April 2013
Monday, 4/1
A Poetry Reading by Maggie O'Sullivan
Writers Without Borders
6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe
hosted by: Charles Bernstein
Maggie O'Sullivan is a British poet, performer and visual artist. For over thirty years, her work has appeared extensively in national and international journals and anthologies and she has performed her work, often in collaboration with dancers and musicians, all over the world. O'Sullivan's work is influenced by Kurt Schwitters, Joseph Beuys, Jerome Rothenberg, Bob Cobbing and Basil Bunting. Her books include, most recently, murmur (Veer Books, 2011), ALTO (Veer Books, 2009), WATERFALLS (etruscan books, 2009), and Windows Opening (Belladonna Chapbook #108, Belladonna Books, 2007). In 1996, she edited out of everywhere: An anthology of contemporary linguistically innovative poetry by women in North America and the UK. Body of Work, which brings together for the first time the full texts of O'Sullivan booklets now out of print made during the London-based late 1970's-1980's and includes many Writers Forum publications is out now (Reality Street, 2006). Full online texts of recent work, including all origins are lonely (2003); murmur - tasks of mourning (2004) and courtship of lapwings (2006) are featured on her website, www.maggieosullivan.co.uk.
Tuesday, 4/2
A poetry reading by David Kirby
co-sponsored by the Creative Writing Program
6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe
hosted by: Greg Djanikian
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen: to an audio recording of this event
David Kirby is the Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of English at Florida State University. He has received many honors for his work, including fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, and his work appears frequently in the Best American Poetry and Pushcart Prize volumes. Kirby is the author of numerous books, including The House on Boulevard St.: New and Selected Poems, which was a finalist for the 2007 National Book Award in poetry. His Little Richard: The Birth of Rock 'n' Roll was named one of Booklist's Top 10 Black History Non-Fiction Books of 2010, and the Times Literary Supplement called it "a hymn of praise to the emancipatory power of nonsense." Kirby's latest poetry collection is Talking About Movies With Jesus, and there's more on www.davidkirby.com.
Wednesday, 4/3
Brodsky Gallery Opening for Comic Sans MS
6:00 PM in the Art Cafe
The Brodsky Gallery is an art gallery integrated with the ground floor of the Writers House. Up to six exhibitions take place during the academic year from September through May. Openings feature a reception for the artist and an accompanying program; examples include panel discussions, poetry readings, film screenings, and technique demonstrations by the artist. Through exhibiting a diverse array of art media and cross-disciplinary programming, the Brodsky Gallery at KWH seeks to engage Penn students and the broader Philadelphia community with the interrelationships between literary and visual arts. Thanks to the generosity of Michael and Heidi Brodsky, whose support makes our gallery space possible, the Brodsky Gallery is a permanent project of Kelly Writers House.
Thursday, 4/4
RealArts@Penn presents Robert Sharenow
5:00 PM in the Arts Cafe
hosted by: Anthony DeCurtis
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen: to an audio recording of this event
Robert Sharenow is an Emmy-award-winning writer, producer, and television executive. He currently serves as Executive Vice President of Programming of Lifetime Networks. In his role, he spearheads all programming activities for Lifetime Television's scripted and reality series, as well as its original movies. In addition, Sharenow is responsible for managing all programming for Lifetime Movie Network, as well as Lifetime Real Women.
Lifetime's scripted programs include the hit drama Army Wives starring Brooke Shields and The Client List starring Jennifer Love Hewitt, as well as the upcoming Devious Maids produced by Marc Cherry (creator of Desperate Housewives) and The Witches of East End starring Julia Ormond and Jenna Dewan-Tatum.
Lifetime's reality slate includes the Emmy-nominated series Project Runway, now in its 11th season, and the hit series Dance Moms.
A longtime leader in original movies, Lifetime is also the number one ad-supported cable network for original movie premieres among Women. Lifetime and LMN are currently in production on 56 original movies annually, including the upcoming Butterfield 8 starring Katherine Heigl, an all African American version of Steel Magnolias, featuring Queen Latifah and Jill Scott, and a mini-series, Bonnie and Clyde directed by Oscar-nominee Bruce Beresford and starring Emile Hirsch, Holly Hunter, William Hurt, and Holiday Granger.
