March 2025
Saturday, 3/1/2025
Sunday, 3/2/2025
Monday, 3/3/2025
Tuesday, 3/4/2025
Beethoven in Beijing
A roundtable discussion with Jennifer Lin, Liza Vick, and Shelley Zhang
6:00 PM in person
moderated by: Xinyi Ye
rsvp: register here to attend in person
Join us for a roundtable on the documentary Beethoven in Beijing to uncover the story behind Philadelphia Orchestra’s pivotal performance in China in 1973 that shaped US-China cultural diplomacy. Penn graduate student Xinyi Ye will host a gathering of journalists, archivists, and researchers —Jennifer Lin, Liza Vick, and Shelley Zhang— who will each introduce their research and works on our very local and beloved Philadelphia Orchestra’s China visit. While the archives uncover the Orchestra’s behind the scene stories, we’ll invite you to discuss the art and science of archival-based non-fiction writing!
Jennifer Lin is an award-winning journalist, author and documentary filmmaker. She produced and co-directed the feature-length documentary, Beethoven in Beijing, about the Philadelphia Orchestra’s China legacy, which premiered in 2021 on PBS’s Great Performances. The film was a 2020 finalist for the Library of Congress Lavine/Ken Burns prize for film and received support from the National Endowment for Humanities. In 2022, Temple University Press published her companion oral history, Beethoven in Beijing: Stories from the Philadelphia Orchestra’s Historic Journey to China. For 31 years, Jennifer worked at The Philadelphia Inquirer as a reporter, including posts as a foreign correspondent in China, a financial correspondent on Wall Street, and a national correspondent in Washington, DC. In 2017, Jennifer published a family memoir, Shanghai Faithful: Betrayal and Forgiveness in a Chinese Christian Family (Rowman & Littlefield). As a filmmaker, Jennifer directed and produced a short documentary, Ten Times Better, about an 89-year-old Chinese-American blackjack dealer in Las Vegas who was a pioneer in ballet and Broadway. Focusing on the Asian experience in dance, Jennifer is working on another documentary project, Beyond Yellowface, about two New York City dancers trying to rid ballet of offensive Asian stereotypes.
As the Head of then Otto E. Albrecht Music Library, Liza Vick oversees the operations of the music library, including the Ormandy Music and Media Center. She is responsible for the collection development of music materials and serves as the liaison to the Department of Music. Liza is very active in the profession of music librarianship; she has served as member-at-large of the board of directors of the Music Library Association, and as chair of the MLA Publications and Nominating Committees. She was elected to the Council of the American Musicological Society and is a Past President of the Music Library Association. She holds graduate degrees in library science and ethnomusicology from the University of Maryland, College Park.
Shelley Zhang is a creative writer, musician, and researcher. She is currently the Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology at Rutgers University, New Brunswick and the President of the Association for Chinese Music Research. In 2022, she curated the multi-disciplinary event, “Li Delun in Philadelphia: Ethnography, Archives, and Music across the Pacific,” which included a symposium, recital, and pop-up exhibit at Penn’s Kislak Center. In 2023, her poem, “The Price of Ambition,” was commissioned for a music composition, which premiered in 2024. Her academic articles can be found in the internationally peer-reviewed journals, Ethnomusicology Forum and Journal of Material Culture. She is currently working on her first monograph, Millennial Migration: Chinese Musicians after the Cultural Revolution, and developing a second project on Asiatic femininity and issues of performance.
Xinyi Ye is a graduate student of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at University of Pennsylvania focusing on Chinese art history. Her current research interests include Chinese opera and the collection of East Asian material culture in American museums. She graduated from The University of Hong Kong (First Class Honours) with double majors in Art History and Music and a minor in French. She excavated Vedi Fortress (Armenia) in the Ararat Plain Southeast Archaeological Project in 2022 and 2023. She is interested in exploring visual and performing arts as cultural heritage and living practices in global contexts. She has completed the HKU Undergraduate Student Research Fellowship on Chinese Yue opera and has performed as a member of Penn Jazz Ensemble, Penn Afro-Brazilian Ensemble, HKU Chamber Singers (Hong Kong), St Andrews Chorus (Scotland), and St Leonard's Chapel Choir (Scotland). She is currently the chair of the Penn East Asian Studies Graduate Student Research Colloquium (GSRC) and the EALC department’s representative at Penn’s Graduate Student Government of the School of Arts & Sciences (Sasgov). She also serves as the Graduate Guide at the Penn Museum and the Gallery Ambassador at The Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia.
Wednesday, 3/5/2025
Thursday, 3/6/2025
Friday, 3/7/2025
Saturday, 3/8/2025
Sunday, 3/9/2025
Monday, 3/10/2025
Tuesday, 3/11/2025
Wednesday, 3/12/2025
Thursday, 3/13/2025
Friday, 3/14/2025
Saturday, 3/15/2025
Sunday, 3/16/2025
Monday, 3/17/2025
A meeting of the writers house planning committee
5:30 PM in person
rsvp: register here to attend in person
Join us for a meeting of the Writers House Planning Committee (also known as "the Hub") — the core group of engaged students, staff, faculty, 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, 3/18/2025
Wednesday, 3/19/2025
Thursday, 3/20/2025
Friday, 3/21/2025
Saturday, 3/22/2025
Sunday, 3/23/2025
Monday, 3/24/2025
Live at the Writers house
a monthly radio show produced in collaboration with WXPN
6:30 PM in person
rsvp: register here to attend in person
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 records a one-hour show of poetry, music, and other spoken-word art for broadcast by WXPN. LIVE at the Writers House is edited by Zach Carduner and produced by Alli Katz. The show is made possible through the generous support of BigRoc.
Tuesday, 3/25/2025
Wednesday, 3/26/2025
Thursday, 3/27/2025
Friday, 3/28/2025
Saturday, 3/29/2025
Sunday, 3/30/2025
Monday, 3/31/2025
A reading by Carmen Maria Machado
Kelly Writers House Fellows Program
6:30 PM in person
rsvp required: whfellow@writing.upenn.edu
Carmen Maria Machado is the author of the bestselling memoir In the Dream House, the graphic novel The Low, Low Woods, and the award-winning short story collection Her Body and Other Parties. She is the former Abrams Artist-in-Residence at the University of Pennsylvania. Her Body and Other Parties was listed as a member of “The New Vanguard” by the New York Times in 2018, as one of “15 remarkable books by women that are shaping the way we read and write fiction in the 21st century.” Her essays, fiction, poetry, and criticism have appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, Granta, Vogue, This American Life, Harper’s Bazaar, Tin House, McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, The Believer, Guernica, Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy, Best American Nonrequired Reading, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She is a 2019 recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, and a visiting associate professor at the Iowa Writers' Workshop in Spring 2021.