October 2026
Thursday, 10/1/2026
ModPo Webcast, Week 5
6:30 PM (BST) in Manchester, UK, 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.
Friday, 10/2/2026
Saturday, 10/3/2026
Sunday, 10/4/2026
Monday, 10/5/2026
A Meeting of the Writers House Planning Committee
5:30 PM in the Arts Café
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, 10/6/2026
Wednesday, 10/7/2026
ModPo Webcast, Week 6
3:00 PM in the Arts Café 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, 10/8/2026
A conversation with Jessica Goldstein
About her debut novel Retro
5:30 PM in the Arts Café
hosted by: Anthony DeCurtis
rsvp: register here to attend in person
Jessica Goldstein (C’11) is a writer based in Washington, D.C. Her debut novel, Retro, was published by Ballantine Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House, in June 2026. You can read her work in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Marie Claire, and elsewhere. She is a longtime contributor to Vulture, where she currently recaps Emily in Paris, Hacks, Wednesday, and The White Lotus. She writes often for McSweeney's Internet Tendency, and several of her pieces have been the site’s most-read of the year. Her Washingtonian magazine guide to standup in DC, “Amateur Hour,” won a 2024 City and Regional Magazine Association award. She was a 2023 Spruceton Inn Artist Resident. Goldstein publishes a weekly newsletter, The Retro Report, where she shares vintage mood-based recommendations for what to read, watch, listen to, meditate on, and obsess over.
Retro, Jessica Goldstein’s debut novel, is about a struggling, down-and-out actress who gets a job as a Time Travel Agent leading wealthy tourists on vacations to the past. B achelor parties at Woodstock! '20s for your twenties birthday bashes at Prohibition-era speakeasies! Millennial-bait journeys on the Oregon Trail! Concerts, sporting events, inaugurations, assassinations: Bygone America is just a Retro Metro ride away. But while Ash's megalomaniacal tech billionaire boss promises travelers that "the Timeline is resilient," Ash has her doubts — but now that her life finally feels dazzling and thrilling, she can't let herself worry that her escapades in the past could be threatening her present.
Friday, 10/9/2026
Saturday, 10/10/2026
Sunday, 10/11/2026
Monday, 10/12/2026
Tuesday, 10/13/2026
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).
Wednesday, 10/14/2026
ModPo Webcast, Week 7
3:00 PM in the Arts Café 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.
Outrider: a film about Anne Waldman
A screening and discussion of "Outrider" with poet Anne Waldman and director Alystyre Julian
6:00 PM in the Arts Café
hosted by: Laynie Browne
rsvp: register here to attend in person
Please join us for a screening and discussion of Outrider, a film about the remarkable poet Anne Waldman. Our screening will be followed by a conversation with Anne Waldman and Outrider’s director, Alystyre Julian.
OUTRIDER explores Anne Waldman’s transcendent role as a visionary word-worker, from the downtown New York scene and the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church, to the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, to Big Sur, Mexico City, Morocco, and onward. Guided by ancestors of the Beat generation and poetic kinships with radical female musicians, Outrider channels the ancient, bardic tradition — celebrating the thunderous power of poetry. The poet Eleni Sikelianos writes of the film: “Outrider is a flash of lightning in the dark night, aglow with the life force of Anne Waldman. If you want to sneak up on the secret trajectory of U.S. culture, if you want to know the true, deep possibilities for art in our times — this is your poet. Waldman’s blazing, capacious soul is here at work and this portrait captures the restless luminosity of a whole poetry community in action. You can see the streaks of energy streaming across the screen. This is the work we need to witness now to carry us forward and through.”
Alystyre Julian is a writer, filmmaker, and photographer. She is the director of Outrider. In 2024, Julian co-curated Language and Light: The Films of Ed Bowes at Anthology Film Archives. She has been the stills photographer on award-winning feature filmsDiane (2018), Monsters and Men (2018), Goldie (2019), and others, and has directed and worked on numerous short films, videos, and documentary projects. She holds an MFA from Bard College, and previously taught creative writing at Long Island University, Montclair State University, and screenwriting at New York University. Her poems have been featured in publications such as Poetry Project Newsletter, Chain, Talisman, and Pharos. She lives and works in New York City, where she is at work on a new film project related to Black Mountain College.
Anne Waldman is an internationally acclaimed poet and the author of more than sixty books, including Fast Speaking Woman: Chants and Essays (1996), The Iovis Trilogy: Colors in the Mechanism of Concealment (2011), and Bard, Kinetic (2023). She is a founder and former director of the The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery, and along with contemporaries Allen Ginsberg and Diane DiPrima, founded the ‘Jack Kerouac School for Disembodied Poetics’ at Naropa University. Her poetry belongs to the lineages of the Beat, New York School, and Black Mountain Movements of New American Poetry. As a feminist, social activist, and powerful performer, she has read in the streets and literary institutions worldwide and continues to teach poetics all over the world.
