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October 2009

Thursday, 10/1

A Conversation with Editor Lewis Lapham

Applebaum Publishers and Editors Series

6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

co-sponsored by: the Critical Writing Program and the Penn Humanities Forum
moderated by: Professor Peter Struck
listen: to an audio recording of this event
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV

Lewis H. Lapham is the founder and editor of Lapham's Quarterly, a newly-launched, award winning and critically acclaimed journal of history and ideas, praised by the historian David McCullough as "a god-send and a genuine treasure," and by the novelist, Dave Eggers, as "brilliant and much needed." Lapham's Quarterly was rated "one of the years hottest launches" by MIN, the media industry newsletter; Library Journal named it one of the best new journals of the year, and the Utne Reader judged it to be the "best new publication of 2009." The editor emeritus of Harper's Magazine, Lapham in 2007 was inducted into the American Society of Magazine Editors Hall of Fame. He is the author of thirteen books, among them Money and Class in America (1988, Grove Press), The Wish for Kings (1993, Grove Press), Waiting for the Barbarians (1997, Verso) and Theater of War (2002, New Press). He produces a weekly podcast, "The World in Time", for Bloomberg Radio, and his documentary film "The American Ruling Class" has become part of the curriculum in many of the nation's schools and colleges. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, Lapham has lectured at many of the nation's leading universities, including Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, Stanford, and the Universities of Michigan, Virginia and Oregon.

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

Friday, 10/2

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

Saturday, 10/3

Sunday, 10/4

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

Monday, 10/5

Volume Zero: Uncovering Louis I. Kahn's Baltic Origins

6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

co-sponsored by: the School of Design
listen: to an audio recording of this event
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV


Becca Kantor, granddaughter of architect Louis I. Kahn, travelled to the Baltic this summer to investigate her grandfather's unknown family history. From rural farmhouses, to art nouveau apartments, to a castled island, this presentation will follow Becca's journey and discuss how she will use her research to form the basis of a novel.


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

Tuesday, 10/6

Fiction Writer J.C. Hallman

Third Annual Cheryl J. Family Fiction program
6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

introduced by: Max Apple
co-sponsored by: the Creative Writing Program
listen: to an audio recording of this event
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV


J.C. Hallman studied creative writing at the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Iowa, and Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of two books of nonfiction, The Chess Artist (2003, Thomas Dunne Books) and The Devil is a Gentleman (2006, Random House), and a story collection, The Hospital for Bad Poets (2009, Milkweed Editions). An anthology to appear in September, The Story about the Story, evolved from a course Hallman taught at Penn in 2004-05. Another book of nonfiction, In Eutopia, will appear in 2010. Hallman has taught at the University of Pennsylvania, St. Joseph's University, Sweet Briar College, and the University of St. Thomas.


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

Wednesday, 10/7

A discussion of Poems for the Millennium, Volume Three

5:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

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

Join us for a panel discussion in celebration of Poems for the Millennium, Volume Three, with editors Jerome Rothenberg and Jeffrey Robinson, Princeton professor Esther Schor, UPenn professors Michael Gamer and panel chair Charles Bernstein.

Reception

6:30 PM in the Dining Room

A reading from Poems for the Millennium, Volume Three

7:15 PM in the Arts Cafe

watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen: to a segmented audio recording at PennSound's Poems for the Millennium page

A reading from the book featuring editors Jerome Rothenberg and Jeffrey C. Robinson, are joined by Esther Schor, Michael Gamer, Bob Perelman, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, George Economou, Rochelle Owens, and Charles Bernstein.

Esther Schor specializes in British Romanticism, teaching courses in Romantic Poetry and Poetics, Romantic Historicism, Romantic Drama, Travel Literature, American Jewish Literature at Princeton University. She is the author of Bearing the Dead: The British Culture of Mourning from the Englightment to Victoria (1994, Princeton) and the editor of the Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley (2005, Cambridge University Press). She co-edited The Other Mary Shelley: Beyond "Frankentstein" (1993, Oxford) and Women's Voices: Visions and Perspectives (1990, McGraw-Hill). She has published a volume of poems, The Hills of HOlland (2002, Archer Books). Her new biography, Emma Lazarus (2006), is the fifth volume in the Jewish Encounters series published jointly by Nextbook/Schocken.

