February 2020
Saturday, 2/1
Sunday, 2/2
Monday, 2/3
A MEETING OF THE WRITERS HOUSE PLANNING COMMITTEE
5:00 PM in the Arts Cafe
rsvp: wh@writing.upenn.edu
Join us for a meeting of the Writers House Planning Committee (also know 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, 2/4
WAIST BEADS WORKSHOP: SELF-LOVE THROUGH THE DIASPORA
6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe
Hosted by: Mary Osunlana and Kwynasia Young
Sponsored by: Creative Ventures
Waist Beads, n., single or multiple strands of beads made from various kinds of glass, metal, crystal, bone, and wood, worn around the waist and stomach. Waist beads have been worn for centuries by women in many West African cultures. They are a popular way for Black women in the diaspora to connect to their ancestors and celebrate their heritage and cultural practices. Join us for an evening of beading and conversation on self-love in the diaspora.
Wednesday, 2/5
A conversation with David Zucchino
Povich Journalism Program
12:00 PM in the Arts Cafe
Hosted by: Dick Polman
RSVP: wh@writing.upenn.edu
watch: a video recording of this event via our YouTube channel.
David Zucchino author of the new book Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy, is a contributing writer for The New York Times. He was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for his reporting from South Africa. He’s a four-time Pulitzer Prize finalist for coverage of Lebanon, Africa, inner-city Philadelphia, and Iraq. He has reported from more than three dozen countries, most recently from Iraq. He is the author of two other books Thunder Run: The Armored Strike to Capture Baghdad (2004) and Myth of the Welfare Queen (1997). Zucchino worked as a foreign and national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times from 2001 to 2016, focusing on Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. Before that, he worked for 20 years at The Philadelphia Inquirer, as the bureau chief in Beirut, Lebanon; Nairobi, Kenya; and Johannesburg. For The Inquirer, he also covered the Middle East, Africa and wars in Chechnya and the former Yugoslavia.
Speakeasy Open Mic Night
7:30 PM in the Arts Cafe
Our student-run open mic night welcomes all kinds of readings, performances, spectacles, and happenings. Bring your poetry, your guitar, your dance troupe, your award-winning essay, or your stand up comedy to share.
Thursday, 2/6
Whenever We Feel Like It Pop-Up Craft Session
Led by Ted Rees
6:00 PM in tha Arts Cafe
watch: a video recording of this event via our YouTube channel.
Whenever We Feel Like It Pop-up Craft Sessions invite visiting writers to lead workshops for KWH audience members. Writers will read and discuss their own work and/or the work of other poets, and lead the audience through a writing exercise. Participants will leave with a piece of writing. This Pop-Up Craft Session will be led by Ted Rees.
Ted Rees is a poet and essayist who lives and works in Philadelphia. His first book of poetry, In Brazen Fontanelle Aflame (Timeless, Infinite Light 2018), was described by Publishers Weekly as "a lyrical stream of consciousness that congeals in a sort of hybrid queer, ecopoetic, intertextual manifesto." His second book is forthcoming from Golias Books this spring, and chapbooks include the soft abyss, The New Anchorage, and Outlaws Drift in Every Vehicle of Thought. Recent lyric essays have been published in the Full Stop blog, Full Stop Quarterly, and ON Contemporary Practice’s monograph on New Narrative. He is editor-at-large for The Elephants and teaches creative writing and literature courses at Temple and area universities.
Friday, 2/7
Saturday, 2/8
Sunday, 2/9
Monday, 2/10
A reading by Carmen Maria Machado
6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe
watch: a video recording of this event via our YouTube channel.
Carmen Maria Machado is the author of the memoir In the Dream House and the short story collection Her Body and Other Parties . She has been a finalist for the National Book Award and the winner of the Bard Fiction Prize, the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction, the Brooklyn Public Library Literature Prize, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Prize. In 2018, the New York Times listed Her Body and Other Parties as a member of "The New Vanguard," one of "15 remarkable books by women that are shaping the way we read and write fiction in the 21st century."
