September 2026
Tuesday, 9/1/2026
A celebration of Jamie Albrecht’s What Have You
But Company Reading Series
6:00 PM in the Arts Café
rsvp: register here to attend in person
Join us for a celebration of What Have You, the debut collection by the late poet Jamie Albrecht (1999–2023). What Have You is a brilliant and searching work that gathers a young writer’s restless intelligence, emotional candor, and formal daring into a remarkable collection that feels both urgently contemporary and enduringly alive. Moving through lists, fragments, narrative passages, and lyric intensity, Albrecht constructs what might be called a living archive — one that gathers the textures of daily life, memory, and cultural residue into a form that resists containment. As the book itself asks: “What does one owe material?” The answer unfolds across its pages in acts of attention, care, and risk.
Jamie Albrecht (1999–2023) was a gifted writer and poet whose work reflected a deep sensitivity to language, memory, and listening. Born in Seattle and raised in Los Angeles, Jamie developed an early love of literature that would shape the course of his life and work. A 2022 graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, Jamie earned distinction as the recipient of the Creative Honors Thesis Prize for outstanding work in poetry. From 2020 to 2021, Jamie studied abroad at Mansfield College, Oxford, where the literary and historical richness of the setting left a lasting imprint. Jamie’s poetry was marked by intellectual rigor and emotional questioning, often exploring themes of identity, transience, and the natural world with both humor and depth. Though his time was brief, Jamie’s voice continues to resonate with those who encountered him and his work—poetry that speaks with brilliant force and enduring exploration.
Wednesday, 9/2/2026
SPEAKEASY OPEN MIC NIGHT
Poetry, prose, and 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, so bring your poetry, your guitar, your or your flash fiction to share! You’ll have three minutes at the podium to perform (there will be a sign-up sheet available when you arrive). You’re also welcome to participate in the event as a member of the audience — no performance required. Come celebrate your classmates, colleagues, and fellow writers!
Thursday, 9/3/2026
Friday, 9/4/2026
Saturday, 9/5/2026
Sunday, 9/6/2026
Monday, 9/7/2026
Tuesday, 9/8/2026
Rewatching the films of the 1950s and 1960s in the 2020s
A conversation with Al Filreis, Jo Park, and William Sturkey
6:00 PM in the Arts Café
rsvp: register here to attend in person
It’s always a good time for us to discuss movies of the 1950s and 1960s. But we’d like to talk about how the films of these eras look now particularly from the perspective of the 2020s. Perhaps we’ll learn as much about our own time as about the eras of retrenching Cold War and then of popular counterculture. What can we learn about AI in the latter half of our own decade by rewatching evil robots threatening people in ‘50s sci fi flicks? What can we learn about today’s pop media forms from re-experiencing leftist rejections of middle-brow populism in biker road films of the ‘60s?
Join three scholar-teachers as they reckon with their own — our own — decade by thinking about these two crucial prior turning-point decades. We will talk across many different movies and the wide range of topics and concerns they present. This will be a discussion, not a lecture, and so we hope our audience will bring ideas about their own perspective on favorite (or un-favorite) films of those now-long-ago periods.
Wednesday, 9/9/2026
Predicting the Future: Real and Imagined Technologies
Novelist Isabel Kim (C’18) in conversation with tech writer Amanda Silberling (C’18)
Cheryl J. Family Fiction Program
6:00 PM in the Arts Café
Isabel J. Kim (C’18) lives near New York City in an apartment filled with books and swords. She is the author of numerous short stories and has won the Nebula, Locus, and the Shirley Jackson Award. Her work has been translated into multiple languages and reprinted in multiple best of the year anthologies. When she’s not writing, she’s practicing law or podcasting. Sublimation is her first novel.
Amanda Silberling (C’18) is a senior writer at TechCrunch covering the impact of technology on culture. She has also written for publications like Polygon, MTV, the Kenyon Review, NPR, and Business Insider. She is the co-host of Wow If True, a podcast about internet culture, with science fiction author Isabel J. Kim. Prior to joining TechCrunch, she worked as a grassroots organizer, museum educator, and film festival coordinator. She studied English and fine arts at the University of Pennsylvania and served as a Princeton in Asia Fellow in Laos.
Thursday, 9/10/2026
A reading by CAConrad
6:00 PM in the Arts Café
hosted by: Jackie Tileston
co-sponsored by: the SNF Paideia Program
rsvp: register here to attend in person
CAConrad works with the ancient technologies of poetry and ritual and has been doing so for over 50 years. Their latest poetry collection is First Light (Wave Books / UK Penguin, 2027). They received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, a PEN award, and a Creative Capital grant. The Book of Frank is available in a dozen languages, with a forthcoming Korean translation in 2027. They exhibit their poems as sculpture with recent shows in Edinburgh, London, Hamburg, Melbourne, Porto, and Chicago. They teach at Sandberg Art Institute and De Ateliers in Amsterdam, and at Bard College's MFA program. They live in Greenfield, Massachusetts. Please visit them at CAConrad.com. Photo by Neil Hana.
Friday, 9/11/2026
Saturday, 9/12/2026
Sunday, 9/13/2026
Monday, 9/14/2026
Tuesday, 9/15/2026
Wednesday, 9/16/2026
Thursday, 9/17/2026
Friday, 9/18/2026
Saturday, 9/19/2026
Sunday, 9/20/2026
Monday, 9/21/2026
Tuesday, 9/22/2026
LIVE AT THE WRITERS HOUSE
A monthly radio show produced in collaboration with WXPN
6:30 PM in the Arts Café
rsvp: register here to attend in person
LIVE at the Writers House is a long-standing collaboration between the Kelly Writers House and WXPN (88.5 FM). Five 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.