Michael Gamer is Associate Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania and author of Romanticism and the Gothic: Genre, Reception, and Canon Formation (2000, Cambridge). He is currently at work on two books: Recollections in Tranquility: the Collected Author and the Institutionalization of Romanticism and A History of British Theatre; Staged Conflicts, under contract with Blackwell Publishing. He works on collaboration and is fond of collaborative work: with Jeffrey Cox he edited The Broadview Anthology of Romantic Drama (2003, Broadview); with Dahlia Porter, Samuel Coleridge and William Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads 1798 and 1800 (2008, Broadview). He has also published essays in "MLQ," "PMLA," "Novel," "ELH," "Nineteenth-Century Contexts," "Studies in Romanticism," and other journals on poetic collections, the novel, pornography, popular culture, authorship, and dramas of spectacle. In recent years he has received the Ira Abrams, Lindback, and College of General Studies awards for distinguished teaching.

Charles Bernstein is the author of more than twenty books, including My Way: Speeches and Poems (1999), With Strings (2001), and most recently Girly Man (2008), all three of which have been published by the University of Chicago Press. He has appeared in four editions of The Best American Poetry, most recently in 2008. He teaches at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is co-director of PennSound.

Rachel Blau DuPlessis is an American poet-critic, whose long poem project, begun in 1986, is collected in Torques: Drafts 58-76 (2007, Salt Publishing) as well as in Drafts 1-38, Toll (2001, Wesleyan University Press) and Drafts 39-57, Pledge, with Draft unnnumbered: Precis (2004, Salt Publishing). In 2006, two books of her innovative essays were published: Blue Studios: Poetry and Its Cultural Work (2006), and the ground-breaking The Pink Guitar: Writing as Feminist Practice ([1990] 2006), both by the University of Alabama Press. Other critical writing includes Genders, Races, and Religious Cultures in Modern American Poetry, 1908-1934 (2001, Cambridge University Press). Earlier work includes Writing Beyond the Ending: Narrative Strategies of Twentieth-Century Women Writers (1985, Indiana University Press) and H.D.: The Career of that Struggle (1986, Indiana University Press), as well as an edition of The Selected Letters of George Oppen (1990, Duke University Press). She has coedited three anthologies including The Objectivist Nexus and The Feminist Memoir Project. She is a professor in the English department at Temple University.

George Economou is the author of several books of poetry, including Century Dead Center (1997, Left Hand Books), and numerous translations from ancient and modern Greek and medieval European language--his most recent book of translation, Ananios of Kleitor, was published earlier this year by Shearsman Books. A critic and scholar of medieval literature, he was also a founding editor of The Chelsea Review and co-founder of Trobar and Trobar Books. He has been awarded fellowships from the Rockefeller and other foundations and has been named twice as an NEA Fellow in Poetry. He taught in the English department at the University of Oklahoma.

Rochelle Owens is a poet and playwright, and a pioneer in the experimental off-Broadway theatre movement. As a poet, she is renowned for her innovation, having received Village Voice Obie awards and honors from the New York Drama Critics Circle. She has held fellowships from the NEA, Guggenheim, Rockefeller, and numerous other foundations. She has taught at Brown University, the University of California-San Diego, the University of Oklahoma, and the University of Southwestern Louisiana (now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette).

Bob Perelman has written numerous books of poetry, including Ten to One: Selected Poems (1999, Wesleyan University Press), The Future of Memory (1998, Roof Books), Playing Bodies, a painting/poem collaboration with Francie Shaw (2004 Granary Books) and, most recently, Iflife (2006, Roof Books). His critical books are The Trouble With Genius: Reading Pound, Joyce, Stein and Zukofsky (1994, California University Press) and The Marginalization of Poetry: Language Writing and Literary History (1996, Princeton University Press). He is a Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania.