Prior to joining Lifetime, Sharenow was Senior Vice President of Non-Fiction & Alternative Programming at A&E Network, where he was responsible for supervising the development and creation of all of A&E's non-fiction programming, including the network's signature real-life series, justice franchises, critically-acclaimed documentary series, A&E IndieFilms, lifestyle programming and marquee specials. He also oversaw original program development for the Bio Channel.
During his tenure at A&E, he developed and/or served as executive producer on several critically acclaimed and hit real life series, including Intervention, Storage Wars, Hoarders, Steven Seagal: Lawman, Beyond Scared Straight, Dog the Bounty Hunter, Criss Angel Mindfreak, Gene Simmons Family Jewels, The First 48, Manhunters and Growing Up Gotti. For the Bio Channel, he was responsible for developing Shatner's Raw Nerve, I Survived and Celebrity Ghost Stories. Under his leadership, A&E IndieFilms produced and released several theatrical documentary features, including he September Issue, The Tillman Story and Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer.
Before joining A&E, Sharenow served as Executive Producer of The History Channel's award-winning weekly series, This Week in History. While there, he also co-created and launched the series Extreme History with Roger Daltrey. In addition, he served as Senior Producer of a special commemorating the anniversary of 9/11, Relics from the Rubble. His other television writing credits include Michael Moore's Emmy Award-winning TV Nation and the Emmy-winning children's series Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego?. His acclaimed second novel, The Berlin Boxing Club was published by HarperCollins in 2011 and recently won the Sydney Taylor Book Award and was a finalist for the Walden Award. His first book, My Mother the Cheerleader, was named one of the "Best Books of the Year" by the American Library Association, School Library Journal and the New York Public Library. His new novel, The Girl in the Torch, is due to be published in 2013.
Sharenow is a graduate of Brandeis University. He received his Masters degree from New York University, where he held a fellowship in the American Studies department.
Friday, 4/5
Saturday, 4/6
The Kelly Writers Home Project
Kate Herzlin's Kerry Prize Project
3:00 PM & 7:00 PM throughout the first floor
RSVP:wh@writing.upenn.edu (specify show time)
The Kelly Writers House Home Project is a collaboratively written play, organized by Kate Herzlin for the annual Kerry Prize Program. We'll host two performances of the play, performed throughout the rooms of Writers House. Intimate, site-specific, pick-your-own-adventure theatre at the homiest place on campus. We'll even feed you. What could possibly go wrong?
The Kerry Sherin Wright Prize honors the extraordinary achievement of Kerry Sherin Wright, who was director of Writers House from 1998 to 2003. Each spring the Kerry Prize is awarded by a representative committee of Writers House-affiliated writers to a member of the Writers House community (the hub or Planning Committee) based on proposals. The prize goes to the person who proposes to create an event or project that best captures the aesthetic capaciousness and literary communitarianism that is a founding idea of the Writers House and is indeed the hallmark of Kerry's work as our director.
Sunday, 4/7
Front Row Theatre Award reading
6:30 PM in the Arts Cafe
Monday, 4/8
A poetry reading by Robert Grenier and Stephen Ratcliffe
6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen: to an audio recording of this event
Stephen Ratcliffe has published more than twenty books of poetry, including New York Notes (1983), Distance (1986), [where late the sweet] BIRDS SANG (1989), spaces in the light said to be where one/ comes from (1992), Present Tense (1995), Sculpture (1996), SOUND/(system) (2002), and Conversation (2011). In the late 1990s, he began a series of 'poems-written-in-consecutive-days' which is still going on, and has thus far resulted in three 474-page books – Portraits & Repetition (2002), REAL (2007), and CLOUD / RIDGE (2011) – and three 1,000-page books – HUMAN / NATURE, Remarks on Color / Sound, and Temporality, all available at Editions Eclipse. Audio recordings of his work, including a fourteen-hour performance in collaboration with several Bay Area musicians of HUMAN / NATURE at UC Davis on June 8–9, 2008, and another fourteen-hour performance of Remarks on Color / Sound on May 16, 2010, at Marin Headlands Center for the Arts, can be found at his page on PennSound; his ongoing 'daily poems' can be found online at stephenratcliffe.blogspot.com. Ratcliffe has also written three books of literary criticism: Campion: On Song (1981), Listening to Reading (2000), and Reading the Unseen: (Offstage) Hamlet (2010).
