patrick Donnelly
Anne-Marie Levine was born in Belgium and raised in Beverly Hills. She's a poet and scholar who began to write while touring as a concert pianist. A board member at Poets House, she's the author of a prize-winning book of poems called Euphorbia, and the recipient of a NYFA grant for poetry. She also performs solo theater pieces based on her poems. She's published essays on Gertrude Stein's politics, and on art and trauma, and has received grants from the Puffin and Vogelstein Foundations for this work. Her poems have appeared in American Letters and Commentary, Parnassus, Crossconnect, and Poetry After 9/11: An Anthology of New York Poets. Her current projects include a Commonplace Book, and the development and display of a visual art project called Boxpoems. Her new book of poems is called Bus Ride to a Blue Movie. She was introduced by Wendy Steiner.
Patrick Donnelly is an Associate Editor at Four Way Books, and received an MFA fromWarren Wilson College, where he was a recipient of the Larry Levis Scholarship. His poems have appeared in The Yale Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Massachusetts Review, Ploughshares, The Marlboro Review, and other literary journals. He is a curator of the reading series at the Ear Inn in Greenwich Village, and Program Assistant of Readings on the Bowery, sponsered by Four Way Books at the Bowery Poetry Club in New York City. The Charge is his first book. He was introduced by Randall Couch.
- 1:30-4:30 PM in Room 202: English 145.301 with Paul Hendrickson (phendric@english.upenn.edu)
- 1:30-4:30 PM in Room 209: English 115.301 with Max Apple (maxapple@dept.english.upenn.edu)
- 6-8:00 PM in Room 209: Suppose An Eyes, a poetry workshop. Any interested in writing poetry is welcome to attend. For more information, please contact Pat Green (patgreen@vet.upenn.edu).
Please note that some of the discussions and classes listed below are open to the public and some require advance registration or enrollment. Call 215-746-POEM or e-mail wh@writing.upenn.edu for more info.
Wednesday, 2/11
- 6:00 PM: A reading with poet Eamon Grennan and A.V. Christie in collaboration with Penn's Creative Writing
Program and Philadelphia-based Pointed Press Letterpress
Eamon Grennan is from Dublin and teaches in Poughkeepsie, New York, where he is the Dexter M. Ferry Jr., Professor of English at Vassar College. His collections (published by Graywolf Press, and in Ireland by Gallery Press) are Wildly for Days (1983), What Light There Is (1987), What Light There Is and Other Poems (North Point, 1989), As If It Matters (1992), So It Goes (1995), Relations: New & Selected Poems (1998), Selected & New Poems (Gallery, 2000), and Still Life with Waterfall (2002). His Leopardi: Selected Poems (Princeton University Press) won the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation in 1997. A special limited edition, Renvyle, Winter (Pointed Press), was published in 2003. A collection of his critical essays--Facing the Music: Irish Poetry in the Twentieth Century--appeared from Creighton University Press in 1999. His poems appear regularly in magazines on both sides of the Atlantic, including Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry London, The New Yorker, The Nation, Threepenny Review, The New Republic. As well as a number of Pushcart Prizes, he has received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. Still Life with Waterfall received the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize for 2002. He lives in Poughkeepsie, and spends as much time as he can in the West of Ireland.
A.V. Christie's first book of poems Nine Skies was selected as a winner in The National Poetry Series by Sandra McPherson and was published in 1997. Her poems, reviews and interviews have appeared in Poetry, Ploughshares, The Bellevue Literary Review, Passages North, Seneca Review, Boulevard, The Iowa Review, Poetry Northwest, The American Scholar, Image and Verse, among other magazines. She is currently the Visiting Writer at LaSalle University, working on editing a collection of essays on the writer Josephine Jacobsen, and is also a Poet-in-the-Schools.