Jeffrey C. Robinson is a poet and professor emeritus at the University of Colorado. He works primarily in Romantic literature and poetics. His books include: Radical Literary Education: A Classroom Experiment with Wordsworth's Ode (1986, University of Wisconsin Press); The Walk: Notes on a Romantic Image (1989, University of Oklahoma Press); The Current of Romantic Passion (1991, University of Wisconsin Press); and Reception and Poetics in Keats: My Ended Poet (1998, St. Martin's Press). In his recent works, he engages with Romantic poetry through original lyric essays, diary, and poetry: Romantic Presences (1995, Station Hill Press), Spliced Romanticism (1997, Mellen Poetry Press), and Wordsworth Day by Day: Reading His Work into Poetry Now (2005, Station Hill Press). Currently he is co-editing, along with Jerome Rothenberg, the forthcoming Poems for the Millennium, Volume Three: The University of California Book of Romantic and Post-Romantic Poetry. He has won Guggenheim and NEH fellowships as well as the Hazel Barnes Prize, the highest award given to a faculty member at the University of Colorado for excellence in research and teaching.

Jerome Rothenberg is an internationally known poet with over eighty books of poetry and several assemblages of traditional and avant-garde poetry such as Technicians of the Sacred (1968, Doubleday), Shaking the Pumpkin (1972, Doubleday), Revolution of the Word (1974, Seabury-Continuum Books), and Poems for the Millennium Volumes 1 and 2 with Pierre Joris (1995 and 1998, University of California Press). A Book of Witness, his twelfth book of poems from New Directions, appeared in 2002 (New Directions), and a thirteenth book, Triptych, appeared in 2007 (New Directions). A first translation into French of Technicians of the Sacred was published by Jose Corti in Paris in 2008, and a nineteenth-century prequel to Poems for the Millennium, co-edited with Jeffrey Robinson, appeared in early 2009. His second collection of literary essays, Poetics & Polemics 1980-2005, appeared at the end of 2008, and new books of poems scheduled for 2009 and 2010 include Gematria Complete, Concealments & Caprichos, and Retrievals: Uncollected & New Poems 1955-2010.

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

Thursday, 10/8

Media Res

6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

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

The second installment of the annual Media Res: A Celebration of Medieval Literature and Culture will tackle the theme of "bridges" in the art and society of the Middle Ages. An evening of performances and discussions followed by a reception with dishes culled from medieval cookbooks. Featured speakers include Kevin Brownlee, Geoffrey Gust, Cristina Pangilinan, Lynn Ransom, and Lance Wahlert.

Kevin Brownlee is a professor of medieval French and Italian literature. His research, publication, and pedagogic interests in French range from the 12th through the 15th centuries, and in Italian focus on issues of authority, identity, and intertextuality, and the changing status of the Italian vernacular. He has published widely on Dante's transformative rewritings of the Classical poets, as well as on Dante's language theory. His co-edited volumes include The New Medievalism (1991, Johns Hopkins) and Rethinking the "Romance of the Rose": Text, Image, Reception (1992, UPenn).

Geoffrey Gust is an assistant professor of pre-modern English literatures at Temple University. His research primarily focuses on the medieval period, and he has just published his forst scholarly book, titled Constructing Chaucer: Author and Autofiction in the Critical Tradition (Palgrave, 2009).

Cristina Pangilinan received her PhD in Medieval English Literature from the English Department of UPenn in 2009. Her teaching interests include romance, medieval and Renaissance London, early English poetry and drama, Chaucer, Shakespeare, the lyric, and the representations of history, remains, and relics in poetry.

Lynn Ransom is the project manager for the Lawrence J. Schoenberg Database of Manuscripts at the University of Pennsylvania Libraries. She earned her doctorate from the University of Texas-Austin, specializing in Gothic manuscripts.

Lance Wahlert is a doctoral candidate in UPenn's Department of English. Lance has taught at Penn since 2002 on subjects including the history of medicine, queer cinema, madness in literature, the literature of London, Irish literature, and classical mythology.

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Friday, 10/9

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

Saturday, 10/10

Sunday, 10/11

Monday, 10/12

A lunch program with Roger Simon

Obama and the Press: A Report Card

presented by the Sylvia Kauders lunch series

12:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

introduced by: Dick Polman
co-sponsored by: CPCW

This Event has been CANCELLED.

