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September 2011

Thursday, 9/1

Friday, 9/2

Saturday, 9/3

NSO Speakeasy

9:30 PM in the Garden

This open-mic night features performances by the Class of 2015 and others. All kinds of readings/performances/spectacles are welcome. Bring your poetry, your guitar, or your award-winning essay and share your amazing talents with your classmates. Or just come to hang out, listen, and check out the Writers House.


Sunday, 9/4

Monday, 9/5

Tuesday, 9/6

Wednesday, 9/7

Thursday, 9/8

Friday, 9/9

Open House

2:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

The Kelly Writers House Open House is an opportunity for new and old students to explore the House. We'll have a book sale, a t-shirt-embellishment table (bring a shirt you'd like to decorate), ice cream and poem-making stations, and plenty of ways for you to meet community members and student leaders and learn about ways to get involved here. All are welcome.

Saturday, 9/10

Sunday, 9/11

Monday, 9/12

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.

New and old Hub members alike are welcome to join us for pizza and a discussion of upcoming readings and programs, volunteer opportunities, and updates from project leaders. Anyone is welcome to join the Writers House Planning Committee. At this first meeting of the year we will discuss ways you can get involved at Writers House.

Go here to get a sense of what we do; go here for sound clips and photos from our end-of-year party; go here for a list of campus publications.


Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)

Tuesday, 9/13

A reading by Blanche Boyd

Bob Lucid Memorial Program in Fiction

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

Blanche McCrary Boyd is the Roman and Tatiana Weller Professor of English and Writer-in-Residence at Connecticut College. She has written four novels, Nerves, Mourning the Death of Magic, The Revolution of Little Girls and Terminal Velocity, and a collection of essays titled The Redneck Way of Knowledge. Blanche has also published a large body of articles, short fiction, and screenplays. Among the awards she has won are a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1993-1994, a National Endowment for the Arts Fiction Fellowship in 1988, a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in Creative Writing from Stanford University in 1967-1968, and the Lamda Award for Lesbian Fiction (which she received in 1991).


Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)

Wednesday, 9/14

A poetry reading by Susan M. Schultz

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 via PennSound.

Susan M. Schultz teaches at the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa. She has edited Tinfish Press, which publishes experimental poetry from the Pacific, since 1995. Among her books of poems and poetic prose is Dementia Blog (Singing Horse Press, 2008). She is also the author of A Poetics of Impasse in Modern and Contemporary American Poetry (University of Alabama Press, 2005), and of the Tinfish Editor's Blog, among other work.


Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)

Thursday, 9/15

A lunch talk by Susan M. Schultz

12:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

rsvp: email wh@writing.upenn.edu or call 215-746-POEM
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen: to an audio recording of this event via PennSound.

Susan M. Schultz teaches at the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa. She has edited Tinfish Press, which publishes experimental poetry from the Pacific, since 1995. Among her books of poems and poetic prose is Dementia Blog (Singing Horse Press, 2008). She is also the author of A Poetics of Impasse in Modern and Contemporary American Poetry (University of Alabama Press, 2005), and of the Tinfish Editor's Blog, among other work.


A reading by Alicia Oltuski (C'06, G'06)

6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

introduced by: Max Apple
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen: to an audio recording of this event

Alicia Oltuski is a writer whose book about diamonds, Precious Objects, is forthcoming from Scribner. She concentrated in creative writing at Penn and spent many happy hours at the Kelly Writers House. After graduating, she completed an MFA at Columbia and taught at the University of the Arts. Her work has appeared in literary magazines, newspapers, and on the radio. She lives with her husband Uri Pasternak, a 2004 graduate of Penn Engineering.

From the publisher:
In Precious Objects, journalist Alicia Oltuski, the daughter and granddaughter of diamond dealers, seamlessly blends family narrative with literary reportage to reveal the fascinating secrets of the diamond industry and its madcap characters: an Elvis-impersonating dealer, a duo of diamond-detective brothers, and her own eccentric faith. Entertaining an illuminating, Precious Objects offers an insider's look at the history, business, and society behind one of the world's most coveted natural resources, providing an unforgettable backstage pass to an extraordinary and timeless show.

