January 2026
Thursday, 1/1/2026
Friday, 1/2/2026
Saturday, 1/3/2026
Sunday, 1/4/2026
Monday, 1/5/2026
Tuesday, 1/6/2026
Wednesday, 1/7/2025
Thursday, 1/8/2026
Friday, 1/9/2026
Saturday, 1/10/2026
Sunday, 1/11/2026
Monday, 1/12/2026
Tuesday, 1/13/2026
Wednesday, 1/14/2026
Thursday, 1/15/2026
Friday, 1/16/2026
Saturday, 1/17/2026
Sunday, 1/18/2026
Monday, 1/19/2026
Tuesday, 1/20/2026
Wednesday, 1/21/2026
Thursday, 1/22/2026
Mind of Winter
5:30 PM in person
rsvp: regsiter here to attend in person
Soups! Stews! Wintery readings! Every January, the people of the Writers House welcome everyone back to campus with “Mind of Winter,” a celebration of the season’s comforts inspired by Wallace Stevens's poem, "The Snow Man.” Join us at 5:30 PM, when we’ll gather here at the KWH for delicious homemade soups and stews, followed by winter-themed readings selected by KWH community members. Let it snow!
Friday, 1/23/2026
Saturday, 1/24/2026
Sunday, 1/25/2026
Monday, 1/26/2026
Live at the Writers House
A monthly radio show produced at the KWH in collaboration with WXPN
6:30 PM in person
LIVE at the Writers House is a long-standing collaboration among 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 through the generous support of BigRoc.
and was nominated for aTuesday, 1/27/2026
New poems for the new year
A reading by members of the Suppose an Eyes workshop
6:00 PM in person
Join us for a reading by members of Suppose an Eyes, a poetry workshop sponsored by the Kelly Writers House. The workshop takes its name from a "portrait" in Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons. Suppose An Eyes has two main goals: to provide a supportive place for poets to share and improve their writing and to organize readings where poets can present their work to the public. The group was founded in 1999 and is one of the longest running poetry workshops in the Philly area. The group has a diverse membership with poets of all ages and from a variety of backgrounds.
Wednesday, 1/28/2026
Speakeasy Open Mic Night
Poetry, prose, 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, 1/29/2026
Al Filreis: The Classroom and the Crowd
A reading and celebration
6:00 PM in person
rsvp: register here to attend in person
Join us for a celebration of The Classroom and the Crowd by Kelly Writers House Faculty Director Al Filreis. For more than a decade, Filreis has taught a free online course about experimental poetry, known as “ModPo,” that has drawn some 435,000 students from 179 countries. Online classes even a fraction of ModPo’s size have been criticized as impersonal and unengaging. But the citizens of ModPo have formed a generous and enduring intellectual community as together they read poems typically dismissed as difficult and inaccessible. In The Classroom and the Crowd, Filreis reflects on his decades of experience as a founder of participatory literary communities and teacher of online courses, demonstrating that student-centered education offers new possibilities for humane social networking.
Al Filreis is Kelly Family Professor of English, founding faculty director of the Kelly Writers House, director of the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing, codirector of PennSound, and publisher of Jacket2 magazine, all at the University of Pennsylvania. His recent books include 1960: When Art and Literature Confronted the Memory of World War II and Remade the Modern (Columbia, 2021), and he is the host of the podcast PoemTalk.