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November 2009

Sunday, 11/1

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

Monday, 11/2

Hub Core!

An open-mic event for hub members

5:30 PM in the Arts Cafe

rsvp: to gautsche@writing.upenn.edu
listen: to an audio recording of this event
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV


Hub members are invited to a special open-mic night. Read for one minute from a work that is important to you (you love it, you hate it, it changed your life, etc.) and then for one minute tell the hub why! Come cozy up to the hub with fall snacks and a roaring fire.

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

Tuesday, 11/3

A discussion with Dan Algrant

introduced by Kathy DeMarco Van Cleve

6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

co-sponsored by: Cinema Studies
listen: to an audio recording of this event
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV

Dan Algrant's first feature film, Naked in New York, was produced by Martin Scorsese, and was released by Fine Line Features in 1994; it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and won the Deauville Film Festival Audience Award. His second feature film, People I Know, starred Al Pacino, Kim Bassinger, and Ryan O'Neal. He's directed HBO's Sex and the City for multiple seasons; his short films Cathedral, Some Film Chopping Wood, Anything for Jazz, The First Dance Ever, and Swimming, have screened at Festivals in New York, Los Angeles, Ann Arbor, and Sundance.

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

Wednesday, 11/4

8th annual "WRITERS HOUSE NEW YORK"

at the Meisel Gallery in SoHo (141 Prince Street)

Once a year since 2002, Susan and Louis Meisel have sponsored a benefit at the Louis K. Meisel Gallery at 141 Prince St. in SoHo to raise money in support of the Kelly Writers House Young and Emerging Writers Fund. Because of the generosity of Louis and Susan, who have donated the use of their gallery and the costs of a delicious reception, 100% of the receipts from this annual benefit go directly toward the Kelly Writers House young writers fund.

a reading by poets Keith Waldrop and Rosmarie Waldrop

introduced by Sarah Dowling

6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

listen: segmented recordings from both authors on PennSound


Keith Waldrop was born in Kansas and served in the United States military. He studied at Aix-Marseille and Michigan Universities, earning a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature in 1964. His first book of poetry, A Windmill Near Calvary (University of Michigan, 1968), was nominated for a National Book Award. He is the author of numerous collections of poetry, most recently Several Gravities (Siglio, 2009), a collection of collages; Transcendental Studies (UC Press, 2009), a trilogy of collage poems nominated for the 2009 National Book Award; and a translation of Charles Baudelaire's Paris Spleen (Wesleyan, 2009).

Rosmarie Waldrop was born in Kitzingen am Main, Germany. Waldrop began publishing her poetry in English in the late 1960s. She is now the author of more than three dozen books of poetry, fiction, and criticism, most recently her trilogy Curves to the Apple: The Reproduction of Profiles, Lawn of Excluded Middle, Reluctant Gravities (New Directions, 2006), and a collection of essays, Dissonance (University of Alabama Press, 2005).

Since 1968, the Waldrops have been co-editors and publishers of Burning Deck Press.

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

Thursday, 11/5

Theorizing presents David Kazanjian

6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

David Kazanjian received his Ph.D from the University of California, Berkeley, his M.A. from the University of Sussex, and his B.A. from Stanford University. His area of specialization is transnational American literary and historical studies through the nineteenth century. His additional fields of research are political philosophy, continental philosophy, colonial discourse studies, and Armenian diaspora studies. His book The Colonizing Trick: National Culture and Imperial Citizenship in Early America (2003, Minnesota) offers a comparative study of colonial and antebellum, racial and national formations, and a critique of the formal egalitarianism that animated early U.S. citizenship. He has co-edited (with David L. Eng) Loss: The Politics of Mourning (2003, California), as well as (with Shay Brawn, Bonnie Dow, Lisa Maria Hogeland, Mary Klages, Deb Meem, and Rhonda Pettit) The Aunt Lute Anthology of U.S. Women Writers, Volume One: Seventeenth through Nineteenth Centuries (2004, Aunt Lute Books). He has also published widely (with Anahid Kassabian) on the cultural politics of the North American-Armenian diaspora. He is currently working on The Brink of Freedom, a study of social movements at the edges of the early U.S. empire.

