October 2026
Thursday, 10/1/2026
Friday, 10/2/2026
Saturday, 10/3/2026
Sunday, 10/4/2026
Monday, 10/5/2026
A Meeting of the Writers House Planning Committee
5:30 PM in the Arts Café
rsvp: register here to attend in person
Join us for a meeting of the Writers House Planning Committee (also known as "the Hub") — the core group of engaged students, staff, faculty, and volunteers who help make things happen at Writers House. Anyone is welcome to become a Hub member by participating in Hub activities and helping out. Members of the Hub plan programs, share ideas, and discuss upcoming projects.
Tuesday, 10/6/2026
Wednesday, 10/7/2026
Thursday, 10/8/2026
A conversation with Jessica Goldstein
About her debut novel "Retro"
5:30 PM in the Arts Café
hosted by: Anthony DeCurtis
rsvp: register here to attend in person
Jessica Goldstein (C’11) is a writer based in Washington, D.C. Her debut novel, Retro, was published by Ballantine Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House, in June 2026. You can read her work in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Marie Claire, and elsewhere. She is a longtime contributor to Vulture, where she currently recaps Emily in Paris, Hacks, Wednesday, and The White Lotus. She writes often for McSweeney's Internet Tendency, and several of her pieces have been the site’s most-read of the year. Her Washingtonian magazine guide to standup in DC, “Amateur Hour,” won a 2024 City and Regional Magazine Association award. She was a 2023 Spruceton Inn Artist Resident. Goldstein publishes a weekly newsletter, The Retro Report, where she shares vintage mood-based recommendations for what to read, watch, listen to, meditate on, and obsess over.
Retro, Jessica Goldstein’s debut novel, is about a struggling, down-and-out actress who gets a job as a Time Travel Agent leading wealthy tourists on vacations to the past. B achelor parties at Woodstock! '20s for your twenties birthday bashes at Prohibition-era speakeasies! Millennial-bait journeys on the Oregon Trail! Concerts, sporting events, inaugurations, assassinations: Bygone America is just a Retro Metro ride away. But while Ash's megalomaniacal tech billionaire boss promises travelers that "the Timeline is resilient," Ash has her doubts — but now that her life finally feels dazzling and thrilling, she can't let herself worry that her escapades in the past could be threatening her present.
Friday, 10/9/2026
Saturday, 10/10/2026
Sunday, 10/11/2026
Monday, 10/12/2026
Tuesday, 10/13/2026
Wedmesdau, 10/14/2026
Outrider: a film about Anne Waldman
A screening and discussion of "Outrider" with poet Anne Waldman and director Alystyre Julian
6:00 PM in the Arts Café
hosted by: Laynie Browne
rsvp: register here to attend in person
Please join us for a screening and discussion of Outrider, a film about the remarkable poet Anne Waldman. Our screening will be followed by a conversation with Anne Waldman and Outrider’s director, Alystyre Julian.
OUTRIDER explores Anne Waldman’s transcendent role as a visionary word-worker, from the downtown New York scene and the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church, to the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, to Big Sur, Mexico City, Morocco, and onward. Guided by ancestors of the Beat generation and poetic kinships with radical female musicians, Outrider channels the ancient, bardic tradition — celebrating the thunderous power of poetry. The poet Eleni Sikelianos writes of the film: “Outrider is a flash of lightning in the dark night, aglow with the life force of Anne Waldman. If you want to sneak up on the secret trajectory of U.S. culture, if you want to know the true, deep possibilities for art in our times — this is your poet. Waldman’s blazing, capacious soul is here at work and this portrait captures the restless luminosity of a whole poetry community in action. You can see the streaks of energy streaming across the screen. This is the work we need to witness now to carry us forward and through.”
Alystyre Julian is a writer, filmmaker, and photographer. She is the director of Outrider. In 2024, Julian co-curated Language and Light: The Films of Ed Bowes at Anthology Film Archives. She has been the stills photographer on award-winning feature filmsDiane (2018), Monsters and Men (2018), Goldie (2019), and others, and has directed and worked on numerous short films, videos, and documentary projects. She holds an MFA from Bard College, and previously taught creative writing at Long Island University, Montclair State University, and screenwriting at New York University. Her poems have been featured in publications such as Poetry Project Newsletter, Chain, Talisman, and Pharos. She lives and works in New York City, where she is at work on a new film project related to Black Mountain College.
Anne Waldman is an internationally acclaimed poet and the author of more than sixty books, including Fast Speaking Woman: Chants and Essays (1996), The Iovis Trilogy: Colors in the Mechanism of Concealment (2011), and Bard, Kinetic (2023). She is a founder and former director of the The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery, and along with contemporaries Allen Ginsberg and Diane DiPrima, founded the ‘Jack Kerouac School for Disembodied Poetics’ at Naropa University. Her poetry belongs to the lineages of the Beat, New York School, and Black Mountain Movements of New American Poetry. As a feminist, social activist, and powerful performer, she has read in the streets and literary institutions worldwide and continues to teach poetics all over the world.
Thursday, 10/15/2026
Friday, 10/16/2026
Saturday, 10/17/2026
Sunday, 10/18/2026
Monday, 10/19/2026
Tuesday, 10/20/2026
Wednesday, 10/21/2026
A reading by Bob Perelman
Eva & Leo Sussman Poetry Program
6:00 PM in the Arts Café
hosted by: Al Filreis
rsvp: register here to attend in person
Bob Perelman has published numerous books of poems, including: Chatty Fossils (Roof Books, 2026), Jack and Jill in Troy (Roof, 2019); Iflife (Roof, 2006); Playing Bodies, in collaboration with painter Francie Shaw (Granary Books, 2004); and Ten to One: Selected Poems (Wesleyan University Press, 1999). His critical books are The Marginalization of Poetry: Language Writing and Literary History (California, 1994); The Trouble With Genius: Reading Pound, Joyce, Stein, and Zukofsky (Princeton, 1996); Modernism the Morning After (Alabama, 2017). His work can be heard on PennSound; a feature on his work appears in Jacket 39. Visit his website for more information. He is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Pennsylvania.
Thursday, 10/22/2026
Friday, 10/23/2026
Saturday, 10/24/2026
Sunday, 10/25/2026
Monday, 10/26/2026
Tuesday, 10/27/2026
Chef to Chef
Alison Roman in conversation with Gabrielle Hamilton
12:00 PM in the Arts Café
Sponsored by: the Blaze Bernstein Memorial Fund
Alison Roman is a New York-based cook, writer, and author of the recently released cookbook, Something from Nothing as well as the New York Times best-selling cookbooks Sweet Enough, Nothing Fancy, and Dining In. She’s the creator of the Home Movies series on YouTube, the author of A Newsletter, and the creator of the Solicited Advice podcast. In 2023, she opened First Bloom, a small grocery store in the Western Catskills full of local produce, near and far pantry staples and the best granola you’ve ever had. A second location is set to open in Brooklyn later this year. In 2025, she added A Very Good Tomato Sauce to the shelves, coming soon to a grocery store near you.
Wednesday, 10/28/2026
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!