Roger Simon is an award-winning political writer. The Chief Political Columnist for politico.com, Simon is a frequent guest on television programs such as Meet the Press, Hardball with Chris Matthews, and Good Morning America. Simon is also a New York Times best-selling author of three books on presidential politics—Divided We Stand (2001, Crown), Road Show (1990, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux), and Show Time (1999, Random House)—and a collection of work titled Simon Says: The Best of Roger Simon (1986, NTC/Contemporary Publishing). Simon was born in Chicago, Illinois, and has a B.A. degree in English from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana.


A meeting of the Writers House Planning Committee (the "Hub")

5:30 PM in the Arts Cafe

RSVP: to gautsche@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. 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, 10/13

a reading by Brazilian poet Régis Bonvicino

presented by Writers Without Borders

6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

introduced by: Charles Bernstein
listen: to an audio recording of this event
listen: to the segmented reading on Régis Bonvicino's PennSound author page

Writers Without Borders features writers from around the world whose fiction, drama, poetry, memoir, journalism, and performance art demand an international — and, what's more, a globally minded — readership and response. Support for Writers Without Borders comes from the Office of the Provost, supplemented by a generous start-up grant from Seth Ginns (C'00).

The author of eleven books of poetry, along with several translations and an anthology of contemporary Brazilian poetry he co-edited, Régis Bonvicino has come to be recognized as one of the most talented and innovative of Brazilian writers. Bonvicino's poetry combines an intense, sprung lyricism with an engagement with artifice of poetic construction. His poems are filled with the imagery of nature, but it is also very much about the dystopia of urban spaces, and especially São Paulo, where he lives. And while his poems often contain narrative passages, for the most part Bonvicino's work is centered on the play of sound and syntax, of rhyme and intense rhythmic shifts. Among his many publications are Página Órfã (2007, Martins Fontes), Ossos de Borboleta (1996, Editora 34), 33 Poemas(1990, Illuminuras), Remorso do Cosmos (2003, Atelie Editorial), Primeiro Tempo (1995, Editora Perspectiva), and a children's book, num zoológica de letras (1994, Maltese). English translations of his work (by many hands, from Michael Palmer to Robert Creeley) are collected in Sky Eclipse (2000, Green Integer). Bonvicino has edited and translated Oliverio Girondo's work and books by Jules Laforgue, Robert Creeley, Charles Bernstein and Douglas Messerli. He also edited the correspondence of Brazilian poet and novelist Paulo Leminski and is especially engaged with the work of Brazillian poets Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Decio Pignatari, and João Cabral de Melo Neto. Bonvicino is editor of Sibila after 11 print issues, the magazine has now moved on-line. His author page is at regisbonvicino.com.br and his PennSound page, writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Bonvicino.php.

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

Wednesday, 10/14

"THE POEMS OF WALLACE STEVENS"

a preceptorial led by professor Al Filreis

6:30 PM - 8:30 PM in Room 202

Speakeasy: Poetry, Prose, and Anything Goes!

8:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

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

Speakeasy is an open mic night held at the Kelly Writers House every other Wednesday evening. It's an opportunity for writers to share their work, or the work of others, in a friendly setting. Speakeasy was founded in 1997 and continues to be an important part of the regular Writers House programming series. We welcome poets, storytellers, singers, musicians, and anything in between to share their voices with us in the Arts Cafe twice a month. As always: Poetry, prose, anything goes!

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

Thursday, 10/15

Young Fiction Writers: Alex Gilvarry, Jessica Soffer and Mecca Sullivan

7:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

introduced by: ArtsEdge Resident Liz Moore
listen: to an audio recording of this event
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV



Mecca Sullivan
Jessica Soffer


Alex Gilvarry is a native of Staten Island, New York. He received an MFA in Creative Writing at Hunter College, where he studied with Peter Carey, Colum McCann, Nathan Englander, and Gary Shteyngart. He was named a Hertog Fellow in 2008, and is the recipient of a Norman Mailer Fellowship. Alex has worked as an editor for Scholastic Inc., where he also wrote books for children. He is at work on his first novel, titled From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Jessica Soffer grew up in New York City, lived in rural Costa Rica, and went to college in Connecticut. She recently graduated from Hunter College's MFA program where she was a Hertog Fellow and recipient of the Bernard Cohen Short Story Prize. Her short story "Beginning, End" was published by Granta. She is at work on her first novel.