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

Friday, 11/6

A lunch discussion with Juliana Spahr

presented by the Talk Poets

12:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

rsvp: to wh@writing.upenn.edu
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen: to this recording on Juliana Spahr's PennSound author page

Juliana Spahr is a poet, editor, and scholar. Her most recent book of poetry is This Connection of Everyone with Lungs (2005, University of California), a collection of poems that she wrote from November 30, 2002 to March 30, 2003 that chronicled the buildup to the latest US invasion of Iraq. Atelos recently published the Transformation (2007), a book of prose which tells the story of three people who move between Hawai'i and New York in order to talk about cultural geography, ecology, anticolonialism, queer theory, language politics, the academy, and recent wars. Spahr co-edited the journal Chain with Jena Osman from 1994-2005 and together they currently edit the Chain Links series. With nineteen other poets she has been an editor of the collectively edited and collectively funded Subpress.


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

Saturday, 11/7

Does a Great Poem Do Any Good?

a Homecoming discussion with Al Filreis

1:30 PM in the Arts Cafe

rsvp: to whhomecoming@writing.upenn.edu or call 215-746-POEM


Join Al Filreis — the Faculty Director of the Kelly Writers House, Kelly Professor of English and Director of the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing — for a stimulating, wide-open discussion of one brilliant, compelling modern poem. Does a great poem do any good? Does it have practical value? In the course of this free-wheeling discussion, find out what the Kelly Writers House is and does, and meet some of Penn's most talented young writers. No prior reading or preparation is necessary.

Homecoming Open House

3:00 PM - 4:30 PM throughout the Writers House

rsvp: to whhomecoming@writing.upenn.edu or call 215-746-POEM


Renew your acquaintance or get to know this lively and innovative home for writers of all ages and genres as you join members of the Writers House community and its staff for informal conversation and coffee.

The Next Page in Book Publishing?

a Homecoming panel discussion, featuring Buzz Bissinger (C'77), Dennis Drabelle (G'66, L'69), Matthew Algeo, (C'88), David Borgenicht (C'90), and moderator Stephen Fried (C'79)

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


Join us for readings by top alumni non-fiction writers followed by a provocative panel discussion about the future of the book business and ambitious writing, featuring Buzz Bissinger (C'77), Vanity Fair contributing editor and best-selling author of Friday Night Lights, Three Days in August, and his collaboration with LeBron James, Shooting Stars; Dennis Drabelle (G'66, L'69), a contributing editor, and the mysteries editor, of The Washington Post Book World (where he won the National Book Critics Circle award), and author of the new book Mile-High Fever: Silver Mines, Boom Towns, and High Living on the Comstock Lode; Matthew Algeo, (C'88), award-winning radio reporter and author of Last Team Standing and his latest, Harry Truman's Excellent Adventure; David Borgenicht (C'90), publisher, editor and evil mastermind behind the controversial bestseller Pride and Prejudice and Zombies; and moderator Stephen Fried (C'79) author of five books including the upcoming An Appetite for America: How Visionary Businessman Fred Harvey Created a Hospitality Empire that Tamed the Wild West. Co-presented by Kelly Writers House and The Nora Magid Mentorship Prize. Advance registration is not required, but seating is limited.


Sunday, 11/8

Monday, 11/9

A lunch discussion with Lisa DePaulo

presented by the Sylvia Kauders lunch series

12:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

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

Lisa DePaulo is currently a correspondent for GQ Magazine. Known at GQ for her political writing, DePaulo has profiled Karl Rove and Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, among others. She has also contributed to New York, Philadelphia Magazine, Talk, George, and the blog The Daily Beast. An alumna of the University of Pennsylvania, DePaulo now resides in New York City.