- 8:00 PM: Speakeasy: Poetry, Prose and Anything Goes
- 1-2:00 PM in Room 202: English 003.307 with Darren Jaspan (djaspen@english.upenn.edu)
- 2-5:00 PM in Room 202: English 155.301 with Paul Hendrickson (phendric@english.upenn.edu)
- 2-5:00 PM in Room 209: English 10.302 with Daisy Fried (daisyf1@juno.com)
Please note that some of the discussions and classes listed below are open to the public and some require advance registration or enrollment. Call 215-746-POEM or e-mail wh@writing.upenn.edu for more info.
Thursday, 2/12
- 6:00 PM: Poet Sparrow will read from recent work.
Sparrow is the author of Yes You ARE A Revolutionary and Republican Like Me both published by Soft Skull Press. In the poem "My Literary Life," he writes:
I always wanted to write a novel
about three generations of a family
in Medford, Oregon.
Instead I have written
5-line poems.A fixture of life on the Lower East Side, the bearded pundit poet Sparrow ran for President with the slogan, "Forgive All Debts, Free The Slaves." He is the founder of the East Village Militia, which hands out free books in front of appliance stores to stop people from buying televisions. His poetry has since appeared in The Quarterly, The New York Times and other erudite journals. He was also featured in the PBS series The United States of Poetry and is the author of the collection Yes, You Are a Revolutionary! For photographs of Sparrow's visit, click on the small photo to the right.
Listen to a recording of this event.
- 1:30-4:30 PM in Room 202: English 135.301 with Lorene Cary (lorene.cary@verizon.net)
- 1:30-4:30 PM in Room 209: English 10.301 with Tom Devaney (tdevaney@writing.upenn.edu)
Please note that some of the discussions and classes listed below are open to the public and some require advance registration or enrollment. Call 215-746-POEM or e-mail wh@writing.upenn.edu for more info.
Friday, 2/13
- 3:30-5:30 PM throughout the House: Write On! Workshop
Write On! volunteers are Penn students who work with eighth graders from the Lea Elementary School on Friday afternoons at the Writers House, building creative writing and reading skills. For more information or to participate, email Rachel Kreinces.
- 1-2:00 PM in Room 202: English 003.307 with Darren Jaspan (djaspen@english.upenn.edu)
- 1-3:00 PM in Room 209: Talk Poets meeting - for more information, contact Jessica Lowenthal
Please note that some of the discussions and classes listed below are open to the public and some require advance registration or enrollment. Call 215-746-POEM or e-mail wh@writing.upenn.edu for more info.
Saturday, 2/14
- 4:00 PM in the Arts Cafe: JOINT WORK: Dirk Stratton (Cincinnati School for Creative and Performing Arts),
Scott Rettberg (Stockton College), William Gillespie (Brown University) and Nick Montfort (Penn) read
from three unusual collaborations. This program is part of the MACHINE series of programs showcasing the literary uses of the
computer. For more information about MACHINE events at the Writers House, see here.
Nick Montfort and William Gillespie read 2002: A PALINDROME STORY, their 2002-word palindrome. The small Spineless Books paperback edition of 2002 is illustrated by Shelley Jackson. (The full text is also available online for free.) In February of 2002 the Oulipo announced that 2002 had broken the world's record for the longest literary palindrome, a title previously held by the 1973 "Le Grand Palindrome" of George Perec. Harry Mathews said "2002 is not only a marvel of ingenuity: it is also funny, sexy, and full of surprises." Trevor Dodge wrote in The Review of Contemporary Fiction that "2002: A Palindrome Story serves proof that the efforts of the Oulipo's progenitors have translated loud and clear to a new generation of experimentalists. ... that 2002 actually is capable of delivering traceable characters (whose names, of course, are palindromes themselves: Bob, Anna, Otto), mood, and thematics is delightfully astonishing."
Nick Montfort and Scott Rettberg read from IMPLEMENTATION, a novel they are currently writing collaboratively and are publishing on stickers. Implementation borrows from the traditions of net.art, mail art, sticker art, conceptual art, situationist theater, serial fiction, and guerilla viral marketing. Implementation is a novel about psychological warfare, American imperialism, sex, terror, identity, and the idea of place. Its initial incarnation is as a serial novel printed on sheets of stickers; these are being distributed in monthly installments beginning in January 2004. Recipients are encouraged to attach the stickers to public surfaces of their choosing; a website will document how stickers from the project are affixed. Implementation was conceived after an untitled literary sticker project that Montfort and Rettberg did in March 2002.
