October 2013
Tuesday, 10/1
Meredith Stiehm
12:00 PM in the Arts Cafe
supported by: Creative Ventures
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen to an audio recording of this event
Meredith Stiehm has chiefly contributed to the television series Cold Case (as creator and show runner/head writer), ER, and NYPD Blue. She won an Emmy Award in 1998 for "Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series" on NYPD Blue. In 2004, Stiehm was one of five women at CBS who were in charge of a television series.
Although her later work exemplifies Stiehm's interest in high pressure, male-dominated environments, Stiehm got her start in the entertainment industry writing for Northern Exposure and, later, Beverly Hills, 90210.
In 2011, she joined the Showtime thriller Homeland as an executive producer, writing several episodes in the first two seasons.
FX had picked up Stiehm's drama series The Bridge for a 13-episode order, which is originally based on the Danish/Swedish series The Bridge. Set on the border between El Paso and Juárez, the show centers on two detectives — one from the U.S., Detective Sonya Cross (Diane Kruger), and one from Mexico, Marco Ruiz (Demián Bichir) — who must work together to hunt down a serial killer operating on both sides of the U.S.-Mexican border.
A Conversation with Matthew Yglesias
Weber Symposium
5:00 PM in the Arts Cafe
rsvp required: whweber@writing.upenn.edu
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen to an audio recording of this event
Matthew Yglesias is the business and economics correspondent for Slate magazine. Before joining Slate he worked for ThinkProgress, the Atlantic, TPM Media, and the American Prospect. His first book, Heads in the Sand, was published by Wiley in 2008. His second,The Rent Is Too Damn High, was published by Simon & Schuster in March 2012.
Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)
- 9:00 AM - 10:30 AM in Room 202: WRIT 039 with Michelle Taransky
- 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM in Room 202: WRIT 125 with Valerie Ross
- 12:00 PM - 1:30 PM in Room 202: WRIT 027 with Emily Weissbourd
- 1:30 PM - 3:00 PM in Room 202: ENG 112 with Max Apple
- 1:30 PM - 4:30 PM in Room 209: ENG 010 with Laynie Brown
Wednesday, 10/2
"Tender Buttons" Symposium
Bob Perelman, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Ron Silliman, Al Filreis, and Julia Bloch
12:00 PM in the Arts Cafe
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen to an audio recording of this event
Bob Perelman,
Rachel Blau DuPlessis and Ron Silliman join
Al Filreis and
Julia Bloch and the "ModPo" TAs, as well as a live audience, in a
discussion of five or six poems in Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons
series. The program also will be simultaneously video-streamed to tens
of thousands of students participating in the Writers House-hosted open
online modern poetry course — "ModPo" — and will be recorded for later
viewing on YouTube.
Bookbinding Workshop
Junior Fellows project
6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe
Join us for an evening of bookbinding and snacks with NoGoodPress. We'll go over a few basic bookbinding techniques and generally geek out about books and paper and letterpress. Bookmaking materials will be provided, though, if you have something that you have printed or written or drawn and would like to make that into a book you are welcome to bring it along!
Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)
- 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM in Room 202: WRIT 002 with Courtney Rydel
- 2:00 PM - 5:00 PM in Room 202: ENG 156 with Paul Hendrickson
- 2:00 PM - 5:00 PM in Room 209: ENG 121 with Donna Jo Napoli
Thursday, 10/3
The Good Girls Revolt: A conversation with Lynn Povich
Bernheimer Symposium
6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe
Lynn Povich is an award-winning journalist who has spent more than 40 years in the news business. After graduating from Vassar, she began her career as a secretary in the Paris Bureau of Newsweek magazine, rising to become a reporter and writer in New York. In 1970, she was one of 46 women who sued the magazine for sex discrimination, the first women in the media to sue. Five years later, she was appointed the first woman Senior Editor in Newsweek's history. Lynn has written a book, The Good Girls Revolt, about that landmark lawsuit, its bittersweet impact on the women involved and what has--and hasn't changed. Lynn became Editor-in-Chief of Working Woman magazine in 1991, and in 1996, she joined MSNBC.com as East Coast Managing Editor, overseeing the internet content of NBC News and MSNBC Cable programs and personalities. In 2005, she edited a book of columns by her father, famed Washington Post sports writer Shirley Povich, called ALL THOSE MORNINGS...AT THE POST. A recipient of the Matrix Award for Magazines, Lynn serves on the Advisory Boards of the International Women's Media Foundation and the Women's Rights Division of Human Rights Watch.
Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)
- 9:00 AM - 10:30 AM in Room 202: WRIT 039 with Michelle Taransky
- 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM in Room 202: WRIT 125 with Valerie Ross
- 12:00 PM - 1:30 PM in Room 202: WRIT 027 with Emily Weissbourd
- 1:30 PM - 4:30 PM in Room 202: ENG 117 with Anthony DeCurtis
- 1:30 PM - 3:00 PM in Room 209: ENG 112 with Max Apple
Friday, 10/4
Saturday, 10/5
Sunday, 10/6
Monday, 10/7
ZEYAR LYNN: POETRY READING
Writers Without Borders
3:30 PM in the Arts Cafe
hosted by: Charles Bernstein
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen to an audio recording of this event
Zeyar Lynn, a poet and translator from Burma/Myanmar, is the author of seven poetry collections, including Distinguishing Features (2006), Real/Life: Prose Poems (2009), and Kilimanjaro (2010). He has translated John Ashbery, Charles Bernstein, Donald Justice, Sylvia Plath, Wisława Szymborska and Tomas Tranströmer, as well as many Chinese, Japanese, Australian, East European and Russian poets. Since 2005 he has organized and hosted the annual UNESCO World Poetry Day event in Yangon. He is also one of the editors of the quarterly Poetry World. He teaches English at a specialized language school. And he is an adviser and contributor to the new anthology of Burmese poetry, Bones Will Crow.
For more informaiton visit:
Edible Books Party
A Creative Ventures Project
6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe
Our Edible Book Party will celebrate works of art inspired by books and created in kitchens. All are welcome to join the festival, to browse the library of edible titles, or to contribute their own. Edible books could show up as depictions of literary characters or scenes, interpretations of titles or themes, or sculptures of actual books. Prizes will be awarded in a variety of categories.
Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)
- 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM in Room 202: WRIT 002 with Courtney Rydel
- 2:00 PM - 5:00 PM in Room 202: ENG 225 with David Wallace
- 2:00 PM - 5:00 PM in Room 209: ENG 145 with Stephen Fried
Tuesday, 10/8
A reading by A. Naomi Jackson and Iain Haley Pollock
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
A. Naomi Jackson was born and raised in Brooklyn by West Indian parents. She studied fiction at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she was awarded the 2013-2014 Schultz Fellowship for Excellence in Fiction to complete her first novel, Star Side of Bird Hill. She spent the summer of 2012 in Barbados researching and writing Star Side with the support of a Stanley Graduate Award for International Research from the University of Iowa. She traveled to South Africa on a Fulbright scholarship, where she received an M.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Cape Town. A graduate of Williams College, her work has appeared in brilliant corners, The Encyclopedia Project, Obsidian, The Caribbean Writer, and Sable. Her short story, “Ladies” was the winner of the 2012 BLOOM chapbook contest. She has been a resident at Hedgebrook and Vermont Studio Center and received the Archie D. and Bertha H. Walker scholarship at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. She co-founded the Tongues Afire creative writing workshop at the Audre Lorde Project in Brooklyn in 2006.
Iain Haley Pollock's first collection of poems, Spit Back a Boy, won the 2010 Cave Canem Prize. Pollock lives in Philadelphia and teaches English at Springside Chestnut Hill Academy, where he is the Cyrus H. Nathan '30 Distinguished Faculty Chair for English. In addition, he is on the faculty of the Solstice Creative Writing M.F.A. Program at Pine Manor College.
Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)
- 9:00 AM - 10:30 AM in Room 202: WRIT 039 with Michelle Taransky
- 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM in Room 202: WRIT 125 with Valerie Ross
- 12:00 PM - 1:30 PM in Room 202: WRIT 027 with Emily Weissbourd
- 1:30 PM - 3:00 PM in Room 202: ENG 112 with Max Apple
- 1:30 PM - 4:30 PM in Room 209: ENG 010 with Laynie Brown
Wednesday, 10/9
Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)
- 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM in Room 202: WRIT 002 with Courtney Rydel
- 2:00 PM - 5:00 PM in Room 202: ENG 156 with Paul Hendrickson
- 2:00 PM - 5:00 PM in Room 209: ENG 121 with Donna Jo Napoli
Thursday, 10/10
Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)
- 9:00 AM - 10:30 AM in Room 202: WRIT 039 with Michelle Taransky
- 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM in Room 202: WRIT 125 with Valerie Ross
- 12:00 PM - 1:30 PM in Room 202: WRIT 027 with Emily Weissbourd
- 1:30 PM - 4:30 PM in Room 202: ENG 117 with Anthony DeCurtis
- 1:30 PM - 3:00 PM in Room 209: ENG 112 with Max Apple
Friday, 10/11
Saturday, 10/12
Sunday, 10/13
Monday, 10/14
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.
A performance by Jaap Blonk
Edit Events Series
7:00 PM in the Arts Cafe
Co-sponsored by: Creative Ventures, the Poetry and Poetics Group, the English Department, and Writer Without Borders
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen to an audio recording of this event
Jaap Blonk (born 1953 in Woerden, Holland) is a self-taught composer, performer and poet. He went to university for mathematics and musicology but did not finish those studies. In the late 1970s he took up saxophone and started to compose music. A few years later he discovered his potential as a vocal performer, at first in reciting poetry and later on in improvisations and his own compositions. For almost two decades the voice was his main means for the discovery and development of new sounds. From around the year 2000 on Blonk started work with electronics, at first using samples of his own voice, then extending the field to include pure sound synthesis as well. He took a year off of performing in 2006. As a result, his renewed interest in mathematics made him start a research of the possibilities of algorithmic composition for the creation of music, visual animation and poetry. As a vocalist, Jaap Blonk is unique for his powerful stage presence and almost childlike freedom in improvisation, combined with a keen grasp of structure. He has performed around the world, on all continents. With the use of live electronics the scope and range of his concerts has acquired a considerable extension. Besides working as a soloist, he collaborated with many musicians and ensembles in the field of contemporary and improvised music, like Maja Ratkje, Mats Gustafsson, Joan La Barbara, The Ex, the Netherlands Wind Ensemble and the Ebony Band. He premiered several compositions by the German composer Carola Bauckholt, including a piece for voice and orchestra. A solo voice piece was commissioned by the Donaueschinger Musiktage 2002. On several occasions he collaborated with visual computer artist Golan Levin.
Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)
- 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM in Room 202: WRIT 002 with Courtney Rydel
- 2:00 PM - 5:00 PM in Room 202: ENG 225 with David Wallace
- 2:00 PM - 5:00 PM in Room 209: ENG 145 with Stephen Fried
Tuesday, 10/15
Lunch with Holocaust Survivor Irving Roth
Wexler Family Program in Jewish Life and Culture
12:00 PM
rsvp: wh@writing.upenn.edu
hosted by: Al Filreis
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen to an audio recording of this event
Irving Roth was born in Kosice, Czechoslovakia on September 2, 1929. He is a survivor of the Nazi death camps Auschwitz and Buchenwald, and he dedicates his life to Holocaust education. Mr. Roth is the Director of the Holocaust Resource Center – Temple Judea of Manhasset and an Adjunct Professor at the University of Maine. He is a recognized speaker on anti-Semitism and the Holocaust and is a frequent lecturer at colleges and universities in the United States, Canada and Europe. As a Holocaust survivor, he provides personal testimony on his experiences during WWII. He is the recipient of numerous awards for his work in Holocaust education and community service, including the Spirit of Anne Frank Outstanding Citizen Award from the Anne Frank Center USA for his brainchild, the Adopt a Survivor program. The program, which puts teens in touch with Holocaust survivors, has been instituted nationally and internationally in public and parochial high schools and colleges. He has written two books one of which, entitled Bondi's Brother, tells the story of his personal experiences before, during, and after the war.
Mr. Roth received a BS and MS in Electrical Engineering from Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn and currently resides in Nassau County, NY.