A meeting of the Writers House Planning Committee

5:30 PM in the Arts Cafe

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, 11/10

A lunch talk with poet Dmitry Golynko

presented by Writers Without Borders

11:00 AM in the Dining Room and Arts Cafe

moderated by: Charles Bernstein

listen: to this recording at Dmitry Golynko's Pennsound author page

Dmitry Golynko is an accomplished St. Petersburg-based poet and translator and a contributing editor of Moscow Art magazine. He has written articles for numerous Russian- and English-language literature publications and, in 2008, Ugly Duckling Presse released an English translation of his book As it Turned Out.


Bernheimer Symposium: Leonard Cassuto and S.J. Rozan

a conversation about crime fiction

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

What is the attraction of crime fiction? (And of genre fiction generally?) How has the hard-boiled attitude evolved over the years? What's with all the serial killers in this generation's crime fiction? S.J. Rozan is an award-winning crime novelist, Leonard Cassuto an American literature professor and award-winning critic of crime fiction. Together they will talk about the theory, history, and practice of a genre that is receiving increasing attention from scholars, critics, and readers of all stripes.

Leonard Cassuto, professor of English at Fordham University, is the author of Hard-Boiled Sentimentality: The Secret History of American Crime Stories (2008, Columbia University Press), which was shortlisted for the Edgar and Macavity Awards and named one of the Ten Best Books of 2008 in the crime and mystery category by the Los Angeles Times. Cassuto's articles about American crime fiction have appeared in The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, the minnesota review, and other publications. Other books include The Inhuman Race: The Racial Grotesque In American Literature and Culture (1997, Columbia) and three edited volumes. Cassuto is currently finishing work as General Editor of the forthcoming Cambridge History of the American Novel to be published in 2010. He is also an award-winning journalist, writing about subjects ranging from sports to the scientific search for room-temperature semiconductors.


SJ Rozan, a native New Yorker, is the author of eleven novels. Her work has won the Edgar, Shamus, Anthony, Nero, and Macavity awards for Best Novel and the Edgar for Best Short Story. Bronx Noir (2007, Akashic Books), a short story collection SJ edited, was given the NAIBA "Notable Book of the Year" award. She's served on the National Boards of Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime, and is ex-President of the Private Eye Writers of America. In January 2003 she was an invited speaker at the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The 2005 Left Coast Crime convention in El Paso, Texas made her its Guest of Honor. A former architect in a practice that focused on police stations, firehouses, and zoos, SJ Rozan lives in lower Manhattan.





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

Wednesday, 11/11

Speakeasy: Poetry, Prose, and Anything Goes!

8:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

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, 11/12

A Sea of Voices: Women Poets in Israel

a multilingual reading of the anthology with Kathryn Hellerstein, Nili Gold, Ronit Engel, Ilana Pardes, Eva Lezzi, Daisy Braverman, and Marla Pagan-Mattos.

5:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

co-sponsored by: Jewish Studies Program, Middle East Center, Comparative Literature, Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Women's Studies, and The Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures
listen: to an audio recording of this event
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV

A Sea of Voices: Women Poets in Israel is a uniquely original anthology that brings together the voices of fifty-one women poets living in Israel. Each writes in their native language as well as in Hebrew. Included are poets from France, Spain, Iraq. Poland, and the USA, who write in French, Yiddish, Russian, Spanish/Ladino, Arabic, Polish, German, Hebrew, and English. With multiple poems from each poet, this anthology, in which all the poems are translated into English, demonstrates the diversity of women's poetry in Israel and shows the multifaceted multilingual experience of writers living in an historically complex society. This mesmerizing and powerful collection evidences how exile and diaspora enrich the poetic tradition of Israel. The book includes a section on women poets who write in Arabic.

Kathryn Hellerstein
Kathryn Hellerstein		 Nili Gold
Nili Gold		 Ronit Engel
Ronit Engel		 Eva Lezzi
Eva Lezzi		 Daisy Braverman
Daisy Braverman		 Marla Pagan-Mattos
Marla
Pagan-Mattos

Kathryn Hellerstein is Associate Professor of Germanic Languages and Undergraduate Director of the Jewish Studies Program at the University of Pennsylvania, where she teaches courses on Yiddish language and literature. She is published as a poet, translator, and essayist of Yiddish poetry and received her doctorate from Stanford University. Her resume includes contributions to American Yiddish Poetry: A Bilingual Anthology (1986, University of California Press) and her role as co-editor of Jewish American Literature: A Norton Anthology (2001, W.W. Norton), as well as an extensive collection of published translations, scholarly essays, and other works too numerous to be listed here.