Her essays, fiction, and criticism have appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, Granta, Harper’s Bazaar, Tin House, VQR, Conjunctions, 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 and has been awarded fellowships and residencies from the Guggenheim Foundation, Michener-Copernicus Foundation, Elizabeth George Foundation, CINTAS Foundation, Yaddo, Hedgebrook, and the Millay Colony for the Arts. She is the Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania and lives in Philadelphia with her wife.
Tuesday, 2/11
Everything You Always Wanted to Know (But were Afraid to Ask) about How to Succeed In Podcasting Without Really Interrupting Each Other
Featuring Sarah Marshall
Bernheimer Symposium
6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe
watch: a video recording of this event via our YouTube channel.
How do you make one of Time's top 10 podcasts of the year with an iPhone and a sponge as your only recording equipment? What makes a conversation interesting to people who can't be part of it? And if you have no mystery to explore, can you draw listeners in with empathy instead? Join us on Tuesday, February 11, at 6:00 PM for this year’s Bernheimer Symposium, "Everything You Always Wanted to Know (But were Afraid to Ask) about How to Succeed In Podcasting Without Really Interrupting Each Other.” Journalist SARAH MARSHALL will join us to talk about her podcast YOU'RE WRONG ABOUT, a show about misremembered history, her lifelong obsession with righting the legacies of maligned women, and how to get your project started when you don't know where to start.
SARAH MARSHALL has published nonfiction with Buzzfeed, The New Republic, and The Believer, and hosts You're Wrong About, a podcast about misremembered history. Before settling in Philadelphia to work on the podcast full-time, she produced it on the road while working as a traveling journalist, house sitter, and sled dog handler.
Wednesday, 2/12
A reading by Tommy Pico
6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe
introduced by: Michelle Taransky
sponsored by: the Creative Writing Program
watch: a video recording of this event via our YouTube channel.
Tommy "Teebs" Pico is the author of the books IRL, Nature Poem, and Junk. Feed (Tin House Books, November 2019) completes the Teebs tetralogy. He's been the recipient of awards and fellowships from the Whiting Foundation, the Lambda Literary Foundation, the Poetry Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Brooklyn Public Library. He co-curates the reading series Poets with Attitude, co-hosts the podcast Food 4 Thot, and is a contributing editor at Literary Hub. Originally from the Viejas Indian reservation of the Kumeyaay nation, he now lives in Los Angeles, CA.
Thursday, 2/13
Mick and Marianne: Tammy Faye Starlite Performs the Songs of the Rolling Stones as Marianne Faithfull
RealArts@Penn Program
5:00 PM in the Arts Cafe
rsvp: wh@writing.upenn.edu or 215-746-POEM
watch: a video recording of this event via our YouTube channel.
Marianne Faithfull was one of the definitive faces of the 1960s and, with Mick Jagger, half of one of the iconic couples of that era. Performance artist Tammy Faye Starlite fully inhabits the persona of Marianne Faithfull, and will perform Rolling Stones songs related to Faithfull's glamorous, tempestuous, doomed life with Jagger. In addition, she will be interviewed by Anthony DeCurtis, whose course on the Rolling Stones provides the occasion for Starlite's visit.
Tammy Faye Starlite is an actor, musician and writer, who, in recent years, has earned a reputation for her stunning cabaret performances embodying the characters of the Velvet Underground singer Nico and Marianne Faithfull, the singer, songwriter and legendary beauty who helped define the look of the Sixties. Of her performance as Faithfull, the New York Times writes, "Her simulation of Ms. Faithfull's vocal style and combustible blend of arrogance and scabrous sarcasm only begins to tell the story. In what is easily the most revelatory show I've seen in this sluggish cabaret season, Ms. Starlite and her alter ego eerily interfuse."