William Gillespie, Scott Rettberg, and Dirk Stratton read from THE UNKNOWN in the first reading since March 2002 in Los Angeles to feature all three principal authors! The Unknown is an insane metafictional account of an epic book tour undertaken by three unruly, success-crazed characters named William Gillespie, Scott Rettberg, and Dirk Stratton, itinerant writers who traverse the country meeting numerous famous authors and consuming drugs with them. Winner of the 1998 trAce/Alt-X Hypertext Competition, The Unknown is a Web novel that has grown online over the course of several years and finally spawned The Unknown Anthology, the book that the fictional book tour was supposedly about. Robert Coover called the hypertext "genuinely multisequential and massively rich in story material"; Neal Pollack said it was "very well-written and lively." Brad Quinn of Cincinnati's City Beat wrote "Get on the Web. Go to The Unknown. You'll find a novel, probably unlike any you've read before. There is no beginning, no end and no particular arrangement in which it should be read. ... as much as I hate to read anything longer than a short e-mail or a box, I don't mind reading The Unknown, mostly because it's fun." Performances/readings of The Unknown, which have taken place on more than thirty occasions and which invite the audience to interact and select what will be read next, are legendary.
Please note that some of the discussions and classes listed below are open to the public and some require advance registration or enrollment. Call 215-746-POEM or e-mail wh@writing.upenn.edu for more info.
Sunday, 2/15
Please note that some of the discussions and classes listed below are open to the public and some require advance registration or enrollment. Call 215-746-POEM or e-mail wh@writing.upenn.edu for more info.
Monday, 2/16
- 6:30 PM: The Kelly Writers House Fellows Program presents novelist RUSSELL BANKS.
RSVP only. Click here for more information about this event and all
Writers House Fellows programs. Click here for more
information about the program.
Russell Banks is the author of thirteen novels, including Affliction, which was short listed for both the PEN/Faulkner Fiction Prize and the Irish International Prize and Continental Drift and Cloudsplitter, which were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize in 1986 and 1998 respectively. Affliction and The Sweet Hereafter were adapted for feature-length films and Banks was the screenwriter of a film adaptation of Continental Drift. Banks has also contributed poems, stories, and essays to The Boston Globe Magazine, Vanity Fair, The New York Times Book Review, Esquire, and Harper's. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowships, the Ingram Merrill Award, the St. Lawrence Award for Short Fiction, the O. Henry and Best American Short Story Award, the John Dos Passos Award, and the Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Watch the reading of this event here.
- 1-2:00 PM in Room 202: English 003.307 with Darren Jaspan (djaspen@english.upenn.edu)
- 2-5:00 PM in Room 202: English 116.301 with Marc Lapadula (lapadula@dept.english.upenn.edu)
- 2-5:00 PM in Room 209: English 115.302 with Lorene Cary (lorene.cary@verizon.net)
- 2-5:00 PM in Arts Cafe: English 285 with Al Filreis (afilreis@english.upenn.edu)
- 6:00-7:00 PM in Room 202: Write On! Coaches' Meeting (for more information email Rachel Kreinces.)
- 7:00 PM in Room 202: Reality Writes, a group devoted to sharing and workshopping creative nonfiction. For more information email John Smagula at jsmagula@temple.edu.
Please note that some of the discussions and classes listed below are open to the public and some require advance registration or enrollment. Call 215-746-POEM or e-mail wh@writing.upenn.edu for more info.
Tuesday, 2/17
- 10 AM: The Kelly Writers House Fellows
Program presents novelist RUSSELL
BANKS--brunch and interview led by Al Filreis. RSVP only. Click here
for more information about this event and all
Writers House Fellows programs.
Watch the discussion of this event here.
- 5:00 PM in the Arts Cafe: An Open Reading of Irish Writers. For more information or to sign up to read, email Samuel Willcocks.