Nili Gold is Associate Professor of Modern Hebrew Literature in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania, where she teaches courses on Modern Hewbrew Literature in both English and in Hebrew. She was born in Haifa, Israel, and received her doctorate from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. Her study includes psychoanalytic, biographical, and cultural-historical interpretation of Hebrew and Israeli literature, and she has been published in English and Hebrew journals and collections. Her book Lo Kabrosh: Gilgule Imagim Ve-tavniyot Be-shirat Yehuda Amichai (Not Like a Cypress: Transformations of Images and Structures in the Poetry of Yehuda Amichai) (1994, Schocken Publishing) won the State of Isreal's Ministry of Science and Culture Award for the Best First Book in Hebrew Literature.

Ronit Engel taught at the Lycee Alliance Isrealite Universelle in Ramat Aviv and Tel Aviv University before coming to the University of Pennsylvania in 1995. She has been invited to speak to universities such as Princeton and McGill as well as universities in Warsaw and Kyoto. A member of the Department of Near Eastern Languages in Civilizations, she teaches courses in Modern Hebrew language and conversations and compositions.

Ilana Pardes is a professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where she is a member of the Department of Comparitive Literature. She received her doctorate in Comparitive Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. Her works include Countertraditions in the Bible: A Feminist Approach (1992, Harvard University Press) and The Biography of Ancient Isreal: National Narratives in the Bible (2000, University of California Press).

Eva Lezzi is a Post Doctoral Researcher at the University of Potsdam in Germany. As a member of the Department of German Language and Literature, her research and teaching focal points include Jewish studies, anti-semitism in literature and theory, and German language and literature, and she has published a wide array of works on these topics, among others.

Daisy Braverman was born in Izmir, Turkey and was raised in a Juedo-Spanish family. She came to America when she was 18 and eventually completed her graduate degree in Linguistics at Columbia. She is a member of the Penn Language Center, where her focus is on Juedo-Spanish studies.

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

Friday, 11/13

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

Saturday, 11/14

Sunday, 11/15

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

Monday, 11/16

A celebration of Poet Thomas Kinsella

with Thomas Kinsella, Thomas Devaney, John P. McNamee, Deborah Burnham, Deirdre Morris-Abrahamsson, Cara Bertron, Lee Huttner, Rivka Fogel, and Callie Ward

presented by Writers Without Borders

6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

co-sponsored by: UPenn Rare Books and Manuscripts Library
listen: to an audio recording of this event
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV

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).

Thomas Kinsella is one of a number of young Irishmen who began to write in the years following World War II, and he has played a major role in invigorating the world of Irish verse. Kinsella began publishing poetry in the UCD magazine, the National Student, and in Poetry Ireland. His first collection, Poems (1956), came out with Miller's Dolmen Press, followed by Another September (1958); Moralities (1960); Downstream (1962); Wormwood (1966); and Nightwalker (1967). Kinsella quickly won recognition with awards from the Poetry Book Society (1958, 1962), the Guinness Poetry Award (1958) and the Denis Devlin Memorial Award (1967). In the 1980s, books like Her Vertical Smile (1985, Peppercanister) Out of Ireland (1987, Peppercanister) and St Catherine's Clock (1987, Peppercanister) marked a move away from the personal to a poetry including historical trends. His Collected Poems (University of Oklahoma) appeared in 1996 and again in an updated edition in 2001.

Thomas Devaney is poet, teacher, and critic. He is the author of A Series of Small Boxes (2007, Fish Drum), Letters to Ernesto Neto (2005, Germ Folios), and The American Pragmatist Fell in Love (1999, Banshee Press). Devaney's poems have been published in The American Poetry Review, jubliat, Fence, Jacket, and online at PennSound.