Praise for Precious Objects:
"A piercing, intensely readable book. Ms. Oltuski guides us through New York's diamond business, one of the world's most fascinating and hard-to-penetrate communities, with great aplomb." —Gary Shteyngart, author of Super Sad True Love Story

"Beautiful and thrilling, Precious Objects, sparkles with life. Alicia Oltuski tells both the story of her family, as glittering as the gems they sell, and the story of the diamonds that have taken them all over the world and across the generations. A fascinating and gripping read." —Jennifer Gilmore, author of Something Red

"With revealing observations on the centuries-old link between Jews and the diamond industry, and sparkling accounts of her familial ties to the business.... Oltuski, daughter of a diamond dealer, brings clarity in this study of the industry." —Publishers Weekly

"Alicia Oltuski is an intrepid journalist able to write with precision and insight about the big issues in the diamond trade and the intimate details of life on Forty-Seventh Street." —Tony Hall, U.S. Representative

"A warm and detailed tour of a fascinating culture that hides in plain sight. You'll never see a diamond twinkling on a woman's finger without remembering the remarkable characters in Oltuski's book." —Dan Baum, author of Citizen Coors


Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)

Friday, 9/16

Saturday, 9/17

Sunday, 9/18

Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)

Monday, 9/19

Philadelphia Future Perfect

The Brodsky Gallery Opening

7:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen: to an audio recording of this event

The first Brodsky Gallery exhibit of the 2011/2012 season will feature prints of Philadelphia city-planning maps depicting large-scale projects that never came to pass -- at least not quite how the maps had promised them. Ranging from hand-drawn sketches to scaled blue-prints, this selection gathers proposals from architects and planning authorities from throughout Philadelphia's urban history, revealing the cities that could have been. Harris Steinberg, executive director of PennPraxis and life-long Philadelphian, will begin the evening with a discussion of maps, city planning, and Philadelphia histories past and present. The talk will be followed by a reception during which attendees will be invited to read and peruse the maps. This opening also serves as the kick-off for a year-long collaborative chapbook project which will aim to collect writings from and about these "alternative Philadelphias."


Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)

Tuesday, 9/20

Careers in Journalism and New Media

What you need to know to get a real job in print or broadcast journalism, book publishing, new media, and beyond

5:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

co-sponsored by: The Daily Pennsylvanian, The Nora Magid Mentorship Prize, and the Maury Povich Fund for Journalism Programs at the Kelly Writers House
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen: to an audio recording of this event

A knowledgeable panel of five Penn alumni – who have held every job in the business, at such outlets as NPR, GQ, the Daily Beast, New York Times, and Forbes – will discuss the early trials, tribulations, and eventual bliss of working in the media. Come get the scoop, as these professionals will be fielding your questions and advising aspiring writers and editors on the ever-changing landscape of new media. And if you're interested in applying for the Nora Magid Mentorship Prize, this is your chance to meet firsthand members of the "Nora-ites" as well as previous prizewinners.


Stephen Fried
Eliot Kaplan
Melody Joy Kramer
Randall Lane

Stephen Fried (C'79, 34th Street co-editor '77-'78) is an adjunct professor at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and the author of five acclaimed books, including Appetite for America: Fred Harvey and the Business of Civilizing the West—One Meal at a Time (which the Wall Street Journal named one of the Top Ten Books of 2010) and Thing of Beauty: The Tragedy of Supermodel Gia (which introduced the word "fashionista" into the English language.) A two-time winner of the National Magazine Award, Fried has written for Vanity Fair, GQ, The Washington Post Magazine, Rolling Stone, Glamour, Ladies' Home Journal, Parade and Philadelphia Magazine. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife, author Diane Ayres.

Eliot Kaplan is the Executive Director, Talent Acquisition for Hearst Magazines, a unique position of scouting and recruiting the world's top editors, writers and art directors for the company's 19 magazines and start-up ventures. These magazines include Cosmopolitan, Esquire, Elle and O:The Oprah Magazine. His role includes career development, succession planning, new-project evaluation, compensation overview and process streamlining. Prior to this job, Kaplan had a distinguished career in magazine editing. In his seven years as editor-in-chief, Philadelphia Magazine won two National Magazine Awards (the field's Pulitzer)and was nominated a total of five times, including, for the first time in the magazine's history, in the General Excellence category. Before joining Philadelphia, Kaplan was managing editor of Gentlemen's Quarterly. As the No. 2 editor to Art Cooper, in charge of story assignment, editing and personnel, he helped transform the Conde Nast publication into one of the most influential and successful magazines in the country. Kaplan, who graduated from Penn in 1978, was a co-editor of 34th Street, a sports writer and op-ed columnist.

Melody Joy Kramer graduated from Penn in 2006 with a degree in English. While at Penn, she edited and wrote for the Punch Bowl Humor Magazine and wrote a weekly humor column in the Daily Pennsylvanian. After graduating, she became a Kroc Fellow at NPR in Washington DC, where she learned reporting, producing, booking and audio-editing skills. She then moved to Chicago, where for almost two years, she directed, wrote for and helped produce Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, NPR's humor show. Mel then moved back to Philadelphia and started working at Fresh Air with Terry Gross. She currently helps produce the radio show and writes/produces all of Fresh Air's web content.

