November 2026
Sunday, 11/1/2026
Monday, 11/2/2026
A Meeting of the Writers House Planning Committee
5:30 PM in the Arts Café
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, 11/3/2026
Wednesday, 11/4/2026
A conversation with Peter Canellos
12:00 PM in the Arts Café
hosted by: Dick Polman
rsvp: register here to attend in person
Peter S. Canellos was POLITICO’s executive editor, leading the newsroom during the 2016 presidential coverage; and the editorial page editor of The Boston Globe. He has also been a Pulitzer Prize finalist, a recipient of the American Society of Newspaper Editors award in 2011 for excellence in editorial writing along with the 2022 George Polk Award, Robin Toner Award, and News Leaders Association Batten Medal for his writing about the Supreme Court. He's the author of The Great Dissenter: The Story of John Marshall Harlan, America’s Judicial Hero; the bestselling Last Lion: The Fall and Rise of Ted Kennedy. His new book is Revenge for the Sixties, charting the rise of Supreme Court Justice Sam Alito.
ModPo Webcast, Week 10
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.
A reading by Mark Nowak
But Company Reading Series
6:00 PM in the Arts Café
hosted by: Michelle Taransky
rsvp: register here to attend in person
Mark Nowak's books include Shut Up Shut Down, Coal Mountain Elementary, Social Poetics, and, most recently, . . . AGAIN, all from Coffee House Press. He has been awarded fellowships from the Guggenheim, Lannan, and Creative Capital foundations. Nowak recently wrote an introduction to Celes Tisdale’s When the Smoke Cleared: Attica Prison Poems and Journal (Duke University Press). He is founding director of the Worker Writers School.
About . . . AGAIN: Told through five abecedarian prose sections, . . . AGAIN is a photo-text commentary on MAGAism in America. In his sobering voice, Nowak captures the depredations of capitalism, the desensitizing regularity of mass shootings, and the extremism that has fueled white nationalism. From the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic and the January 6 insurrection through Donald Trump’s re-election, Nowak chronicles the transformations as the seasons change around him, attempting to make sense of a bitterly divided nation that elected a polarizing figurehead . . . again.
Thursday, 11/5/2026
Friday, 11/6/2026
Saturday, 11/7/2026
Sunday, 11/8/2026
Monday, 11/9/2026
ModPo Webcast, Final Words
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.
Tuesday, 11/10/2026
Seeing Shoah: A Conversation
Wexler Family Program in Jewish Life and Culture
6:00 PM in the Arts Café
hosted by: Al Filreis
rsvp: register here to attend in person
For four decades, students in a single University of Pennsylvania course gathered for an extraordinary experience: watching, in one sitting, Claude Lanzmann's Shoah, the landmark 9½-hour documentary that challenges viewers to confront the Holocaust not as a closed chapter of history, but as a continuing presence. Join us for a conversation exploring the lasting impact of Shoah and what it means to carry the experience of seeing the film through time. Moderated by Al Filreis, this panel brings together Sophia DuRose, Emily Harnett, Carlos Decena, and Henry Steinberg for a discussion about memory, testimony, education, and the enduring questions raised by Lanzmann's monumental work. Drawing on the perspectives of those who have lived with the experience of watching Shoah, the conversation will consider how the film extends the vital act of noticing in personal, cultural, and transformative ways.
Wednesday, 11/11/2026
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!
Thursday, 11/12/2026
Friday, 11/13/2026
Saturday, 11/14/2026
Sunday, 11/15/2026
Monday, 11/16/2026
Tuesday, 11/17/2026
A conversation with Mallory Tenore Tarpley
Author of SLIP: Life in the Middle of Eating Disorder Recovery
12:00 PM in the Arts Café
hosted by: Jamie-Lee Jossleyn
rsvp: register here to attend in person
Mallary Tenore Tarpley is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin’s Moody College of Communication and the award-winning author of SLIP: Life in the Middle of Eating Disorder Recovery. SLIP is the 2026 recipient of the Association of American Publishers’ PROSE Award for Excellence in Biological and Life Sciences. It also won first place in the PROSE awards’ Clinical Medicine category and was a finalist in the Outstanding Work by a Trade Publisher category. While writing SLIP, Mallary received a prestigious Alfred P. Sloan Foundation grant, which supported her research and reporting. A journalist by trade, Mallary’s recent articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, TIME Magazine, and Harvard University’s Nieman Storyboard, among other publications. She also publishes a weekly newsletter, Write at the Edge, featuring writing tips and best practices. Mallary lives outside of Austin with her husband and two children.
The Poetic Record
Chris Mustazza in conversation with Charles Bernstein
6:00 PM in the Arts Café
rsvp: register here to attend in person
In the period immediately following the invention of sound recording, who first had the idea to record, collect, and study the voices of poets? PennSound Co-Director Chris Mustazza explores this question in The Poetic Record, featuring Mustazza in conversation with Charles Bernstein.
Chris Mustazza is Co-Director of the PennSound archive, the world’s largest archive of recordings of poets, and he teaches in the English department at the University of Pennsylvania. His research focuses on the history of literary audio, sonic media archaeology, and digital analyses of poetry recordings.