John P. McNamee, a Catholic Priest ordained May 1959, is a native of Philadelphia where he has served as a parish priest in the inner-city neighborhoods. His efforts on behalf of the poor include returning a Catholic Worker house to Philadelphia and organizing Catholic Peace Fellowship/Pax Christi. Father McNamee is the author of several books of prose and poetry which champion the cause of the poor, including Diary of a City Priest (1993), Clay Vessels and Other Poems (1995), and Endurance - The Rhythm of Faith (1996), all published by Sheed and Ward. Diary of a City Priest received the prestigious 1994 Catholic Press Association Book Award. A new book of poems, Donegal Suite, A Collection of Poetry was published in October 2006 by Dufour Editions, Chester Springs, PA.

Deborah Burnham is the Associate Undergraduate Chair of the English Department. She teaches courses in American and British fiction from the 19th and 20th century, in gender studies and poetry. She also teaches the writing of non-fiction prose and poetry. Texas Tech University Press published her book, Anna and the Steel Mill, as its First Book Prize winner in 1995. She also published a chapbook, "Still", and has two volumes of poetry in circulation. She is finishing a novel, Raising June, set in the Viet Nam era. She has received a National Endowment for the Arts grant in poetry.

Deirdre Morris-Abrahamsson C'93, GEd'94 is from NYC and was an English major at Penn and the captain of the women's Track & Field team. Her senior paper was on Irish women poets. She has worked in the sports and events industries since 1996 and has helped to organize major international sporting events including the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City and the 2006 European Athletics Championships in Gothenburg. She just moved back to Philadelphia after living in Sweden for seven years to work at Penn in the Athletic Department. She still writes poetry and short stories and is currently working on a young adult historical fiction novel. As a first generation Irish-American, she has done extensive research on her family tree. Her father worked for Aer Lingus for over 20 years, so she was able to travel frequently and spent a lot of time in Ireland. She is excited to be back at Penn and involved with the Kelly Writers House. She is also the proud mom of her two bilingual children, Gavin, aged 5, and Violet, aged 2.

Cara Bertron is a graduate student in Penn's Historic Preservation program. In addition to old buildings, she is particularly fond of her bicycle, ambitious cooking projects, Scotland, and words. She writes poems, lists, and the occasional jot of fiction.

Lee Huttner is a senior in the College majoring in English. His research concentrates on the medieval and early modern periods, and he is particularly interested in history, sexuality, and performance in literature, as well as theories of censorship and translation. He has worked at the Kelly Writers House since his sophomore year, planning and organizing events such as the Media Res program on medieval literature, the EII reading series on the legacy of Marlowe, and Speakeasy open-mic nights.

Rivka Fogel is a junior and English major with a concentration in Creative Writing. The Behrman Scholar at the Kelly Writers House, she is the Executive Editor of the Kedma Journal and serves on the Penn Review editorial board. Her poems have been published in Peregrine and in Penn student journals, and her visual art will be featured in this year's Arts in the City Year Crawl. She writes on art for the SoHo-based blog Art Observed, and has an eternal love of polka dots.

Callie Ward is a freshman who is striving to major in English and minor in Spanish because she loves literature and words. She grew up in a small town in the desert of Nevada, where she learned words such as bouldering, drought, and tumbleweed. Callie now has the privilege of living in this big east coast city, where she's learning many new words, such as hoagie, SEPTA, and rain.

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

Tuesday, 11/17

Edit Presents Jeremy James Foxtrot Thompson, Astrid Lorange, and Danny Snelson

Poetry, Performance, Printmaking, and Editorial Practice

6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

introduced by: Danny Snelson
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen: to an audio recording of this event on the EDIT Series PennSound page

"EDIT: Strategizing Writing Technologies" is a roving events series pairing innovative performances with focused critical responses toward an exploration of editorial strategies in contemporary writing and the arts.

Jeremy James Foxtrot Thompson is an instructor at New York's Center for Book Arts as well as curator for the TEXTFORM reading series. He was born in Los Angeles, CA, and now resides in Queens. Through his own Auto Types Press he prints broadsides and other text-centric ephemera, including collaborative prints with poets Edwin Torres, Joan Retallack, David Lehman and Charles Bernstein, among others. His texts and typographic works are published in collections and journals including Cricket Online Review, Pinstripe Fedora, The Houston Literary Review, The Bucky Monkey, Lamination Colony, WORK, and Viz. Inter-Arts, a Trans-Genre Anthology. See more of his work at www.AUTOTYPOGRAPH.com.