BARTOK'S MONSTER
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
Jay Kirk will read from “Bartók's Monster,” his latest story from the October issue of Harper's Magazine. An excerpt from a book in progress, “Bartók's Monster” is a genre-bending account of a trip to Transylvania gone terribly wrong, a work described by readers as gonzo, absurd, and a tour de force of hypersubjective nonfiction.
Jay Kirk is the author of Kingdom Under Glass (Picador, 2011), which was named one of the Best Nonfiction Books of 2010 by the Washington Post. His award-winning nonfiction has been published in Harper's, GQ, The New York Times Magazine, and anthologized in Best American Crime Writing, Best American Travel Writing, and Submersion Journalism: Reporting in the First Person from Harper's Magazine. He was a 2013 National Magazine Award Finalist, and a recipient of a 2005 Pew Fellowship in the Arts. He teaches in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Pennsylvania.
Now in its seventh year, the Bassini Apprenticeship Program gives aspiring student writers hands-on access to the day-to-day work of professionals. Bassini Writing Apprentices get a crash course in the work necessary for sustaining and completing serious writing projects, including archival research, complicated permissions requests, phone interviews, rewriting, editing, and more. The master writers, in turn, benefit from energetic student engagement with their work. For her Bassini apprenticeship, Zoe Kirsch (C'14) helped nonfiction writer Jay Kirk with research for his book-in-progress Bartok's Monster. Zoe acted as liaison with a professional violinist-informant, made allies of reference librarians, corresponded with experts at the Smithsonian, and conducted a solo, eight-hour interview of a research subject for the book.
Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)
- 9:00 AM - 10:30 AM in Room 202: WRIT 039 with Michelle Taransky
- 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM in Room 202: WRIT 125 with Valerie Ross
- 12:00 PM - 1:30 PM in Room 202: WRIT 027 with Emily Weissbourd
- 1:30 PM - 3:00 PM in Room 202: ENG 112 with Max Apple
- 1:30 PM - 4:30 PM in Room 209: ENG 010 with Laynie Brown
Wednesday, 10/16
Reinventing the Classroom
Al Filreis and Kevin Werbach
12:00 PM in the Arts Cafe
supported by: Creative Ventures
rsvp: wh@writing.upenn.edu
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen to an audio recording of this event
rsvp: wh@writing.upenn.edu
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen to an audio recording of this event
Professors Al Filreis and Kevin Werbach, who have each led wildly successful massive open online courses ("MOOCs"), will lead an informal conversation about this new learning mode, touching upon the challenges and possibilities MOOCs represent and the changes they augur for on-campus teaching.
Al Filreis is Kelly Professor, Faculty Director of the Kelly Writers House, Director of the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing, Co-Director of PennSound, and Publisher of Jacket2—all at the University of Pennsylvania. Among his books are Secretaries of the Moon, Wallace Stevens & the Actual World, Modernism from Left to Right, and Counter—Revolution of the Word. He has taught a massive open online course, "ModPo," to 36,000 students.
Kevin Werbach is a leading expert on the legal, business, and public policy dimensions of the Network Age. He is associate professor of Legal Studies at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, and the founder of Supernova Group, a technology consulting firm. He co-led the review of the Federal Communications Commission for the Obama Administration's Presidential Transition Team, and then served as an expert advisor on broadband issues to the FCC and US Department of Commerce. A pioneer in the emerging field of gamification, Werbach is the co-author of For the Win: How Game Thinking Can Revolutionize Your Business. Over 140,000 students worldwide have taken his massive online course on the topic, and he was named Wharton's first “Iron Prof” for his presentation, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in World of Warcraft.
Previously, Werbach organized Supernova, a leading executive technology conference; served as Editor of Release 1.0: Esther Dyson's Monthly Report; and was Counsel for New Technology Policy at the FCC during the Clinton Administration, where he helped develop the US Government's Internet and e-commerce policies. He has authored numerous scholarly and popular articles in leading publications, and appears frequently in print, online, and broadcast media. He is graduate of UC Berkeley and Harvard Law School.