Mecca Jamilah Sullivan's writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Crab Orchard Review, American Visions, Best New Writing 2010, Bloom, GLQ, Philadelphia Stories Online, Lumina, X-24 Unclassified, Baobab South African Journal of New Writing and other publications. Her writing honors include the Charles Johnson Student Fiction Award from Crab Orchard Review, the James Baldwin Memorial Playwriting Award from New World Theatre, and scholarships and fellowships from Temple University, The New York State Summer Writer's Institute, and the NAACP. Most recently, her short fiction manuscript, Blue Talk and Love, was named a finalist for the Sol Books Prose Series award, and her short story, "Wolfpack," was shortlisted for the 2010 Eric Hoffer Award from Best New Writing. She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in English Literature at the University of Pennsylvania and working on her first novel.

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

Friday, 10/16

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

Saturday, 10/17

Sunday, 10/18

Monday, 10/19

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

Tuesday, 10/20

Theorizing Presents Jasbir Puar

"'I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess': Intersectionality, Assemblage, and the Politics of Affect"

6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

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

Professor Puar is Associate Professor of Women's & Gender Studies at Rutgers University. Her research interests include gender, sexuality, globalization; postcolonial and diaspora studies; South Asian cultural studies; and theories of assemblage and affect. She is the author of Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times (Duke University Press 2007), which won the 2007 Cultural Studies Book Award from the Association for Asian American Studies. Professor Puar has also authored numerous articles that appear in Gender, Place, and Culture, Social Text, Radical History Review, Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography , and Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society . Her edited volumes include a special issue of GLQ titled, "Queer Tourism: Geographies of Globalization" and co-edited a volume of Society and Space titled "Sexuality and Space".


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

Wednesday, 10/21

hoaxes, literary frauds, and fakers

a conversation with Paul Maliszewski and Bob Perelman
5:30 PM in the Arts Cafe

co-sponsored by: the Creative Writing Program
listen: to an audio recording of this event
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV

Fakers are believed — and, at least for a time, celebrated — because they each promise us, screen-gazing and experience-starved, something real and authentic, a view, however fleeting, of a great thing rarely glimpsed. — from Fakers by Paul Maliszewski


Paul Maliszewski has published essays in Harper's, Granta, and Bookforum, among other magazines. His stories have appeared in The Paris Review, One Story, and Bomb and have been awarded two Pushcart Prizes. Fakers, his first collection of essays, was published by The New Press in 2009. Prayer and Parable, a collection of his stories, is forthcoming from Fence Books.

Bob Perelman has written numerous books of poetry, including Ten to One: Selected Poems (1999, Wesleyan University Press), The Future of Memory (1998, Roof Books), Playing Bodies, a painting/poem collaboration with Francie Shaw (2004 Granary Books) and, most recently, Iflife (2006, Roof Books). His critical books are The Trouble With Genius: Reading Pound, Joyce, Stein and Zukofsky (1994, California University Press) and The Marginalization of Poetry: Language Writing and Literary History (1996, Princeton University Press). He is a Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania.

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

Thursday, 10/22

The Weber Symposium: Larry Summers

3:30-5:00 PM in the Arts Cafe


Lawrence Summers is the current director of the National Economic Council, acting as economic advisor to President Barack Obama. Summers also holds a position as a tenured professor at Harvard University, where he served as the university's president from 2001 to 2006. He was the undersecretary, and then the Secretary of the Treasury under the Clinton's administration, and also worked for a year as an economist for Reagan's administration from 1982-83. He holds degrees in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University.