Over the past forty years, poet Robert Grenier has constantly pushed poetry into new frontiers of practice and utterance. His handwritten poems, produced in the last decade, cross the upper limit of inscription to be both writing and drawing. His works include Sentences (1978, Whale Cloth Press), Series (1978, This Press), Oakland (1980, Tuumba Press), A Day At The Beach (1984, Roof Books), Phantom Anthems (1986, O Books), and OWL/ON/BOU/GH (1997, Post-Apollo). A graduate of Harvard College and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Grenier has received two NEA Fellowships for poetry writing and has taught literature and creative writing at UC Berkeley, Tufts University, Franconia College, New College of California and Mills College.
Tuesday, 4/9
A Conversation with Robert Grenier and Stephen Ratcliffe
12:00 PM in the Arts Cafe
Kauders Lunch Series
RSVP: wh@writing.upenn.edu
hosted by: Julia Bloch
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen: to an audio recording of this event
Stephen Ratcliffe has published more than twenty books of poetry, including New York Notes (1983), Distance (1986), [where late the sweet] BIRDS SANG (1989), spaces in the light said to be where one/ comes from (1992), Present Tense (1995), Sculpture (1996), SOUND/(system) (2002), and Conversation (2011). In the late 1990s, he began a series of 'poems-written-in-consecutive-days' which is still going on, and has thus far resulted in three 474-page books – Portraits & Repetition (2002), REAL (2007), and CLOUD / RIDGE (2011) – and three 1,000-page books – HUMAN / NATURE, Remarks on Color / Sound, and Temporality, all available at Editions Eclipse. Audio recordings of his work, including a fourteen-hour performance in collaboration with several Bay Area musicians of HUMAN / NATURE at UC Davis on June 8–9, 2008, and another fourteen-hour performance of Remarks on Color / Sound on May 16, 2010, at Marin Headlands Center for the Arts, can be found at his page on PennSound; his ongoing 'daily poems' can be found online at stephenratcliffe.blogspot.com. Ratcliffe has also written three books of literary criticism: Campion: On Song (1981), Listening to Reading (2000), and Reading the Unseen: (Offstage) Hamlet (2010).
Over the past forty years, poet Robert Grenier has constantly pushed poetry into new frontiers of practice and utterance. His handwritten poems, produced in the last decade, cross the upper limit of inscription to be both writing and drawing. His works include Sentences (1978, Whale Cloth Press), Series (1978, This Press), Oakland (1980, Tuumba Press), A Day At The Beach (1984, Roof Books), Phantom Anthems (1986, O Books), and OWL/ON/BOU/GH (1997, Post-Apollo). A graduate of Harvard College and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Grenier has received two NEA Fellowships for poetry writing and has taught literature and creative writing at UC Berkeley, Tufts University, Franconia College, New College of California and Mills College.
Cross Cultural Poetics: Isabel Cadenas Cañón and Edward Foster
Writers Without Borders
6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe
hosted by: Leonard Schwartz
Isabel Cadenas Cañón's book Irse (Vitruvio, 2010) won the III Caja de Guadalajara-Fundación Siglo Futuro Award for young poets. In 2010, she was selected by the Spanish Ministry of Culture to represent Spain at Book Expo America. She is the co-anthologist of El tejedor: New Iberoamerican Poetry in New York (LUPI, 2011). She has translated C.D. Wright's poetry into Spanish (with Valerie Mejer), Circe Maia's into French (with Étienne Dobenesque) and Raúl Zurita's into Basque. Her poems and translations have appeared reviews such as Brooklyn Rail and Mandorla, as well as in the anthology Palabras errantes. She has performed her poetry in places ranging from the Nuyorican Poets Cafe to the recently departed Bowery Poetry Club. Her photographic work has been showcased in galleries in Spain and the United States. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from NYU, where she is currently pursuing her PhD. Most importantly, she holds the title of "Insigne Vaivodesa" from the Long-lived Institute of Higher Pataphysical Studies of Buenos Aires (LIAEPBA). She lives in Brooklyn, of course.