Randall Lane is the editor of Forbes Magazine. Previously, he was editor-at-large at Newsweek and The Daily Beast, CEO and editor-in-chief of Doubledown Media, where he founded or relaunched six magazines, including Trader Monthly, Dealmaker, and Private Air, and co-founder and editor-in-chief of P.O.V. magazine, which was Adweek's "Startup of the Year." A National Magazine Award finalist, he has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Vanity Fair and was the Washington bureau chief for Forbes. He is the author of The Zeroes: My Misadventures in the Decade Wall Street Went Insane.

Ashley Parker graduated from Penn in 2005, where she majored in English (Creative Writing concentration) and Communications. She wrote for The Daily Pennsylvanian, where she was the Assignments and Features Editor, as well as for 34th Street, where she was the Features Editor. During college, she interned at the New York Sun and The Gaithersburg Gazette. After graduating, she worked as New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd's research assistant, freelancing for every section of the paper during her five years with Maureen in the DC Buro. She became a full-time reporter for the Times last fall, moved to New York to work on the Metro desk, and recently started as a campaign reporter for the 2012 presidential election. Her photos have appeared in Vanity Fair ndash;a combination of luck and right place, right time prevailing over minimal talent.

Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)

Wednesday, 9/21

Speakeasy: Poetry, Prose, and Anything Goes!

Open Mic Night

8:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen: to an audio recording of this event
hosted by: Richard Thomson and Michelle Taransky

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.

Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)

Thursday, 9/22

Feminism/s presents Inga Muscio

POSTPONED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE

6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

sponsored by: the Fund for Feminist Projects

Inga Muscio is a feminist, anti-racist, and environmentalist writer and public speaker. She is the author of Cunt: a declaration of independence, Autobiography of a Blue-Eyed Devil: My Life and Times in a Racist, Imperialist Society, and most recently Rose: Love in Violent Times. The second oldest in a family of four, Muscio was born and raised in Santa Maria, California, attended The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington and currently lives in Seattle, Washington.


Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)

Friday, 9/23

Saturday, 9/24

Sunday, 9/25

Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)

Monday, 9/26

"PASTORAL ORIGINS," A CONVERSATION WITH ANNIE SEATON

12:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

rsvp: email wh@writing.upenn.edu or call 215-746-POEM
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen: to an audio recording of this event

Since Theocritus, the pastoral has been about origin, loss, and difference. This stands against the cliched image of the pastoral as idealized nature scenes of frolicking, hyper-sexual shepherds. In fact, those cliches, along with the dryly canonical nature of much of the secondary literature on the pastoral, have encouraged the neglect of some important and interesting themes. Quietly influential, the pastoral affect is, in fact, one of the dominant cultural modes by which the West represents itself — and it may even, in fact, be one of the earliest sources of the mythopoetic fashioning of cultural nationalism, considered broadly. This talk will consider passages from Theocritus to Heidegger, to read the pastoral as a search for lost origins vs. a clash with "difference." After a brief introductory talk by Annie Seaton, participants will be invited to consider and discuss passages.

Ann Seaton worked with Mary Lefkowitz and Frank Bidart at Wellesley, where she was a two-time undergraduate Academy of American Poets Prize winner and a Mellon Fellow. At Harvard, she studied American, French, and English literature and literary theory with Barbara Johnson. Subsequently, Annie was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Brown, and has taught at Skidmore, CUNY, and Bard College, where she is presently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Humanities. Annie is working on a book-length project, Pastoral Origins. Her main interests are in Ancient Greek, English Renaissance, French 18th and 19th century, and American 18th-20th century literature.


LIVE at the Writers House presents Philadelphia Stories

with musical guest Adrian Reju

7:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

LIVE at the Writers House is a long-standing collaboration between the Kelly Writers House and WXPN FM (88.5). Six times annually between September and April, Michaela Majoun hosts a one-hour broadcast of poetry, music, and other spoken-word art, along with one musical guest, all from our Arts Cafe onto the airwaves at WXPN. LIVE is made possible by generous support from BigRoc. For more information, contact Producer Erin Gautsche (gautsche@writing.upenn.edu).


Debrah Morkun
Christina Delia
James W. Morris
Chad Willenborg
Helen W. Mallon
Adrien Reju

Debrah Morkun's is the author of Projection Machine (BlazeVox Books, 2010) & The Ida Pingala (forthcoming). She curates the monthly Jubilant Thicket Literary Series at The Walking Fish Theatre in Philadelphia. She believes in near death experiences & prays to the old gods. Visit Debrah at www.debrahmorkun.com.