- 1:30-4:30 PM in Room 202: English 145.301 with Paul Hendrickson (phendric@english.upenn.edu)
- 1:30-4:30 PM in Room 209: English 115.301 with Max Apple (maxapple@dept.english.upenn.edu)
Please note that some of the discussions and classes listed below are open to the public and some require advance registration or enrollment. Call 215-746-POEM or e-mail wh@writing.upenn.edu for more info.
Wednesday, 2/18
- 6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe: A talk by Philip Gourevitch, co-sponsored by Penn's Creative Writing Program and
introduced by Paul Hendrickson
Philip Gourevitch has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1997.
His first book, We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: stories from Rwanda, published in 1998, won the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the George K. Polk Award for Foreign Reporting, the PEN/Martha Algrand Award for First Nonfiction, the New York Public Library's Helen Bernstein Award, and, in England, the Guardian First Book Award. It has been published in six foreign languages.
His new book, A Cold Case, published in 2001, is being developed as a feature film by Tom Hanks and Universal Pictures.
In addition to his work for The New Yorker, Gourevitch has published reportage, critical essays, and short fiction in numerous journals and anthologies.
He lives in Brooklyn and Millerton, New York.
- 1-2:00 PM in Room 202: English 003.307 with Darren Jaspan (djaspen@english.upenn.edu)
- 2-5:00 PM in Room 202: English 155.301 with Paul Hendrickson (phendric@english.upenn.edu)
- 2-5:00 PM in Room 209: English 10.302 with Daisy Fried (daisyf1@juno.com)
- 6:30-8:30 PM in Room 202: Preceptorial on J.R.R. Tolkien's Return of the King with Jennifer Snead. For more information contact Albert Shyy.
- 8:30 PM in Room 202: FLASHLIT meeting. Flashlit is a new undergraduate literary magazine. For more information contact Liz Cooper at coopere@sas.upenn.edu.
Please note that some of the discussions and classes listed below are open to the public and some require advance registration or enrollment. Call 215-746-POEM or e-mail wh@writing.upenn.edu for more info.
Thursday, 2/19
- 7:00 PM: Greek Spring: "Trojan Women," by Euripides - Staged Reading by the Theatre Arts Program at Penn.
In conjunction with the Theatre Arts Program's production of "Trojan Women: A Love Story," a contemporary adaptation of the Euripides play, to be staged this April 22nd to the 25th, in a site-specific performance at the University Museum. Discussion moderators for the reading: Production co-directors Dr. James F. Schlatter, Dr. Marcia Ferguson, of the Theatre Arts Progam.
- 1:30-4:30 PM in Room 202: English 135.301 with Lorene Cary (lorene.cary@verizon.net)
- 1:30-4:30 PM in Room 209: English 10.301 with Tom Devaney (tdevaney@writing.upenn.edu)
- 4:30-6:00 PM in Room 202: The Mods meeting. For more information contact Matt Hart (matthart@dept.english.upenn.edu)
- 7-8:30 PM in Room 202: English 001.307, Reading in the Drawing Room group readings with Myra Lotto (mlotto@dept.english.upenn.edu)
- 7:30 PM in Room 209: Talking Film meeting. For more information contact: Wesley Barrow: barrow@seas.upenn.edu
Please note that some of the discussions and classes listed below are open to the public and some require advance registration or enrollment. Call 215-746-POEM or e-mail wh@writing.upenn.edu for more info.
Friday, 2/20
- 3:30-5:30 PM throughout the House: Write On! Workshop
Write On! volunteers are Penn students who work with eighth graders from the Lea Elementary School on Friday afternoons at the Writers House, building creative writing and reading skills. For more information or to participate, email Rachel Kreinces.
- 1-2:00 PM in Room 202: English 003.307 with Darren Jaspan (djaspen@english.upenn.edu)
- 2:00 PM in Room 209: Talk Poets meeting - for more information, contact Jessica Lowenthal.