Edward Foster is a widely published critic, essayist, editor, and poet. His poetry has been translated into, and published in, many languages, including single-author volumes in Slovenian, Romanian, and Russian. The poetry editor of MultiCultural Review, Foster is the founding editor of Talisman: A Journal of Contemporary Poetry and Poetics, Talisman House, Publishers, and Jensen/Daniels, Publishers. He is a co-editor of Contemporary Turkish Studies. He is also the president of Greenfield Distribution, Inc., a book distribution company located in New Hampshire. A Professor of History and Associate Dean for Administration in the College of Arts and Letters at the Stevens Institute of Technology, he is a former visiting professor at Drew University Graduate Faculty and Beykent University (Istanbul) and was a Fulbright lecturer at Haceteppe University in Ankara, Turkey, and at the University of Istanbul. The co-director of the Russian/American Cultural Exchange Program, he has been the recipient of numerous grants and awards from Columbia University, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the USIA arts program, the New Jersey Historical Commission, Choice, the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, the Fulbright Commision, the Greve Foundation, the Fund for Poetry, the Trubar Foundation, and the Turkish Ministry of Culture.
Wednesday, 4/10
A lunch talk with David Lieberman
Povich Journalism Program
12:00 PM in the Arts Cafe
RSVP: wh@writing.upenn.edu
hosted by: Dick Polman
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen: to an audio recording of this event
David Lieberman is the Executive Editor for Deadline Hollywood where he reports on several issues including business and finance, television news, media, public policy and technology. Prior to joining Deadline, David was Senior Media Reporter at USA Today for seventeen years and covered media, telecom and technology. He also managed the USA Today's CEO Forum, where he conducted one-on-one interviews with some of the nation's most influential business leaders including Microsoft's Steve Ballmer, General Electric's Jeffrey Immelt, American Express' Kenneth Chenault and Kraft's Irene Rosenfeld. Before working at USA Today, David covered television as a Reporter and Editor for TV Guide, served as Media and Entertainment Editor at Business Week and covered business and the economy for The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour. During his career, David free-lanced for several prestigious publications including the Media Studies Journal, The New York Times, the Columbia Journalism Review and The New Republic. He also contributed an essay on media mergers which appears in the influential book, Conglomerates and the Media, published by The New Press. In addition to his writing, David is an adjunct professor at the Fordham University Graduate School of Business where he specializes in business and media.
A Reading by Ariel Djanikian
Cheryl Family Fiction Program
6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen: to an audio recording of this event
Ariel Djanikian graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in
2004 and holds an MFA in fiction writing from the University of Michigan. She lives in Chapel Hill,
North Carolina, with her husband and daughter. The Office of Mercy is her first novel. www.arieldjanikian.com
Thursday, 4/11
Twit Crit Blog Launch
Featuring Patricia Lockwood
sponsored by Creative Ventures
6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe
hosted by: Lily Applebaum, Jess Bergman, Isaac Kaplan, and Madeleine Wattenbarger
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen: to an audio recording of this event on PennSound
This is a launch event for Twit Crit, a blog that creates a space for critical discourse around Twitter as a platform and a medium for serious, interesting contemporary writing. The program will feature Patricia Lockwood, poet and terrific Tweeter with 17,500 followers and counting at @tricialockwood, who will speak about contemporary poetic writing on Twitter and how she personally uses the platform to write.