Wednesday, 9/23/2026
Ron Silliman: a poetry reading
In honor of his 80th birthday
6:00 PM in the Arts Café
rsvp: register here to attend in person
Ron Silliman has written and edited over 50 books of poetry, critical theory, and memoir, most recently Wet Loom Star, forthcoming from Chax, a selection of poems other than his master work, Ketjak. Silliman’s anthology In the American Tree is the definitive gathering of Language Poetry and his own poetry is included in numerous other anthologies. Silliman received the Levinson Prize from the Poetry Foundation, fellowships and grants from the Pew Foundation, the California and Pennsylvania Arts Councils, and the NEA. A 2012 Kelly Writers House Fellow, the subject of symposia at the University of Windsor and the University of Paris, plus special issues of The Difficulties and Quarry West, Silliman taught at Penn for ten years, as well as at Haverford College, UC San Diego, San Francisco State, New College of California and Naropa. His sculpture From Northern Soul (Bury Neon) is installed in the transit center of Bury, Lancashire. Silliman’s Blog received over 5 million visits during its 13-year run.
Thursday, 9/24/2026
CAREERS IN JOURNALISM AND MEDIA
Alumni writers panel
sponsored by: The Nora Magid Mentorship Prize Committee, Career Services, the Creative Writing Program, the Daily Pennsylvanian, and the Povich Journalism Program
5:30 PM in the Arts Café
rsvp: register here to attend in person
Hoping to work in journalism, media, or publishing after college? Join us for a discussion of career paths, internships, grad school, and more, featuring a group of alumni journalists, writers, and editors: Luis Ferré-Sadurní (C’17), Matt Flegenheimer (C’11), Beatrice Forman (C’22), Stephen Fried (C’79), and Ashley Parker (C’05), with host Jessica Goodman (C’12). The conversation, organized and hosted by the Nora Magid Mentorship Prize Advisory Committee, will focus on how you might prepare for first jobs and careers in print, broadcast and online media, publishing, and related fields. For more info about the Nora Magid Mentorship Prize and a full list of winners, visit the Nora Magid Mentorship Prize.
LUIS FERRÉ-SADURNÍ (C’17) is an immigration reporter at the New York Times. He joined the Times in 2017 and has covered breaking news, crime, housing, and politics for the Metro Desk. He previously covered New York State government and politics for four years, covering former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and Gov. Kathy Hochul as Albany Bureau Chief. He began covering immigration issues in the New York City area in late 2023, with a focus on the city's migrant crisis and the Trump administration's enforcement efforts.
BEATRICE FORMAN (C’22) is a food writer at the Philadelphia Inquirer and a co-author of Taylor Swift (Spotlight on a Legend), an Amazon-bestselling retrospective on the pop star published in 2024 by Hearst. Beatrice spent her first three years at the Inquirer as a general assignments and breaking news reporter, specializing in coverage of Philly's distinct pop and youth cultures (and yes, Taylor Swift). As a food reporter, she works on quick strike investigations into the underbelly of Philly's sparkling food scenes, from the black market for dinner reservations to the Michelin-honored restaurant that operated illegally for years. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2022, where she was editor-in-chief of 34th Street Magazine and the diversity chair of the Daily Pennsylvanian. Beatrice has reported on memes for Vox and Cosmo and was previously a deputy editor for Billy Penn at WHYY.
MATT FLEGENHEIMER (C’11) is a correspondent at the New York Times. His primary focus is long-form profiles of notable figures — in politics and otherwise — for the Times and Times MagazineHall.
Stephen Friend (C’79) is an award-winning journalist and best-selling author who teaches at Penn and Columbia.
JESSICA GOODMAN (C’12) is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of young adult thrillers They Wish They Were Us, They’ll Never Catch Us, The Counselors, The Legacies, and The Meadowbrook Murders from Penguin Random House. Her books have been translated into 15 languages. She is co-developing They’ll Never Catch Us for television at Netflix. She is the former op-ed editor at Cosmopolitan magazine, where she won a National Magazine Award in personal service. She has also held editorial positions at Entertainment Weekly and HuffPost, and her work has been published in outlets like The Cut, Elle, Glamour, and Marie Claire. Jessica graduated from the College in 2012.
ASHLEY PARKER (C’05) is a staff writer at The Atlantic. Previously, Parker — a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner —spent eight years at the Washington Post, where she covered all four years of Donald Trump’s first presidency, was White House bureau chief during President Joe Biden’s first two years, and covered the 2024 presidential campaign as the senior national political correspondent. Before that, she spent more than a decade at the New York Times, where she covered the 2012 and 2016 presidential campaigns and Congress. She is also a political analyst for MS NOW.
Friday, 9/25/2026
Saturday, 9/26/2026
Sunday, 9/27/2026
Monday, 9/28/2026
Tuesday, 9/29/2026
Wednesday, 9/30/2026
A READING BY MEMBERS OF THE PENN AND PENCIL CLUB
6:00 PM in the Arts Café
A reading of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, written by members of the Penn and Pencil Club, a creative writing workshop for Penn staff from a variety of backgrounds and university departments.