Please note that some of the discussions and classes listed below are open to the public and some require advance registration or enrollment. Call 215-746-POEM or e-mail wh@writing.upenn.edu for more info.
Saturday, 2/21
- 6:00-8:00 PM: Art Gallery Reception
Through Her Eyes: Works in Photography and Prose
By Beandrea Davis
Curated by Beandrea Davis & Peter SchwarzBeandrea Davis is a photographer and writer interested in using art to promote greater social justice in our world. She graduated from University of Pennsylvania in May 2003 with a degree in Afro-American Studies and French. Rooted in the belief that creating images with a camera or a pen is an inherently political act, she is interested in documenting individuals and communities who live on the margins of our society. She lives in the Cobbs Creek section of West Philadelphia.
This exhibit is co-sponsored by the Center for Africana Studies & Women's Studies Program
Please note that some of the discussions and classes listed below are open to the public and some require advance registration or enrollment. Call 215-746-POEM or e-mail wh@writing.upenn.edu for more info.
Sunday, 2/22
Please note that some of the discussions and classes listed below are open to the public and some require advance registration or enrollment. Call 215-746-POEM or e-mail wh@writing.upenn.edu for more info.
Monday, 2/23
- 5:00 PM: A Reading and Conversation with Poet and Novelist Jennifer Smith Turner, cosponsored by the Fox Leadership Program
Jennifer Smith Turner is a New England born writer. She began writing poetry thirty years ago while an English major at Union College in Schenectady, New York. Perennial Secrets is her first book-length collection of poetry. Her range of verse is eclectic in the hundreds of poems she has written. Her work is included in Vineyard Poets, an anthology of poems by Martha's Vineyard writers, published this year. Several of her poems and essays have been published in The Martha's Vineyard Gazette, and she recently finished of her first novel, No Visiting Rights. Jennifer is a graduate of Union College, where she earned a Bachelors degree. She received her Masters degree in Communications from Fairfield University, Fairfield, CT. Subsequent to her studies she spent twenty-eight years in corporate America, holding numerous senior executive positions. She is a member of the Poetry Society of America and serves on many boards of academic and non-profit organizations across the country. Jennifer resides in Connecticut and Martha's Vineyard with her husband.
- 1-2:00 PM in Room 202: English 003.307 with Darren Jaspan (djaspen@english.upenn.edu)
- 2-5:00 PM in Room 202: English 116.301 with Marc Lapadula (lapadula@dept.english.upenn.edu)
- 2-5:00 PM in Room 209: English 115.302 with Lorene Cary (lorene.cary@verizon.net)
- 2-5:00 PM in Arts Cafe: English 285 with Al Filreis (afilreis@english.upenn.edu)
Please note that some of the discussions and classes listed below are open to the public and some require advance registration or enrollment. Call 215-746-POEM or e-mail wh@writing.upenn.edu for more info.
Tuesday, 2/24
- 12:30 PM: Lunchtime Columbia University MFA Writers
Panel Discussion hosted by Karen Rile. Cosponsored by Penn's Creative Writing Program
and Penn Career Services. RSVP only to wh@writing.upenn.edu
As a freelance writer, Meredith Broussard has reviewed books for the Philadelphia City Paper and the Philadelphia Inquirer. Her essays and features have also appeared in the Hartford Courant, the Chicago Reader, the New York Press, Africana.com and Philadelphia magazine. Meredith is the editor of an anthology, "The Dictionary of Failed Relationships: 26 Stories of Love Gone Wrong," featuring 26 of today's most talented women writers. She is presently working on a second volume of the anthology, which will feature 26 male writers. Meredith is a graduate of Harvard University and a candidate for the M.F.A in creative writing at Columbia University. In 2002, she organized and performed in the 215 Festival of Books and Music, a weekend-long celebration co-sponsored by the Rosenbach Museum, the Free Library of Philadelphia and McSweeney¹s Books. She is a member of the National Book Critics¹ Circle and the Pennsylvania Association of Black Journalists, and she is the literary critic for "Your Morning" on CN8 television. More information is available on her Web site, www.failedrelationships.com.