Friday, 4/12
Saturday, 4/13
Sunday, 4/14
Monday, 4/15
A meeting of the Writers House Planning Committee (the "Hub")
5:00 PM in the Arts Cafe
rsvp: jalowent@writing.upenn.edu
From the time of its founding in 1995-1996, the Kelly Writers House has been run more or less collectively by members of its community. Our original team of intrepid founders—the group of students, faculty, alumni, and staff who wanted to create an independent haven for writers and supporters of contemporary writing in any genre—took for themselves the name "the hub." "Hub" was the generic term given by Penn's Provost, President, and other planners who hoped that something very innovative would be done at 3805 Locust Walk to prove the viability of the idea that students, working with others, could create an extracurricular learning community around common intellectual and creative passions. To this day, the Writers House Planning Committee refers to itself as "the hub"—the core of engaged faculty, student, staff, and alumni volunteers from whom the House's creative energy and vitality radiates.
Old English Live!
7:00 PM in the Arts Cafe
hosted by: Emily Steiner
featuring Herman Beavers, Tsitsi Jaji, Bob Perelman, Danny Snelson, and Emily Steiner
sponsored by: The English Department
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen: to an audio recording of this event
Come hear Penn poets, musicians, and medievalists respond to the great Anglo-Saxon epic, Beowulf! The episode we've chosen from Beowulf is a very tense story within a story, sung by the Danish court poet after Beowulf's victory against Grendel. In this episode, Hildeburgh, a Danish princess is married to Finn, king of the Frisians (c.500). Her brother Hnaef has come to visit her, accompanied by his retainers, and a fight breaks out between the Danes and the Frisians. Hnaef is killed, as well as Hildeburgh's son, who was the heir to the Frisian throne. Too few men survive for the battle to continue, but by now winter has set in, and the ocean is too icy for the Danes to sail home. A shaky truce is established between the Frisians and the Danes now led by Hengest. The bodies of the dead are burned together on a funeral pyre. But emotions run high, and the Danes resent being trapped in their enemy's court, p retending to obey him as their leader. When spring comes, all hell breaks loose!
Tuesday, 4/16
Cross Cultural Poetics: Lila Zemborain and Anna Moschovakis
Writers Without Borders
12:00 PM in the Arts Cafe
rsvp: wh@writing.upenn.edu
hosted by: Leonard Schwartz
Lila Zemborain is an Argentine poet and critic who has lived in New York since 1985. She directs the Creative Writing in Spanish Program at NYU and is the author of several poetry collections: Abrete sésamo debajo del agua (1993), Usted. (1998), Guardianes del secreto (2002) - translated into English as Guardians of the Secret (2009), Malvas orquídeas del mar (2004) - translated into English as Mauve Sea-Orchids (2007) - Rasgado (2006), La couleur de l' eau / El color del agua (2008) translated into French by Sarah T. Reyna, and the chapbooks Ardores (1989), and Pampa (2001). Her work, translated into English by Rosa Alcalá or Mónica de la Torre, has appeared in the art catalogues Alessandro Twombly (Brussels, 2007), Heidi McFall (New York, 2005) and in numerous publications from Latin America, Spain and the US. Zemborain holds a Ph.D. degree from New York University. Also a critic, she is the author of Gabriela Mistral. Una mujer sin rostro (2002). She has been the director and editor of the Rebel Road Series (2000-2007) and, since 2004, she curates the KJCC Poetry Series at New York University. In 2006 she taught in the Summer Writing Program at Naropa University and in 2007 she was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim fellowship.
Anna Moschovakis's recent books are You and Three Others Are Approaching a Lake, winner of the 2011 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets, and The Jokers, a translation of La violence et la dérision by Egyptian-French novelist Albert Cossery. She has received grants from New York Foundation for the Arts, The Fund for Poetry, and The Edward Albee Foundation, and in 2009 she was granted an apexart outbound fellowship to Ethiopia. A freelance editor and book designer, she teaches in the Writing Program at Pratt Institute and is a member of the writing faculty at Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College. She is also a longtime member of Brooklyn-based publishing collective Ugly Duckling Presse, for which she edits several books a year and heads up the Dossier Series of investigative texts.