A Conversation with Inga Saffron
Creative Ventures
6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe
hosted by: Dick Polman
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen to an audio recording of this event
Inga Saffron, the architecture critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer, has been writing about urban design issues for over a decade. She has reviewed some of the most memorable new projects of the era— including Gehry's Disney Hall, Koolhaas' Seattle Library and New York's High Line. But her primary interest is in writing about the less-heralded places that people encounter in their daily lives—offices and casinos, parking garages and parks. Inga became a design critic after working for many years as a news reporter, and she melds a critic's sensibility with a reporter's ability to ferret out a story. For her, that story is Philadelphia's struggle to maintain its urbanity, livability and distinctiveness in the face of pressure from a homogenizing, car-oriented culture. She writes about that effort in a weekly column, “Changing Skyline,” and has been influential in shaping the public conversation in Philadelphia about design and planning issues. Her advocacy was instrumental in convincing city officials to focus on Philadelphia's neglected Delaware waterfront. She has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize three times since 2004, and received the Gene Burd Urban Journalism Award in 2010.
Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)
- 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM in Room 202: WRIT 002 with Courtney Rydel
- 2:00 PM - 5:00 PM in Room 202: ENG 156 with Paul Hendrickson
- 2:00 PM - 5:00 PM in Room 209: ENG 121 with Donna Jo Napoli
Thursday, 10/17
George Economou and Rochelle Owens
A Poetry Reading
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
George Economou is the author of fourteen books of poetry and translations, the latest of which are Complete Plus, The Poems of C. P. Cavafy in English, Ananios of Kleitor, and Acts of Love, Ancient Greek Poetry from Aphrodite's Garden. He has published many translations from ancient and Modern Greek and medieval European languages, including William Langland's Piers Plowman. A critic and scholar of medieval literature, he is the author of The Goddess Natura in Medieval Literature and numerous other studies, including editions of the late Paul Blackburn's troubadour translations, Proensa and The Poem of the Cid. A founding editor of The Chelsea Review and co-founder of Trobar and Trobar Books, he has also published many critical reviews and essays. A Rockefeller Fellow at Bellagio, he has been named twice as an NEA Fellow in Poetry. In 2000, he retired, after 41 years of teaching, at the University of Oklahoma, where he was department chair of English from 1983-90 and director of Creative Writing from 1990-2000, Long Island University, and Columbia. George Economou has given readings and lectures throughout the United States and in numerous countries abroad in such venues as Harvard, Princeton, Penn, Michigan, Colgate, Texas A & M, Columbia, Stanford, California, the American College of Paris, King's College of London, Oxford, and Athens, among others. He lives with his wife, poet and playwright Rochelle Owens in Philadelphia and Wellfleet, Massachusetts.
A central figure in the international avant-garde for fifty years, Rochelle Owens is a poet, playwright, translator, and video artist. She has published eighteen books of poetry, the most recent being Out of Ur, New & Selected Poems 1961-2012 and Solitary Workwoman, and is the author of four collections of plays, Futz and What Came After, The Karl Marx Play and Others, Futz and Who Do You Want Peire Vidal? and Plays by Rochelle Owens. She also edited Spontaneous Combustion: Eight New American Plays.
A pioneer in the experimental Off-Off Broadway theatre movement, she is widely known as one of the most innovative and controversial writers of her generation, whose groundbreaking work has influenced subsequent experimental poets and playwrights. Since its first publication in 1961, her play Futz, has become a classic of the American avant-garde theatre and an international success. In 1969, Futz was made into a film, which has attained a cult following. Her plays have been presented worldwide and in festivals in Edinburgh, Avignon, Paris, and Berlin. Her work has been translated into French, German, Greek, Japanese, Swedish and Ukrainian.
Owens has been a participant in the Festival Franco-Anglais de Poésie, and has translated Liliane Atlan's novel Les passants, The Passersby (Henry Holt, 1989). A recipient of five Village Voice Obie awards and honors from the New York Drama Critics Circle, she has held fellowships from the NEA, Ford, Guggenheim, Rockefeller (Bellagio), and numerous other foundations. A member of ASCAP and the Dramatists Guild, she has taught at the University of California, San Diego, and the University of Oklahoma and has held residencies at Brown University and the University of Southwestern Louisiana. She has lectured and read widely in the United States and abroad. Owens lives with her husband, poet and translator George Economou, in Philadelphia and Wellfleet, Massachusetts.
Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)
- 9:00 AM - 10:30 AM in Room 202: WRIT 039 with Michelle Taransky
- 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM in Room 202: WRIT 125 with Valerie Ross
- 12:00 PM - 1:30 PM in Room 202: WRIT 027 with Emily Weissbourd
- 1:30 PM - 4:30 PM in Room 202: ENG 117 with Anthony DeCurtis
- 1:30 PM - 3:00 PM in Room 209: ENG 112 with Max Apple
Friday, 10/18
Saturday, 10/19
Sunday, 10/20
Monday, 10/21
A Conversation with Marc Lapadula
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
Marc Lapadula is a full-time lecturer at Yale University, where he runs and teaches the entire screenwriting curriculum in the Film Studies Program. Marc also lectures and conducts screenwriting, playwriting and film analysis workshops on both the graduate and undergraduate levels for The Writing Seminars Department at Johns Hopkins University where he is a senior lecturer. He has also lectured extensively on film and conducted screenwriting seminars at Columbia Graduate Film School, the University of Pennsylvania (where he originated the Screenwriting Program), as well as the Screenwriting Series at the Smithsonian Institution. He has been a consultant and expert analyst for movie producers and New Line and Paramount film studios. Marc produced the film, Angel Passing, starring Hume Cronyn, which premiered at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival and then went on to win the Grand Jury Award at Worldfest, the Houston International Film Festival. Marc also co-produced the film Mentor, starring Rutger Hauer, which was screened at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2006. He is a graduate of The University of Pennsylvania ('83) and The Iowa Writers' Workshop ('87).
Marc's former students have written the screenplays for The Hangover, (500) Days of Summer, The Break Up, Bride Wars, Thirty Minutes or Less, Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon, Olympus Has Fallen to name only a few. Several have written successfully for TV with scripts for Family Guy, Scrubs, Happy Endings, Law and Order: SVU, The Agency and others.
Marc has had stage plays (i.e. Dancer, Men Like Us, Serial Killer) produced in New York and regionally and has had several original as well as adapted screenplays optioned and commissioned (i.e. Night Bloom, Heart of a Dog, Distant Influence). Most recently, At Risk, a dark drama about a troubled teen sent to a behavior modification camp in Montana, has been optioned in Los Angeles.
Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)
- 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM in Room 202: WRIT 002 with Courtney Rydel
- 2:00 PM - 5:00 PM in Room 202: ENG 225 with David Wallace
- 2:00 PM - 5:00 PM in Room 209: ENG 145 with Stephen Fried
Tuesday, 10/22
BLONDE ON BLONDE
Al Filreis and Patrick Bredehoft on Bob Dylan
11:30 AM in the Arts Cafe
RSVP: wh@writing.upenn.edu
sponsored by: Creative Ventures
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen to an audio recording of this event
Bob Dylan continues his enduring presence as one of the greatest American songwriters. Join us for a lunchtime discussion of one of his seminal albums -- Blonde on Blonde -- and to reflect on a career that continues to surprise and inspire more than 50 years down the line.
Blonde on Blonde is the seventh studio album by singer-somngwriter Bob Dylan, released in 1966 by Columbia Records. The album completed the trilogy of rock albums Dylan recorded in 1965 and 1966, starting with Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited. Critics often rank Blonde on Blonde as one of the greatest albums of all time. Combining the expertise of Nashville session musicians with a modernist literary sensibility, the album's songs have been described as operating on a grand scale musically, while featuring lyrics critic Michale Gray has called "a unique blend of the visionary and the colloquial".
A reading by Ken Kalfus
Bob Lucid 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
Ken Kalfus is the author of three novels, Equilateral (2013), The Commissariat of Enlightenment (2003), and A Disorder Peculiar to the Country, which was a finalist for the 2006 National Book Award and has appeared in several foreign editions, including French and Italian translations. He has also published two collections of stories, Thirst (1998) and Pu-239 and Other Russian Fantasies (1999), a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. Kalfus has received a Pew Fellowships in the Arts award and a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. He's written for Harper's, The New York Review of Books, and The New York Times. A film adaptation of his short story, "Pu-239," aired on HBO in 2007.