A poetry reading by Rae Armantrout

6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

co-sponsored by: the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen: an audio recording of this event
visit: Rae Armantrout's PennSound author page

Rae Armantrout's most recent book of poetry, Versed, was published in January 2009. Next Life (2007, Wesleyan), was chosen as one of the 100 Notable Books of 2007 by The New York Times. Other recent books include Collected Prose (2007, Singing Horse), Up to Speed (2004, Wesleyan), The Pretext (2001, Green Integer), and Veil: New and Selected Poems (2001 Wesleyan University Press). Her poems have been included in anthologies such as American Hybrid (2009, Norton), Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology (1993), American Women Poets in the 21st Century: Where Language Meets the Lyric Tradition (2002, Wesleyan), The Oxford Book of American Poetry (2006, Oxford) and The Best American Poetry of 1988, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2007 and 2008. Armantrout received an award in poetry from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts in 2007 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2008. She is Professor of Poetry and Poetics at the University of California, San Diego. Writing in Poetry magazine, Ange Milinko has said, "I would trade the bulk of contemporary anecdotal free verse for more incisive, chilling poetry like Armantrout's."

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

Friday, 10/23

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

Saturday, 10/24

POETRY READING FEATURING ANDREW ZAWACKI AND JOSHUA HARMON WITH SANAE LEMOINE

Whenever We Feel Like It Reading Series

4:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

listen: to an audio recording of this event on PennSound's Whenever We Feel Like It series page
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV

The Whenever We Feel Like It Reading Series is put on by Committee of Vigilance members Michelle Taransky and Emily Pettit. The Committee of Vigilance is a subdivision of Sleepy Lemur Quality Enterprises, which is the production division of The Meeteetzee Institute.


Andrew Zawacki is the author of three poetry books—Petals of Zero Petals of One (2009, Talisman House), Anabranch (2004, Wesleyan), and By Reason of Breakings (2001, Georgia). His work has appeared in Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century (2006, Sarabande), Walt Whitman hom(m)age, 2005/1855 (2005, Turtle Point), The Iowa Anthology of New American Poetries (2004, Iowa), Great American Prose Poems: From Poe to the Present (2003, Scribner), and other anthologies. He teaches at the University of Georgia.

Joshua Harmon is the author of Scape (2009, Black Ocean), a book of poems, and Quinnehtukqut (2007, Starcherone Books), a novel. His work has appeared in many journals, including Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Iowa Review, jubilat, TriQuarterly, and Verse. A graduate of Marlboro College and Cornell University, he has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, and the Dutchess County Arts Council.

Sanae Lemoine is a junior in the College. She was born in Paris. She is half-French and half-Japanese. When she was four she moved to Australia where she developed a liking for walking barefoot. She returned to France at age eleven. Growing up, she would relentlessly demand that her parents tell her stories. Thankfully her mother has an inexhaustible imagination and great patience. Now Sanae writes her own ones...

Sunday, 10/25

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

Monday, 10/26

LIVE at the Writers House

7:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

hosted by: Michaela Majoun
produced by: Erin Gautsche
listen: to an audio recording of this event

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).


Daniel Denvir
Matt Stroud
Tara Murtha
Mattathias Schwartz
Bruce Schimmel
Isaiah Thompson
David Faris
Cabin Dogs

Daniel Denvir is an independent journalist in West Philly and a contributing writer at the Philadelphia Weekly. In his print and radio journalism, Denvir explores politics and social issues in the U.S. and Latin America; he is particularly interested in individual stories that convey the complexity of larger issues. Originally from Washington, D.C., Denvir recently moved to Philadelphia from Quito, Ecuador. Before starting work as a journalist, he worked as a community organizer in Portland, Oregon. His work has appeared in publications including The Colombia Journalism Review, In These Times and The Advocate, ; he edits an online magazine called Caterwaul Quarterly and occasionally blogs at the Huffington Post.

Matt Stroud is a reporter and graduate assistant with the Innocence Institute of Point Park University, where he investigates claims of innocence from incarcerated folks within 100 miles of Pittsburgh, PA. In a previous life, he was editor in chief of a Philly-based "urban issues" magazine called Next American City, a disgruntled Web Editor for Village Voice Media's San Francisco alt-weekly, and a staff writer with Metro Silicon Valley in San Jose, CA. He's bicycled across the United States, been locked alone overnight (on purpose) in the bowels of Philadelphia's subway system, thrown a no-hitter, crawled around underneath Paris and Bangkok, and watched the sad implosions of several major low-income housing units in the Pittsburgh area (which were then transformed miraculously into big box department stores). As a freelance writer, he blogs about prison reform at trueslant.com, and contributes regularly to Philadelphia City Paper and Pittsburgh City Paper. His work has appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Philadelphia Inquirer, San Francisco Chronicle, People magazine, McSweeney's online, and many other fine publications and Web sites.