Jennifer F. Estaris (CAS and WH '99) is a candidate for the MFA in creative writing (fiction) at Columbia University. Her stories and reviews have appeared in Lit Rag, Really Small Talk, Sassy, Digital City Philadelphia, 34th Street, Philly2Nite, and the Asian American Writers Workshop's anthology, Topography of War (Temple University Press, 2004). After pursuing the sharply defined corporate combination of publishing and technology at AOL Time Warner and American Lawyer Media, she now spends her energy on the inchoate intersection of art and technology, particularly in the video game realm. Jennifer is also one of the coordinators for the Art & Technology Lecture Series at Columbia. Her website is http://ione.freeshell.org.
Felicia C. Sullivan is a New York based writer attending Columbia University's MFA program. Her work has been published in Post Road Magazine, Drunken Boat, Bold Type, Word Riot, Carve Magazine, The Oklahoma Review, and The Adirondack Review, among many other publications. A self-professed yoga junkie and culinary goddess, she loves French pastries and wearing down the jackets of her favorite novels. Felicia is a co-curator of the non-fiction series at KGB Bar in NYC and she can be reached at felsull@hotmail.com
- 5:00 PM: A reading by novelist Peter Straub, introduced by
Charles Bernstein.
Peter Straub's many novels include Black House, with Stephen King, Mystery, Koko, and The Throat, one of the most harrowing and illuminating books to have been written about the Vietnam War. Frank Wilson, in his recent review in the Inquirer of Straub's new novel, Lost Boy Lost Girl writes, "Straub has written a real thinking person's thriller, a nuanced, layered reworking of the haunted-house story, genuinely creepy in spots, but coolly modulated from time to time with wry reminders that it's all only make-believe." In a rare Philadelphia appearance, Straub will read from his work and discuss his thoughts on genre writing, poetics, and the darker side of everyday life.
- 1:30-4:30 PM in Room 202: English 145.301 with Paul Hendrickson (phendric@english.upenn.edu)
- 1:30-4:30 PM in Room 209: English 115.301 with Max Apple (maxapple@dept.english.upenn.edu)
- 5:30-7:30 PM in Room 202: American Literature Group, please contact Martha Schoolman for more information.
- 6-8:00 PM in Room 209: Suppose An Eyes, a poetry workshop. Any interested in writing poetry is welcome to attend. For more information, please contact Pat Green (patgreen@vet.upenn.edu).
Please note that some of the discussions and classes listed below are open to the public and some require advance registration or enrollment. Call 215-746-POEM or e-mail wh@writing.upenn.edu for more info.
Wednesday, 2/25
-
THIS PROGRAM HAS BEEN POSTPONED UNTIL FALL 2004:
- 5:30-7:30 PM: When Civil Rights Were Only a Dream: A
Roundtable Discussion of Robert
Penn Warren’s interviews for Who Speaks for the Negro?
In 1963 and 1964, Robert Penn Warren conducted a series of taped interviews with African American civil rights leaders - among them Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X and Medgar Evars. These interviews were edited and inserted into Warren’s personal commentary for Who Speaks for the Negro?, a book Warren says he compiled in order to "to find out what I could find out" about the "Negro Revolution." Warren amassed a collection of conversations with almost every major voice in the Civil Rights Movement, from youth leaders like Stokely Carmichael to literary figures like Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin. Since they were reposited in Yale’s Beinecke Library in 1973, these tapes have been unavailable to scholars as well as the public, but Penn’s library recently acquired copies of these remarkable interviews. Please join us to be among the first to hear portions of these historic tapes. This will be followed by an historic roundtable discussion of the tapes, introduced by Kristina Baumli (English), and including Herman Beavers (English), Michael Dyson (Religious Studies), Ancil George (Van Pelt Library), and Sheldon Hackney (History), as well as a panel of undergraduate students reacting to their first exposure to these living voices of the Civil Rights Movement.
