October 2025
Wednesday, 10/1/2025
ModPo Webcast, Week 5
12:00 PM in person and on YouTube
Everyone is welcome to join the people of ModPo for this live, interactive webcast — in person or online. ModPo is a fast-paced introduction to modern and contemporary U.S. poetry, with an emphasis on experimental verse, from Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman to the present. Participants (who need no prior experience with poetry) learn how to read poems that are supposedly “difficult.” Find more information about ModPo webcasts here.
Thursday, 10/2/2025
Friday, 10/3/2025
Saturday, 10/4/2025
Sunday, 10/5/2025
Monday, 10/6/2025
Tuesday, 10/7/2025
COLLAGE WORKSHOP
Brodsky Gallery event
11:00 AM in person
rsvp: register here to attend in person
Join us as we incorporate KWH ephemera, photos, and more into collaborative collages in honor of the Kelly Writers House’s 30th anniversary. This is the first of three workshops – come for one or all!
Wednesday, 10/8/2025
Thursday, 10/9/2025
Friday, 10/10/2025
Saturday, 10/11/2025
Sunday, 10/12/2025
Monday, 10/13/2025
Tuesday, 10/14/2025
Chef to Chef: Laurie Woolever & Gabrielle Hamilton
12:00 PM in person
sponsored by: the Blaze Bernstein Memorial Fund
rsvp: register here to attend in person
Laurie Woolever is a writer, editor, public speaker, and former cook. For nearly a decade, she worked as the lieutenant to the late author, TV host, and producer Anthony Bourdain. Her memoir, Care and Feeding, was published in March 2025. Woolever was an editor at Art Culinaire and Wine Spectator magazines, and has written about food, travel, television and more for the New York Times, Vogue, GQ, Rolling Stone, Food & Wine, Lucky Peach, Saveur, Dissent, Roads & Kingdoms, and others. She has contributed to and co-authored a number of books, including Appetites: A Cookbook and World Travel, both with Anthony Bourdain, and the James Beard Award-winning Richard Hart Bread, with British baker Richard Hart. Woolever is a graduate of Cornell University, where she studied Natural Resources Management, and the French Culinary Institute in New York.
Wednesday, 10/15/2025
ModPo Webcast, Week 7
12:00 PM in person and on YouTube
Everyone is welcome to join the people of ModPo for this live, interactive webcast — in person or online. ModPo is a fast-paced introduction to modern and contemporary U.S. poetry, with an emphasis on experimental verse, from Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman to the present. Participants (who need no prior experience with poetry) learn how to read poems that are supposedly “difficult.” Find more information about ModPo webcasts here.
A reading by members of the Penn and Pencil Club
6:00 PM in person
rsvp: register here to attend in person
A reading of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, written by members of the Penn and Pencil Club, a creative writing workshop for Penn staff from a variety of backgrounds and university departments.
Thursday, 10/16/2025
COLLAGE WORKSHOP
Brodsky Gallery event
12:00 PM in person
rsvp: register here to attend in person
Join us as we incorporate KWH ephemera, photos, and more into collaborative collages in honor of the Kelly Writers House’s 30th anniversary. This is the second of three workshops – come for one or all!
The Unplanned Plan: A Roadmap to the Creative Career You Can't Predict
A presentation by Ethan Fixell
5:30 PM in person
hosted by: Anthony DeCurtis
co-sponsored by: The Creative Ventures Fund and RealArts@Penn
rsvp: register here to attend in person
Ethan Fixell, a proud UPenn alumnus, has built a dynamic and multifaceted career as a writer and creative professional. After a brief stint with a signed rock band, Ethan went on to become a full-time comedian, touring every US state, appearing multiple times on The Tonight Show, and eventually co-creating his own show for NBC. A certified expert in beer, wine, and spirits, he has contributed regularly to dozens of renowned publications such as Food & Wine, Esquire, Men's Journal, and Vanity Fair, and has appeared on TV networks such as VH1, Bravo, TruTV, PBS, and the Food Network. He would eventually serve as U.S. Executive Director -- and later Global Head of Brand Strategy -- for Kerrang!, the premier UK-based rock magazine founded in 1981. Today, Ethan enjoys his role as an SVP for iHeartMedia, where he merges his creative and marketing expertise as the head of Ruby, the company's branded content studio.
Friday, 10/17/2025
Saturday, 10/18/2025
Sunday, 10/19/2025
Monday, 10/20/2025
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, 10/21/2025
A Poetry Reading by Greg Djanikian
In celebration of Nostalgia for the Future: New and Selected Poems, 1984-2024
Eva & Leo Sussman Poetry Program
6:00 PM in person
hosted by: Al Filreis
rsvp: register here to attend in person
Join us at the Writers House for a reading by acclaimed poet Gregory Djanikian, who was for many years the Director of Creative Writing at Penn. Djanikian’s latest book, Nostalgia for the Future: New and Selected Poems, written over several decades, takes for its many subjects romantic love and its difficulties, the horrors of the Armenian genocide of 1915, the émigré experience and the joys and struggles of acculturation, the allure of landscapes and vast distances, the polarity of our material life on earth and our longing for what is ethereal and elusive, all in tones that are humorous, elegiac, contemplative, lyrical, and suffused with a gratitude for the mysteriousness and wonder of life itself.
Born in Alexandria, Egypt of Armenian parentage, Gregory Djanikian
came to the United States when he was 8 years old and spent his boyhood in Williamsport, PA. For many
years, he was the Director of Creative Writing at the University of Pennsylvania and is the author of
seven collections of poetry from Carnegie Mellon, most recently of which is Sojourners
of the In-Between. His poems have appeared in numerous journals, and in many anthologies including
Best American Poetry, Good Poems, American Places (Viking),
Killer Verse: Poems of Murder and Mayhem (Knopf), Seriously Funny
(Georgia), Becoming Americas: Four Centuries of Immigrant Writing (Library of America),
Poem in Your Pocket (The Academy of American Poets), Language for a
New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia & Beyond (Norton), and 180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Every Day (Random House).