Tara Murtha is a Philadelphia-based writer, columnist, editor, and occasional video producer, and is into personal amusement, promoting Philadelphia arts, challenging the Man and recreational despair. She's currently staff writer and resident pen-thrower at Philadelphia Weekly.

Mattathias Schwartz is a writer. He contributes to the New York Times Magazine, Harper's, Good Magazine, Megawords and other publications, specializing in long-form articles in which fundamental philosophical questions arise in conversation. In late 2001, he founded the Philadelphia Independent, a monthly broadsheet newspaper.

Bruce Schimmel founded the alternative newsweekly, the Philadelphia City Paper, where he writes a weekly column on civic issues. Schimmel also produces news and documentaries for Public Radio. He is currently producing "Tell It Forward," a series of educational podcasts by and for detained juveniles. Schimmel teaches Media Ethics and Audio/Slideshow Documentary at the University of the Arts, and runs a Journalism Fellowship at the University of Rochester.

Isaiah Thompson is an award-winning blogger, columnist and staff writer for the Philadelphia City Paper, where he covers everything from feral chickens to municipal tax policy. Before coming to Philly, he was a staff writer for the Miami New Times. Besides story-hunting, Isaiah enjoys bicycling, hiking, and taking guitar lessons on YouTube.

With two dogs, an eight track recorder and a book of old murder ballads, Rich and Rob Kwait (Cabin Dogs) would start their musical journey. Visiting mountain cabins from Vermont to Tennessee and listening to the country blues, the Philadelphia-based twin brothers would soon begin crafting songs of their own and bring them back to Philadelphia to play for friends on the stoop. What started as cosmic country and bluegrass would soon become something more rich and textured and groovy.... The brothers would begin to find their sound.... After the death of the two dogs (old age), Rich and Rob would form a band to be called Cabin Dogs and would retreat to the mountains — this time in Upstate New York — and being writing songs for a new album. Aaron "Professor Louie" Hurwitz — a veteran Woodstock NY producer/keyboard master would be brought into the fold and a new album — Electric Cabin (Woodstock Records) — would be recorded, bringing the Cabin Dogs onto the national scene (including appearances at the Newport Folk Festival and Appel Farm Festival in NJ). Critics would compare the album to classic works by the Grateful Dead and The Band and describe the music of the Cabin Dogs as something like a conduit into a colorful pastoral timeless American story. With a growing repertoire, the Cabin Dogs have developed into a forceful and seasoned live act playing festivals, bars and singer-songwriter venues alike. 2009 and 2010 stand to be busy for the band, with a new album project in the works...... and so the story continues.

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

Tuesday, 10/27

Poetry reading by Bob Grenier

6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

introduced by: Bob Perelman
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen: to a audio recording of this event at Bob Grenier's PennSound author page

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.


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

Wednesday, 10/28

Spookeasy: Poetry, Prose, and Anything Goes!

8:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

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


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

Thursday, 10/29

RealArts@Penn Presents Blues and Chaos

Anthony DeCurtis and Augusta Palmer celebrate the legendary music critic Robert Palmer

6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

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


Filmmaker Augusta Palmer earned her PhD in Cinema Studies from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. She has directed the documentary film The Hand of Fatima, about her father Robert Palmer, who worked as a contributing editor for Rolling Stone for nearly three decades and was an avid musician until his death in 1997.

KWH Seminar in Second Life

Avatar of KWH's Faculty Director - Alf Fullstop - teaches modernist poetry for alumni and others in the virtual Writers House

8:00 PM on SecondLife.com

hosted by: Al Filreis

Alf Fullstop (our Faculty Director) will lead a seminar on modernist poetry in Second Life's virtual Kelly Writers House to a group of alumni and friends from around the world. This is our first quasi-formal venture into Second Life, where we have a gorgeous Writers House with an Arts Cafe, a living room with a green couch, an upstairs seminar room, and a garden.

Here are a few screenshots from the event:


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

Friday, 10/30

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

Saturday, 10/31