- 8:00 PM: Speakeasy: Poetry, Prose and Anything
Goes
- 1-2:00 PM in Room 202: English 003.307 with Darren Jaspan (djaspen@english.upenn.edu)
- 2-5:00 PM in Room 202: English 155.301 with Paul Hendrickson (phendric@english.upenn.edu)
- 2-5:00 PM in Room 209: English 10.302 with Daisy Fried (daisyf1@juno.com)
- 5:00 - 6:30 PM in Room 209: Latitudes Reading Group - for more information, email Darren Jaspan
- 6:30 - 8:00 PM in Room 209: Lacan Study Group. For more information, email lamasc@sas.upenn.edu
- 7:30 PM in Room 209: Manuck!Manuck! meeting
Please note that some of the discussions and classes listed below are open to the public and some require advance registration or enrollment. Call 215-746-POEM or e-mail wh@writing.upenn.edu for more info.
Thursday, 2/26
- 2 PM in the Arts Cafe - NORMAN MAILER meets with twenty
Writers House-affiliated students to discuss his new book, Why
We Are at War (about the Iraq conflict) as well as his other
writings, the life of the writer, etc. For more about
Mailer's visit to the Writers House - including photographs and a recording of
the session - please click
here.
- 6 PM in the Arts Cafe - A CONVERSATION WITH NORMAN MAILER. Mailer meets with 60 members of the Writers House community for a session, co-led by Al Filreis and Robert Lucid, entitled "The Spooky Art." The Spooky Art is the title given to Mailer's recent collection of essays, reviews, and interviews. For more about Mailer's visit to the Writers House - including photographs and a recording of the session - please click here.
- 1:30-4:30 PM in Room 202: English 135.301 with Lorene Cary (lorene.cary@verizon.net)
- 1:30-4:30 PM in Room 209: English 10.301 with Tom Devaney (tdevaney@writing.upenn.edu)
Please note that some of the discussions and classes listed below are open to the public and some require advance registration or enrollment. Call 215-746-POEM or e-mail wh@writing.upenn.edu for more info.
Friday, 2/27
- 3:30-5:30 PM throughout the House: Write On! Workshop
Write On! volunteers are Penn students who work with eighth graders from the Lea Elementary School on Friday afternoons at the Writers House, building creative writing and reading skills. For more information or to participate, email Rachel Kreinces.
- 1-2:00 PM in Room 202: English 003.307 with Darren Jaspan (djaspen@english.upenn.edu)
Please note that some of the discussions and classes listed below are open to the public and some require advance registration or enrollment. Call 215-746-POEM or e-mail wh@writing.upenn.edu for more info.
Saturday, 2/28
- 4:00 PM: Reading and book reception for Pat Hughes, author of
Guerrilla Season: a novel of the Civil War in
Missouri.
In 1863, at fifteen, Matt Howard is old enough to join the Southern guerrillas and help protect Missouri from Union forces. But Matt would rather farm than fight – tending his beloved pa's land is the next best thing to having him still alive. What’s more, to safeguard her six children, Matt’s mother insists that the family take a neutral position. In Missouri's Civil War, which pits neighbor against neighbor, armed men often bang on doors in the middle of the night, shouting "Union or Secesh?" The wrong answer can get a civilian killed.
Matt’s mother is from the North, and when Ma decides to move them back, Matt is torn: Should he abandon his farm or his family? And what about his friend Jesse, who has no doubts about joining the guerrillas? What will Jesse say if Matt runs away? In this large, gripping examination of the Civil War in Missouri, a boy bewildered by the madness around him wrestles with questions about family ties, friendship, and loyalty.
"Hughes's strong Civil War novel depicts the plight of families caught between warring neighbors...a compelling story about courage and sacrifice...History buffs will appreciate Hughes's accurate detailing of the events and moods of a tumultuous time." --Publishers Weekly
Please note that some of the discussions and classes listed below are open to the public and some require advance registration or enrollment. Call 215-746-POEM or e-mail wh@writing.upenn.edu for more info.
Sunday, 2/29
Please note that some of the discussions and classes listed below are open to the public and some require advance registration or enrollment. Call 215-746-POEM or e-mail wh@writing.upenn.edu for more info.