Wednesday, 10/22/2025
A Conversation with David Corn
12:00 PM in person
co-sponsored by: Truth and Disinformation in the Writing Arts and the Povich Journalism Program
hosted by: Dick Polman
rsvp: register here to attend in person
David Corn is a veteran Washington journalist and political commentator. He is the Washington bureau chief for Mother Jones magazine and an analyst for MSNBC. He is the author or co-author of four New York Times bestsellers, including the #1 bestseller Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin's War on America and the Election of Donald Trump; Showdown: The Inside Story of How Obama Battled the GOP To Set Up the 2012 Election; and Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War. He is also the author of the Blond Ghost: Ted Shackley and the CIA's Crusades and the novel Deep Background.
ModPo Webcast, Week 8
with Sarah Riggs
3:00 PM in person and on YouTube
Everyone is welcome to join the people of ModPo for this live, interactive webcast — in person or online. ModPo is a fast-paced introduction to modern and contemporary U.S. poetry, with an emphasis on experimental verse, from Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman to the present. Participants (who need no prior experience with poetry) learn how to read poems that are supposedly “difficult.” Find more information about ModPo webcasts here.
Speakeasy Open Mic Night
Poetry, prose, and anything goes
7:00 PM in person
rsvp: register here to attend in person
Our student-run open mic night welcomes all kinds of readings and performances. A sign-up sheet will be available when you arrive and you’ll have three minutes at the podium to perform. Bring your poetry, your guitar, your dance troupe, your award-winning essay, or your flash fiction to share – or just come to celebrate your classmates, colleagues, and fellow writers.
Thursday, 10/23/2025
Edible Books Party
5:30 PM in person
sponsored by: the Blaze Fund
rsvp: register here to attend in person
Do you like to bake? Are you a master of literary puns? This event is for you! Anyone is welcome to make, bake, or build an (edible) book for our annual Edible Books Party, held in memory of Blaze Bernstein. Prizes will be awarded in a number of categories, including Punniest, Best Use of a Single Ingredient, Most Literary, Most Literal, and Blaziest (i.e. the best). Your entry might look like book (a beautiful cake decorated to look like book jacket), or it might be a playful food pun on a book title (we’ve had flan jokes, pie jokes, and other punny play). You can make a book solo or as a team! To be considered for a prize, please register. (We’ll use your registration to make a fancy book cover/sign for your entry).
Friday, 10/24/2025
COLLAGE WORKSHOP
Brodsky Gallery event
1:00 PM in person
rsvp: register here to attend in person
Join us as we incorporate KWH ephemera, photos, and more into collaborative collages in honor of the Kelly Writers House’s 30th anniversary. This is the third of three workshops – come for one or all!
Saturday, 10/25/2025
Sunday, 10/26/2025
Monday, 10/27/2025
Live at the Writers House
A monthly radio show produced at the KWH 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 anong the people of the Kelly Writers House and WXPN (88.5 FM). Six times annually between September and April, we gather at the KWH to record a one-hour show of poetry, music, and other spoken-word art for broadcast by WXPN. Edited by Zach Carduner and produced by Alli Katz, LIVE at the Writers House is made possible thorugh the generous support of BigRoc.
Tuesday, 10/28/2025
A Conversation with Adelle Waldman
Weber Symposium
5:00 PM Reception
6:00 PM Interview/Conversation
co-hosted by: Al Filreis and David Roberts (W'84)
rsvp: register here to attend in person
Adelle Waldman is the author of the novels, Help Wanted, published by W.W. Norton in March of 2024, and The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P., which was published by Henry Holt in 2013 and named one of that year’s best books by The New Yorker, The Economist, The New Republic, NPR, Slate, Bookforum, The Guardian and others. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The New York Times Book Review, The Wall Street Journal, Slate, among other publications. She lives in the Hudson Valley with her husband and daughter.
Wednesday, 10/29/2025
ModPo Webcast, Week 9
with Marcella Durand
10:00 AM in person and on YouTube
Everyone is welcome to join the people of ModPo for this live, interactive webcast — in person or online. ModPo is a fast-paced introduction to modern and contemporary U.S. poetry, with an emphasis on experimental verse, from Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman to the present. Participants (who need no prior experience with poetry) learn how to read poems that are supposedly “difficult.” Find more information about ModPo webcasts here.
A poetry reading by Marcella Durand
6:00 PM in person
co-sponsored by: The Creative Writing Program
rsvp: register here to attend in person
Marcella Durand's latest books are A Winter Triangle, which received the Poetic Justice Institute Prize in 2024 and was published this fall by Fordham University Press, and The Light Factory, a collaboration with her mother, painter Suzan Frecon, published by Insurance Editions 2025 with support from David Zwirner Gallery. She is the co-editor with Jennifer Firestone of Other Influences: The Untold History of Avant-Garde Feminist Poetry, a collection of essays by experimental women poets on their own self-identified contexts and lineages, published by MIT Press in Fall 2024. Other collections include To husband is to tender (Black Square Editions, 2021), The Prospect (Delete Press, 2020), and a book-length translation from French of Michèle Métail, Earth's Horizons/Les horizons du sol (Black Square Editions, 2020). She is also the 2021 recipient of the C.D. Wright Award in Poetry from the Foundation of Contemporary Art and the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing fellow in poetics and poetic practice at the University of Pennsylvania 2010-2011. She lives in New York City, where she is active in local ecological and land-use issues, including the fight to save East River Park and ban the use of artificial turf in city parks.