Friday, 2/14
Saturday, 2/15
Sunday, 2/16
Monday, 2/17
A reading by Saidiya Hartman
Kelly Writers House Fellows Program
6:30 PM in the Arts Cafe
rsvp required: whfellow@writing.upenn.edu
Saidiya Hartman is an American writer, researcher, and professor, whose major fields of study range from African American and American literature to cultural history, slavery, law and literature, and performance studies. Hartman gives a beautiful and generous attention to individual stories in the process of writing about large topics of collective history and culture such as race, queer identity, slavery and more, an attention she sometimes shines on her own individual story as in the memoir Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route. Born and raised in New York City, Hartman has been a Cullman Fellow at the New York Public Library, a Fulbright Scholar in Ghana, a Whitney Oates Fellow at Princeton University, and a Rockefeller Fellow at Brown University. She is the author of three major works, Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-making in Nineteenth Century America, (Oxford University Press,1997), Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route (Farrar,Straus and Giroux, 2007), and most recently Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval (W. W. Norton, 2019). Hartman currently teaches in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and is working on a new project surrounding ideas on photography and ethics.
Tuesday, 2/18
Brunch with Saidiya Hartman
Kelly Writers House Fellows Program
10:00 AM in the Arts Cafe
rsvp required: whfellow@writing.upenn.edu
Saidiya Hartman is an American writer, researcher, and professor, whose major fields of study range from African American and American literature to cultural history, slavery, law and literature, and performance studies. Hartman gives a beautiful and generous attention to individual stories in the process of writing about large topics of collective history and culture such as race, queer identity, slavery and more, an attention she sometimes shines on her own individual story as in the memoir Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route. Born and raised in New York City, Hartman has been a Cullman Fellow at the New York Public Library, a Fulbright Scholar in Ghana, a Whitney Oates Fellow at Princeton University, and a Rockefeller Fellow at Brown University. She is the author of three major works, Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-making in Nineteenth Century America, (Oxford University Press,1997), Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route (Farrar,Straus and Giroux, 2007), and most recently Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval (W. W. Norton, 2019). Hartman currently teaches in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and is working on a new project surrounding ideas on photography and ethics.
Wednesday, 2/19
Contemporary Iranian Fiction in Translation
A panel discussion with Moniro Ravanipour, Mohamad Ghanoonparvar, Fatemeh Shams, Mahyar Entezari
6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe
co-sponsored by: the Middle East Center and the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations
watch: a video recording of this event via our YouTube channel.
Join us for an evening with internationally acclaimed Iranian-American author Moniro Ravanipour. Ravanipour was born in Jofreh, a village on the coast of the Persian Gulf. Her birthplace has had a substantial impact on her writing career. In addition to children stories, Ravanipour has written many short stories, several novels, and a few screenplays. Her short stories have been translated into many languages. Ravanipour's short stories have been published in PEN America, World Literature Today, and CONSEQUENCE Magazine. She has also had presentations all around the world, in countries such as Germany, France, Italy, Sweden, England, Turkey, Canada, and in more than twenty-two state in the United States. She received fellowships from Brown University and BMI (Black Mountain Institute) at the University of Nevada. Ravanipour was among seventeen activists to face trial in Iran for their participation in the 2000 Berlin Conference, accused of taking part in anti-Iran propaganda. Copies of her current work were recently stripped from bookstore shelves in Iran in a countrywide police action.
Her tales, described as "reminiscent in their fantastic blend of realism, myth, and superstition of writers like Rulfo, Garcia Marquez, even Tutuola," frequently take as their setting the small, remote village in southern Iran where she was born. Nahid Mozaffari, editor of Strange Times, My Dear: The International PEN Anthology of Contemporary Iranian Literature, writes that Ravanipour "has been successful in the treatment of the complex subjects of tradition and modernity, juxtaposing elements of both, and exposing them in all their contradictions without idealizing either."
