April 2026
Wednesday, 4/1/2026
Thursday, 4/2/2026
Friday, 4/3/2026
Saturday, 4/4/2026
Sunday, 4/5/2026
Monday, 4/6/2026
A Meeting of the Writers House Planning Committee
5:30 PM 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, 4/7/2026
Wednesday, 4/8/2026
Thursday, 4/9/2026
Friday, 4/10/2026
Saturday, 4/11/2026
Sunday, 4/12/2026
Monday, 4/13/2026
Tuesday, 4/14/2026
Wednesday, 4/15/2026
Thursday, 4/16/2026
Friday, 4/17/2026
Saturday, 4/18/2026
Sunday, 4/19/2026
Monday, 4/20/2026
Tuesday, 4/21/2026
Anna Badkhen: To See Beyond
6:00 PM in person
co-sponsored by: the Creative Writing Program
rsvp: register here to attend in person
Please join us for a celebration of Anna Badkhen's extraordinary new essay collection, To See Beyond, about which Ben Fountain has written: "Anna Badkhen’s lifetime of deep reading and dangerous living has yielded these profoundly moving essays that range from Canary Islands myth to hunger stones, from ‘radical hope’ and child soldiers to micro-love and prayer beads and a lifejacket graveyard on Lesvos.”
Anna Badkhen is the author of eight books. Her essay collection Bright Unbearable Reality was longlisted for the 2022 National Book Award and for the 2023 Jan Michalski Prize for Literature. Her new essay collection, To See Beyond, is being published by Bellevue Literary Press in April 2026. Badkhen’s awards include the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Barry Lopez Visiting Writer in Ethics and Community Fellowship, and the Joel R. Seldin Award from Psychologists for Social Responsibility for writing about civilians in war zones. A former war correspondent, Badkhen has essays in New York Review of Books, Granta, Harper’s, The Paris Review, Emergence, Orion, Adi, and the New York Times, and fiction in AGNI, The Common, Conjunctions, Scalawag, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Zyzzyva. Badkhen grew up in the Soviet Union and is a US citizen. She is an Artist-in-Residence at the University of Pennsylvania.
Wednesday, 4/22/2026
Thursday, 4/23/2026
Friday, 4/24/2026
Saturday, 4/25/2026
Sunday, 4/26/2026
Monday, 4/27/2026
A READING BY AYANA MATHIS
Kelly Writers House Fellows Program
6:30 PM in person
rsvp required: whfellow@writing.upenn.edu
Ayana Mathis's first novel, The Twelve Tribes of Hattie was a New York Times bestseller and has been translated into sixteen languages. Her nonfiction has been published in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Guernica, and Rolling Stone. Mathis has been the recipient of fellowships from the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center, the Bogliasco Foundation, the Civitella Ranieri Foundation in Italy, and the American Academy in Berlin. She was the first Black woman to be a permanent member of the faculty at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop and has taught in MFA Programs at Columbia University and Rutgers. She currently hosts and curates the Black Arts Dialogues series, a conversation series centered around art and Blackness hosted by the African American and African Diasporic Studies Department at Columbia University, and teaches in the MFA Creative Writing Program at Hunter College.
Tuesday, 4/28/2026
A Conversation with AYANA MATHIS
Kelly Writers House Fellows Program
10:00 AM in person
rsvp required: whfellow@writing.upenn.edu
Ayana Mathis's first novel, The Twelve Tribes of Hattie was a New York Times bestseller and has been translated into sixteen languages. Her nonfiction has been published in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Guernica, and Rolling Stone. Mathis has been the recipient of fellowships from the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center, the Bogliasco Foundation, the Civitella Ranieri Foundation in Italy, and the American Academy in Berlin. She was the first Black woman to be a permanent member of the faculty at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop and has taught in MFA Programs at Columbia University and Rutgers. She currently hosts and curates the Black Arts Dialogues series, a conversation series centered around art and Blackness hosted by the African American and African Diasporic Studies Department at Columbia University, and teaches in the MFA Creative Writing Program at Hunter College.