Charles Bernstein: Recalculating
A book party
7:00 PM in the Arts Cafe
From the publisher: Long anticipated,
Recalculating is Charles Bernstein's first
full-length collection of new poems in seven years. As a result of this lengthy time under construction,
the scope, scale, and stylistic variation of the poems far surpasses Bernstein's previous work. Together,
the poems of Recalculating take readers on a journey through the history
and poetics of the decades since the end of the Cold War as seen through the lens of social and personal
turbulence and tragedy.
The collection's title, the now–familiar GPS expression, suggests a change in direction due to a mistaken or unexpected turn. For Bernstein, formal invention is a necessary swerve in the midst of difficulty. As in all his work since the 1970s, he makes palpable the idea that radically new structures, appropriated forms, an aversion to received ideas and conventions, political engagement, and syntactic novelty will open the doors of perception to exuberance and resonance, from giddiness to pleasure to grief. But at the same time he cautions, with typical deflationary ardor, "The pen is tinier than the sword." In these poems, Bernstein makes good on his claim that "the poetry is not in speaking to the dead but listening to the dead." In doing so, Recalculating incorporates translations and adaptations of Baudelaire, Cole Porter, Mandelstam, and Paul Celan, as well as several tributes to writers crucial to Bernstein's work and a set of epigrammatic verse essays that combine poetics with wry observation, caustic satire, and aesthetic slapstick.
Wednesday, 4/17
A Poetry Reading by Lynn Levin's English 10 Class
2:00 PM in the Arts Cafe
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen: to an audio recording of this event
Come hear comic narratives, sonnets, Fibonacci poems (and find out what they are), plus much more as the students in Lynn Levin's English 10 class share their poetic achievements. These students hail from a wide variety of majors, so you are bound to hear poems on not-the-usual subjects.
Speakeasy open mic night
Poetry, Prose, and Anything Goes!
7:30 PM in the Arts Cafe
hosted by: Rosa Escandon and Isa Oliveres
watch: a video recording of part 1 of this event via KWH-TV
watch: a video recording of part 2 ofthis event via KWH-TV
listen: to an audio recording of part 1 of this event
listen: to an audio recording of part 2 of this event
Our Speakeasy Open Mic Night is held once a month. We invite writers to share their work, or the work of others, in our Arts Cafe. Speakeasy 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. You should expect outrageous (and free!) raffles for things you didn't know you needed, occasional costumes, and, of course, community members who love writing.
Thursday, 4/18
Brave Testimony: Nikki Finney
time TBA in the Arts Cafe
co-sponsored by: Africana Studies
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen: to an audio recording of this event
Nikky Finney was born in South Carolina, within listening distance of the sea. A child of activists, she came of age during the civil rights and Black Arts Movements. At Talladega College, nurtured by Hale Woodruff's Amistad murals, Finney began to understand the powerful synergy between art and history. Finney has authored four books of poetry: Head Off & Split (2011); The World Is Round (2003); Rice (1995); and On Wings Made of Gauze (1985). The Guy Davenport Endowed Professor in the Department of English at the University of Kentucky, Finney also authored Heartwood, (1997) edited The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South (2007), and co- founded the Affrilachian Poets. Finney's fourth book of poetry, Head Off & Split was awarded the 2011 National Book Award for poetry.
Friday, 4/19
Saturday, 4/20
Sunday, 4/21
Monday, 4/22
A reading by Rodrigo García
Kelly Writers House Fellows Program
6:30 PM in the Arts Cafe
rsvp: seating strictly limited; please rsvp to whfellow@writing.upenn.edu or call 215-573-9749
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen: to an audio recording of this event
Funded by a grant from Paul Kelly, the Kelly Writers House Fellows program enables us to realize two unusual goals. We want to make it possible for the youngest writers and writer-critics to have sustained contact with authors of great accomplishment in an informal atmosphere. We also want to resist the time-honored distinction — more honored in practice than in theory — between working with eminent writers on the one hand and studying literature on the other.
Rodrigo García was born in 1959 in Bogotá, Colombia, and was
raised in Mexico.