Thursday, 10/15/2026
A CONVERSATION WITH SERGIO DE LA PAVA
Friedman Fiction Program
5:00 PM reception | 6:00 PM interview-conversation
hosted by: Simone White
rsvp: register here to attend in person
Sergio de la Pava is a novelist, having published four works of literary fiction. He won the PEN/Bingham Award for Best Debut Fiction for his novel set in the NYC criminal punishment system, A Naked Singularity. His fourth novel, Every Arc Bends Its Radian, was recently released by Simon and Schuster resulting in the New York Times assessment that “De La Pava’s commitment to ideas – their creation and their interrogation – is so fervid that it lights up his prose.” Sergio was an Inaugural Member of the National Book Foundation’s Literature for Justice Committee and a member of National Book Award Judging Panel in Translated Literature. Additionally, Sergio is a careerlong public defender in New York City. He is the Legal Director of New York County Defender Services where he continues to engage in trial work, legal education and training, and large-scale criminal reform advocacy. Sergio is the recent recipient of the New York State Bar Association’s lifetime criminal defense practitioner award. He is the author of The Public Defender – a longform essay on two decades of representing indigent people accused of crimes, published in Harper’s Magazine (October 2020) and One Will be Provided for You, an essay on Gideon v. Wainwright included in Fight of the Century: Writers Reflect on 100 Years of Landmark ACLU Cases, published by Avid Reader Press (2020).
Friday, 10/16/2026
Saturday, 10/17/2026
Sunday, 10/18/2026
Monday, 10/19/2026
Tuesday, 10/20/2026
DATA EMPIRE: A CONVERSATION WITH ROOPIKA
Weber Symposium
5:00 PM reception | 6:00 PM interview-conversation
hosted by: Al Filreis
rsvp: register here to attend in person
Roopika Risam (C’03) is Professor of Digital Humanities and Social Engagement at Dartmouth. Her research explores how histories of race, empire, and technology shape the modern world. Data Empire, her most recent book, reveals the hidden history of information as a technology of power. Spanning from the first written records in ancient Mesopotamia to today's algorithmic systems, Risam shows how data has long shaped who counts, who belongs, and who can be governed — and why understanding that history is essential to navigating the age of AI. She is also the author of New Digital Worlds: Postcolonial Digital Humanities in Theory, Praxis, and Pedagogy, taught in over 150 universities worldwide, and co-editor of four collections, including Anti-Racist Community Engagement and The Digital Black Atlantic. Her work has been supported by over $4.3 million in grants from the NEH, Mellon Foundation, and others. She is also known for her public scholarship and digital projects, including Torn Apart/Separados, which visualized the U.S. government’s family separation policy at the border. Risam is past president of the Association for Computers and the Humanities, the U.S. scholarly organization for digital research in the humanities.
Wednesday, 10/21/2026
ModPo Webcast, Week 8
12:00 PM in the Arts Café 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 Bob Perelman
Eva & Leo Sussman Poetry Program
6:00 PM in the Arts Café
hosted by: Al Filreis
rsvp: register here to attend in person
Bob Perelman has published numerous books of poems, including: Chatty Fossils (Roof Books, 2026), Jack and Jill in Troy (Roof, 2019); Iflife (Roof, 2006); Playing Bodies, in collaboration with painter Francie Shaw (Granary Books, 2004); and Ten to One: Selected Poems (Wesleyan University Press, 1999). His critical books are The Marginalization of Poetry: Language Writing and Literary History (California, 1994); The Trouble With Genius: Reading Pound, Joyce, Stein, and Zukofsky (Princeton, 1996); Modernism the Morning After (Alabama, 2017). His work can be heard on PennSound; a feature on his work appears in Jacket 39. Visit his website for more information. He is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Pennsylvania.
Thursday, 10/22/2026
Friday, 10/23/2026
Saturday, 10/24/2026
Sunday, 10/25/2026
Monday, 10/26/2026
Tuesday, 10/27/2026
Chef to Chef
Alison Roman in conversation with Gabrielle Hamilton
12:00 PM in the Arts Café
Sponsored by: the Blaze Bernstein Memorial Fund
Alison Roman is a New York-based cook, writer, and author of the recently released cookbook, Something from Nothing as well as the New York Times best-selling cookbooks Sweet Enough, Nothing Fancy, and Dining In. She’s the creator of the Home Movies series on YouTube, the author of A Newsletter, and the creator of the Solicited Advice podcast. In 2023, she opened First Bloom, a small grocery store in the Western Catskills full of local produce, near and far pantry staples and the best granola you’ve ever had. A second location is set to open in Brooklyn later this year. In 2025, she added A Very Good Tomato Sauce to the shelves, coming soon to a grocery store near you.
LIVE AT THE WRITERS HOUSE
A monthly radio show produced in collaboration with WXPN
6:30 PM in the Arts Café
rsvp: register here to attend in person
LIVE at the Writers House is a long-standing collaboration between the Kelly Writers House and WXPN (88.5 FM). Five 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 through the generous support of BigRoc.
Wednesday, 10/28/2026
ModPo Webcast, Week 9
10:00 AM in the Arts Café 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, so bring your poetry, your guitar, your or your flash fiction to share! You’ll have three minutes at the podium to perform (there will be a sign-up sheet available when you arrive). You’re also welcome to participate in the event as a member of the audience — no performance required. Come celebrate your classmates, colleagues, and fellow writers!