Thursday, 2/20
Friday, 2/21
Saturday, 2/22
Sunday, 2/23
Monday, 2/24
LIVE at the Writers House
WXPN radio show
7:00 PM in the Arts Cafe
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" is made possible through the generous support of BigRoc and is produced by Alli Katz.
Tuesday, 2/25
Chili cook off
5:00 pm in the dining room
Our yearly Chili Cook Off (followed by a Chopped-style dessert round) is open to teams and individuals. To participate in the chili cook-off, please make a BIG BATCH of your best chili — all kinds of chili welcome — and bring it to the KWH (ready to eat!) by 5:00 PM for a community tasting. The two best chili-makers or chili-making teams will be elected by popular vote and will face-off immediately in a Chopped-style dessert throw-down in the KWH Kane-Wallace Kitchen.
IF YOU PLAN TO MAKE A CHILI, please email wh@writing.upenn.edu to let us know. To help in your efforts, we'll have a wide selection of chili and spices available in the KWH kitchen a week in advance. We'll also happily reimburse chili makers up to $40 PER BATCH (with receipt). And YES! you should encourage your chili-making friends to enter this competition.
Wednesday, 2/26
Sonali Deliwala and Isami McCowan
Heled Travel and Research Grant Presentations
12:00 PM in the Arts Cafe
rsvp to: wh@writing.upenn.edu
watch: a video recording of this event via our YouTube channel.
Heled Travel and Research Grants enable students to travel and conduct research for significant writing projects. Join us for presentations by two Heled Grant recipients: Sonali Deliwala and Isami McCowan. Sonali Deliwala will present some of her research into the Valsad tribe, just outside of Mumbai India. Isami McCowan will present on the history and culture of the Izu Islands.
THE SENSIBLE NONSENSE PROJECT
sponsored by the Lucy F. DeMarco Fund for Youth Literature
6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe
watch: a video recording via our YouTube channel
Help us honor the humor, pathos, and enduring wisdom of children's books through a celebration of The Sensible Nonsense Project, curated by Arielle Brousse. Six community members will share stories about their favorite books from childhood, what those books taught them, and how those lessons continue to influence their adult lives. Stay on after the readings for a delicious reception inspired by after-school snacks, and to get more information about how you, too, can participate in the project. In the meantime, visit The Sensible Nonsense Project at sensiblenonsense.us.
Thursday, 2/27
Lunch with Sebastian Modak
Povich Journalism Program
12:00 PM in the Arts Cafe
rsvp: wh@writing.upenn.edu
watch: a video recording via our YouTube channel
Sebastian Modak is a travel writer and multimedia journalist based in New York City. In 2019, he was selected to be the New York Times 52 Places Traveler and spent the year traveling to and reporting from all the destinations on the Times's "52 Places to Go" list. Prior to that, Modak was part of the digital team at Condé Nast Traveler for three years where he was an editor and then a staff writer. He also has worked as a producer on the MTV World series "Rebel Music," and, as a 2013 Fulbright-mtvU Fellow, spent a year documenting the hip-hop scene in Gaborone, Botswana. Of mixed Colombian and Indian heritage, Modak has lived in six countries on four continents. In 2010, Modak received a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, where he majored in English and History and minored in Music and African Studies.
A reading by Major Jackson
6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe
introduced by: Herman Beavers
co-sponsored by: the Center for Africana Studies
This program has been CANCELLED due to inclement weather. It will be rescheduled if possible.
Major Jackson is the author of five books of poetry, most recently The Absurd Man (2020). His edited volumes include: Best American Poetry 2019, Renga for Obama, and Library of America’s Countee Cullen: Collected Poems. A recipient of fellowships from Cave Canem, Inc., Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, Major Jackson has published poems and essays in American Poetry Review, The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, Paris Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, and World Literature Today. He lives in South Burlington, Vermont and is the Richard A. Dennis Professor of English at the University of Vermont. He serves as the Poetry Editor of The Harvard Review. For more information, visit www.majorjackson.com.