García, whom the Washington Post referred to affectionately as "the man
who loves women" in a 2010 profile, is a director and writer for both TV and film, celebrated for
his intimate, emotional and invested portrayals of his characters. He directed several independent
movies which attracted critical acclaim, such as Things You Can Tell Just By
Looking At Her (2000), Nine Lives (2005), and Albert Nobbs (2011). His greatest work to date has been the HBO series In Treatment, which ran from 2008 through the end of 2010, and which he
created, wrote, and directed. García made fascinating use of the genre of the television series,
where each season featured week-long stretches with one episode per night for five nights in a row,
and then four in the third season, simulating the psychotherapist's work week, each episode
focusing on a session with a different patient.
While García's father, writer Gabriel García Márquez, is best known for his works of magical realism, García has spent the better half of his career emphasizing the un-magical, and his style is an everyday realism. But such a style does not mean that touches of the mystical and the uncertain are absent from his work. There is a beautiful spirituality within both his directing and writing work. Contemporaneous with a TV era of American viewers who were obsessively watching, in real time, to find out whether or not 24's Jack Bauer was going to explode into millions of pieces, García has used the concept of "real time" in TV to gain emotional depth and to connect with his audience, convincing them to care as much for the people he created as he genuinely did. As he quotes to the Washington Post, "Anybody can blow up cars. A director who can really get into the mysteries and complexity of women is very special."
Tuesday, 4/23
A brunch conversation with Rodrigo García
Kelly Writers House Fellows Program
10:00 AM in the Arts Cafe
rsvp: seating strictly limited; please rsvp to whfellow@writing.upenn.edu or call 215-573-9749
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen: to an audio recording of this event
Funded by a grant from Paul Kelly, the Kelly Writers House Fellows program enables us to realize two unusual goals. We want to make it possible for the youngest writers and writer-critics to have sustained contact with authors of great accomplishment in an informal atmosphere. We also want to resist the time-honored distinction — more honored in practice than in theory — between working with eminent writers on the one hand and studying literature on the other.
A reading by students in Ron Silliman's English 111 course
2:30 PM in the Arts Cafe
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen: to an audio recording of this event
What happens if you take the "experiment" in experimental poetry seriously? One tradition has viewed literature as cumulative and continuous since at least the 1700s, but another tradition sees poetry as discontinuous, given to disruption and transformation. We've been taking a closer look at this second tradition and seeing what happens to our own work when we alter the underlying presumptions of our writing. Eleven of the sharpest students at Penn since Ezra Pound was hitting on Professor Doolittle's daughter!
The Penn and Pencil Club Reading
An Evening of Fiction, Nonfiction and Poetry
6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe
Wednesday, 4/24
Creative Writing Contest Winners Reading
5:00 PM in the Arts Cafe
hosted by: Greg Djanikian
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen: to an audio recording of this event
Thursday, 4/25
Wednesday, 4/25
Hub Party
5:00 in the Arts Cafe
watch: a video recording of part 1 of this event via KWH-TV
watch: a video recording of part 2 of this event via KWH-TV
Watch: segments on the End of Year Party program page.
Friday, 4/26
Writing at the Borders
A reading by students in Katie Price's creative writing class
12:00 in the Arts Cafe
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen: to an audio recording of this event
For the last three months, students in Katie Price's English 010 class have been foreigners to their own writing practice. They have taken risks, pushed boundaries, and challenged themselves to work at the borders between genres; art, math and science; print and new media. Come to see and hear their challenging, engaging, and thought-provoking work. Stay to help us celebrate their achievements!
A reading by Jamie-Lee Josselyn's nonfiction writing workshop
2:30 PM in the Arts Cafe
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen: to an audio recording of this event
Join us as we feature the fantastic, energetic and attractive students of English 010 reading original work produced this semester: from essays detailing tales from elementary and middle school to investigations of places familiar and foreign to character studies that examine the intersection of the ordinary and extraordinary. Students in this seminar have been educated and inspired by the likes of Joan Didion, Phillip Lopate, David Sedaris, Ian Frazier, Buzz Bissinger, and, of course, one another.