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
A Celebration of the Life and Work of Lyn Hejinian
5:30 PM in person
sponsored by: The Creative Writing Program
hosted by: Julia Bloch and Laynie Browne
rsvp: register here to attend in person
Please join us for a special evening honoring the life and work of poet, essayist, translator and teacher Lyn Hejinian (May 17, 1941–February 24, 2024). Hejinian is perhaps best known as a founding member of the Language Writing group of poets and for her book My Life, which revolutionized the form of verse memoir, as well as for her essays in the brilliant collection The Language of Inquiry, which introduced readers to the revolutionary concept of "the rejection of closure." Lyn Hejinian was also a beloved teacher, generous force for poetry, activist and community member. Hejinian's oeuvre is truly remarkable and her influence on generations of writers cannot be overstated. A number of poets will read from Lyn's work, offer personal remembrances, and collectively engage with her poetry, critical writing, translation, publishing, and extraordinary presence. This event is both for readers new to Lyn's work as well as for her many devoted readers and friends — all are welcome.
Charles Bernstein met Lyn Hejinian almost fifty years ago. His most recent book is The Kinds of Poetry I Want: Essays & Comedies, from the University of Chicago Press. He is a professor, emeritus, at Penn.
Laynie Browne's recent books of poetry include: Everyone & Her Resemblances (Pamenar, 2024), Intaglio Daughters (Ornithopter 2023), and Practice Has No Sequel (Pamenar 2023). She co-edited the anthology I’ll Drown My Book: Conceptual Writing by Women (Les Figues Press) and edited the anthology A Forest on Many Stems: Essays on The Poet’s Novel (Nightboat). Honors include a Pew Fellowship, the National Poetry Series Award, and the Contemporary Poetry Series Award. She teaches at the University of Pennsylvania.
Pattie McCarthy is the author of seven books of poetry, most recently Wifthing (Apogee Press, 2021), and a dozen chapbooks, most recently extraordinary tides (Omnidawn Publishing, 2023). A former Pew Fellow in the Arts, she is a non-tenure-track professor at Temple University where she is currently the Assistant Director of the MFA in Creative Writing.
Jena Osman Jena Osman's first full-length collection of poems, The Character, was selected for the 1998 Barnard New Women Poets Prize by Lyn Hejinian. She has published six books since then, as well as A Very Large Array: Selected Poems. She co-edited the journal Chain with Juliana Spahr from 1994-2005; they were honored to have published excerpts from Hejinian's A Border Comedy, as well as collaborations between Hejinian and Travis Ortiz, Joan Retallack, and Emilie Clark (which can be read at https://jacket2.org/reissues/chain).
Ron Silliman has written and edited forty books of poetry, critical theory, and memoir, most recently The L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Letters: Selected 1970s Correspondence of Bruce Andrews, Charles Bernstein, and Ron Silliman.
Claire Marie Stancek is a writer, editor, and educator. Her poetry collections include wyrd] bird (Omnidawn, 2020), Oil Spell (Omnidawn, 2018), and MOUTHS (Noemi, 2017). With Daniel Benjamin, she co-edited Active Aesthetics: Contemporary Australian Poetry (Tuumba/Giramondo, 2016). With the late Lyn Hejinian and Jane Gregory, she co-founded Nion Editions, a chapbook press that she and Jane now co-edit. Claire Marie earned a B.A. from the University of Toronto and holds a Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of California, Berkeley. She lives in Philadelphia.
Syd Zolf’s most recent books are No One’s Witness: A Monstrous Poetics (Duke, 2021) and a selected poetry, Social Poesis (WLU Press, 2019). Honors also include a Pew Fellowship in the Arts, a Trillium Book Award for Poetry, and finalist for several other prizes. They teach at the University of Pennsylvania.
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.