Christina Delia received her BFA in Writing for Film and Television from The University of the Arts. She writes the wedding advice column "Bride Dish With Mags & Dags" for web based humor publication Happy Woman Magazine. Christina's work can be found in the anthologies In One Year and Out The Other (Pocket books), The Best of Philadelphia Stories Volume 2 and most recently, in the Heart Beats Anthology. She lives in New Jersey with her husband, Rob.

James W. Morris grew up in Philadelphia and attended Central High School and LaSalle University, where he was awarded a scholarship for creative writing. He has published dozens of humor and fiction pieces in various literary magazines, including Philadelphia Stories, which has published two of his works of fiction so far. Those stories were later reprinted in the anthology series The Best of Philadelphia Stories, volumes One and Two. Jay has also written one play, "Rude Baby," which was produced as part of a festival of short plays by the City Theater Company of Wilmington, Delaware, and he worked for a time as a joke writer for Jay Leno.

Chad Willenborg teaches writing at the Art Institute of Philadelphia, but his resume tracks stints as a gravedigger, a bartender, a dry ice blaster, and an animal skinner. His work can be found in Fugue, McSweeney's, and The Believer, as well as the local publications, Philadelphia Stories and First City Review. He has been listed in Best American Short Stories and was twice runner-up for CityPaper's annual fiction contest. Currently, he's completing a novel and a collection of "cover versions" of James Joyce's Dubliners.

Helen W. Mallon grew up in a Philadelphia Quaker family, and her writing explores that world. She attended Germantown Friends School and received her MFA in Fiction Writing from Vermont College. She is a regular contributor of book reviews to the Philadelphia Inquirer and Fiction Writers Review website. Her fiction has been published in Philadelphia Stories Magazine and Relief: A Christian Quarterly. Two of her short stories are available for download onto just about anything from Books to Go Now.com. Currently, she is working on a novel titled Quaker Playboy Leaves Legacy of Confusion. She teaches creative writing at Cheltenham Adult School and works as an editorial consultant for writers of all stripes. Her website is HelenWMallon.com.

Adrien Reju's debut release, A Million Hearts, is a beautiful blend of folk, pop, indie, Americana delights. Known for her previous ventures as a member of the acclaimed Philadelphia-based bluegrass outfit The Lowlands, Reju cultivates her own style here "burnishing her timeless sensibility into laid-back sparkly pop that registers on the familiarity meter somewhere between Feist and Petula Clark." (Tara Murtha, Philadelphia Weekly).

In her solo work, Adrien explores a more serene side of herself through clarity in voice, depth in lyric, and an understated delivery that allows her to build up to key moments in a song. A Million Hearts features Reju's original songs as well as writing collaborations with the album's producer Pete Donnelly (Mike Viola, Soul Asylum, NRBQ) and Philadelphia music-scene luminaries Chris Kasper and Andrew Chalfen (The Trolleyvox). Highlights include a fun cover of Melanie's classic "Brand New Key," a vocal duet with pop prodigy Jim Boggia, full harmonies, muted horn solos, tickled barrel-house piano and hand claps.

Her song "When the Curtain Falls" earned 1st place in the Pop/Adult Contemporary category and 2nd Place Overall in the 2009 100% Music Songwriting Contest, and earned top-12 finalist status in the 2009 NY Songwriters' Circle Competition. "Heartless" and "The Waiting Room," were both featured in the movie Flower Girl, which first aired on the Hallmark movie channel in November 2009.


Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)

Tuesday, 9/27

A poetry reading by Charles Alexander

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 via PennSound.

Charles Alexander is the founder and director of Chax Press, in Tucson, where he has lived all but three of the past 27 years. His books include Hopeful Buildings (Chax 1990), Arc of Light / Dark Matter (Segue 1992), Near or Random Acts (Singing Horse 2004), and Certain Slants (Junction 2007), which includes 30 sections of the ongoing work Pushing Water, which is expected to be published in its entirety in 2011. He is recipient of the distinguished Arizona Arts Award, and is a former director of Minnesota Center for Book Arts, of Black Mesa Press, and of the Tucson Poetry Festival. Book arts works by Alexander are included in collections at the Getty Museum Library, the State University of New York at Buffalo Poetry Collection, the New York Public Library, the University of Wisconsin Special Collections Library, the University of Arizona Special Collections Library, the Stanford University Library, the Beinecke Library at Yale University, and at other major collections nationally and internationally. In the summer of 2007 he was a participant in the TAMAAS poetry translation seminar in Paris, France. He is currently at work on a book about the pleasures of poetry.


Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)

Wednesday, 9/28

Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)

Thursday, 9/29

Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)

Friday, 9/30