Kalfus was born in New York in 1954, grew up in Plainview, Long Island, and has lived in Paris, Dublin, Belgrade and Moscow. He currently lives in Philadelphia with his wife, Philadelphia Inquirer architecture critic Inga Saffron. For more information visit: kenkalfus.com.
Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)
- 9:00 AM - 10:30 AM in Room 202: WRIT 039 with Michelle Taransky
- 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM in Room 202: WRIT 125 with Valerie Ross
- 12:00 PM - 1:30 PM in Room 202: WRIT 027 with Emily Weissbourd
- 1:30 PM - 3:00 PM in Room 202: ENG 112 with Max Apple
- 1:30 PM - 4:30 PM in Room 209: ENG 010 with Laynie Brown
Wednesday, 10/23
A reading by Herman Beavers
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
Herman Beavers has been teaching African American Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Pennsylvania since 1989. He was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio and attended Oberlin College, where he studied poetry with Stuart Friebert and David Young. After graduation, he went on to the Graduate Writing Program at Brown University, where he studied fiction with novelists John Hawkes and R.V. Cassill and poetry with Michael S. Harper. His first poems were published in Black American Literature Forum (presently titled The African American Review), Dark Phrases, and The Cincinnati Poetry Review. His chapbook, A Neighborhood of Feeling won first prize in the Doris Press Chapbook competition. He was among the first group of Cave Canem Fellows when the group was established in 1996. Since then, his poems have appeared in Whiskey Island, Cross Connect, Peregrine, The Painted Bride Quarterly, Callaloo, MELUS, The Langston Hughes Colloquy, Versadelphia, as well as the anthology, Gathering Ground: A Cave Canem Reader. He has given readings in and around the Philadelphia area, including readings with Yusef Komunyakaa, Elizabeth Alexander, June Jordan, and Major Jackson as well as Live at the Kelly Writers House (on WXPN). He has been twice nominated for The Pushcart Prize in Poetry and been a finalist for the 42 Miles Press Poetry Award, the Kathryn A. Morton Poetry Prize, and the Lena Miles Wever Poetry Prize. His sestina, “The Relative of Fear,” will soon appear in the anthology, Obsession: Sestinas for the 21st Century, edited by Marilyn D . Krysl and Carolyn Beard Whitlow. He has recently completed work on a chapbook, The Vernell Poems and a manuscript, Dreaming the Business of Hurt. He lives in Burlington Township, NJ with his wife, Lisa, and their two children, Michael and Corinne.
Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)
- 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM in Room 202: WRIT 002 with Courtney Rydel
- 2:00 PM - 5:00 PM in Room 202: ENG 156 with Paul Hendrickson
- 2:00 PM - 5:00 PM in Room 209: ENG 121 with Donna Jo Napoli
Thursday, 10/24
Joni Fest
6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe
supported by: Creative Ventures
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen to an audio recording of this event
Al Filreis, Greg Djanikian, and Anthony DeCurtis join forces once again to bring us our third annual Song Symposium, this time on the works of Joni Mitchell. One by one, this Writers House musical triumvirate and six of their friends will lead us through an analysis of a different song by this musician, who Rolling Stone has called "one of the greatest songwriters ever."
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Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)
- 9:00 AM - 10:30 AM in Room 202: WRIT 039 with Michelle Taransky
- 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM in Room 202: WRIT 125 with Valerie Ross
- 12:00 PM - 1:30 PM in Room 202: WRIT 027 with Emily Weissbourd
- 1:30 PM - 4:30 PM in Room 202: ENG 117 with Anthony DeCurtis
- 1:30 PM - 3:00 PM in Room 209: ENG 112 with Max Apple
Friday, 10/25
Saturday, 10/26
Sunday, 10/27
Monday, 10/28
LIVE at the Writers House
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.
Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)
- 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM in Room 202: WRIT 002 with Courtney Rydel
- 2:00 PM - 5:00 PM in Room 202: ENG 225 with David Wallace
- 2:00 PM - 5:00 PM in Room 209: ENG 145 with Stephen Fried
Tuesday, 10/29
On Holocaust Survivors: a conversation
Alan Rosen & Al Filreis
12:00 PM in the Arts Cafe
rsvp: wh@writing.upenn.edu
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen to an audio recording of this event
Dr. Alan Rosen has worked with many Holocaust testimonies over the course of his career, including the earliest ones. He has published two monographs on the topic: The Wonder of Their Voices: The 1946 Holocaust Interviews of David Boder and Sounds of Defiance: The Holocaust, Multi-Lingualism, and the Problem of English. He also collaborated on the German edition of I Did Not Interview the Dead, by David Boder, and edited Approaches to Teaching Wiesel's Night. Dr. Rosen has been a research fellow of the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah from 2006 to 2009. He has also held fellowships at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; the International Institute for Holocaust Research, Yad Vashem; the Katz Center for Advanced Jewish Studies, University of Pennsylvania, and the Archives for the History of American Psychology, University of Akron. He has taught at universities and colleges in Israel and the United States, and lectures regularly on Holocaust Literature at Yad Vashem's International School for Holocaust Studies and other Holocaust study centers. Born and raised in Los Angeles, educated in Boston under the direction of Elie Wiesel, he lives in Jerusalem with his wife and four children.
Al Filreis is Kelly Professor, Faculty Director of the Kelly Writers House, Director of the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing, Co-Director of PennSound, and Publisher of Jacket2—all at the University of Pennsylvania. Among his books are Secretaries of the Moon, Wallace Stevens & the Actual World, Modernism from Left to Right, and Counter- Revolution of the Word. He is currently teaching a course at Penn called "Representations of the Holocaust," a course he has taught for over 20 years.
LITERATURE AND PSYCHOANALYSIS TOGETHER
Siri Hustvedt reads from The Sorrows of An American
With respondents Jean-Michel Rabate and Elaine Zickler
6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe
Co-sponsored by: the Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia and Creative Ventures
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen to an audio recording of this event
Siri Hustvedt is an American novelist and essayist. Hustvedt is the author of a book of poetry, five novels, two books of essays, and a work of non-fiction. Her books include: The Blindfold (1992), The Enchantment of Lily Dahl (1996), What I Loved (2003), for which she is best known, The Sorrows of an American (2008), and The Shaking Woman or A History of My Nerves (2010). Her work has been translated into over thirty languages.
Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)
- 9:00 AM - 10:30 AM in Room 202: WRIT 039 with Michelle Taransky
- 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM in Room 202: WRIT 125 with Valerie Ross
- 12:00 PM - 1:30 PM in Room 202: WRIT 027 with Emily Weissbourd
- 1:30 PM - 3:00 PM in Room 202: ENG 112 with Max Apple
- 1:30 PM - 4:30 PM in Room 209: ENG 010 with Laynie Brown
Wednesday, 10/30
Lunch with Robert Costa
Povich Journalism Program
12:00 PM in the Arts Cafe
hosted by: Dick Polman
RSVP: wh@writing.upenn.edu
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen to an audio recording of this event
Speakeasy Open Mic Night
7:30 PM in the Arts Cafe
hosted by: Rosa Escandon and Isa Oliveres
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen to an audio recording 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.
Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)
- 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM in Room 202: WRIT 002 with Courtney Rydel
- 2:00 PM - 5:00 PM in Room 202: ENG 156 with Paul Hendrickson
- 2:00 PM - 5:00 PM in Room 209: ENG 121 with Donna Jo Napoli
Thursday, 10/31
Crime Writing: a panel discussion
Keith Alan Deutsch, Duane Swierczynski, and Jim Zervanos
moderated by Carlin Romano
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
Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)
- 9:00 AM - 10:30 AM in Room 202: WRIT 039 with Michelle Taransky
- 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM in Room 202: WRIT 125 with Valerie Ross
- 12:00 PM - 1:30 PM in Room 202: WRIT 027 with Emily Weissbourd
- 1:30 PM - 4:30 PM in Room 202: ENG 117 with Anthony DeCurtis
- 1:30 PM - 3:00 PM in Room 209: ENG 112 with Max Apple