Astrid Lorange is a PhD candidate visiting UPenn from the University of Technology, Sydney, researching the poetics of Gertrude Stein and Joan Retallack, and the relationship between the two women and philosophies of twentieth-century sciences. Last year she was the director of the Critical Animals research symposium at This Is Not Art in Newcastle. This year she is working on a manuscript of poems. She is included in Best Australian Poems 2009.

Danny Snelson is a writer, editor, and archivist recently relocated to Philadelphia. His online editorial work can be found on UbuWeb, PennSound, and Eclipse. He is the founder of Aphasic Letters (with Phoebe Springstubb) and No Input Books (with James Hoff). Recent writing projects include Endless Nameless (publishing used hard drives as functional archives), my Dear coUntess (an epistolary vlog translation), Equi Nox (a bowdlerized edition of Samuel Delany's classic novel), and Radios (a long form Miltonic recomposition). Currently, he's working around textual conditions, editorial strategies, and media technologies at the University of Pennsylvania.

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

Wednesday, 11/18

KWH ART opening

"Umlaut Machine: Selected Visual Works"

a reading and discussion with Christian Bök

6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

co-sponsored by: Writers Without Borders
watch: a video recording of this event via KWH-TV
listen: to an audio recording of this event on Christian Bök's PennSound author page

The reading will be followed by a discussion of Bök's work with students Astrid Lorange, Danny Snelson, Henry Steinberg, and curator Kaegan Sparks.

Christian Bök is the author of Crystallography (1994, Coach House Press), a pataphysical encyclopedia nominated for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award, and Eunoia (2001, Coach House Books), a bestselling work of experimental literature and winner of the Griffin Prize for Poetic Excellence. Bok has created artificial languages for two television shows: Gene Roddenberry's Earth: Final Conflict and Peter Benchley's Amazon. Bok has also earned many accolades for his virtuoso performances of sound poetry (particularly the Ursonate by Kurt Schwitters). His conceptual artworks (which include books built out of Rubik's cubes and Lego bricks) have appeared at the Marianne Boesky Gallery in New York City as part of the exhibit Poetry Plastique. Bok is currently a Professor of English at the University of Calgary.


Astrid Lorange is a second year PhD candidate at the University of Technology, Sydney in Australia, where she also teaches. This semester she is a visiting scholar at Penn in the English Department. She is researching Gertrude Stein, early twentieth-century philosophical sciences and contemporary poetics.

Danny Snelson is a writer, editor, and archivist as well as a first year PhD candidate in the Penn English Department. His online editorial work can be found on UbuWeb, PennSound, and Eclipse. He is the founder of Aphasic Letters (with Phoebe Springstubb) and No Input Books (with James Hoff). His current interests are centered in textual conditions, editorial strategies, and media technologies.

Henry Steinberg is a freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences and currently lost in Ulysses. He plans to major in English/Creative Writing.

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

Thursday, 11/19

RealArts@Penn Presents: The Serious Side of Comedy Writing

featuring Greg Maughan (Penn '06), Gregg Gethard, Meg Favreau and special guests

6:00PM 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

A panel discussion, led by Philly Improv Theater Executive Director Greg Maughan (Penn '06), featuring local Philadelphia comedians and comedy writers - along with a special guest or two - discuss the day to day aspects of trying to do comedy. How do you find outlets to hone material? Where can you go to get published/have your work performed? What's involved in pitching? Is it enough to have funny material? What role has the internet played in changing the rules for breaking into comedy? All these questions, and more, will be discussed in a free-ranging conversation on trying to make people laugh and get paid for it.

Greg Maughan
Greg Maughan		 Gregg Gethard
Gregg Gethard		 Meg Favreau
Meg Favreau

Greg Maughan is the founder and current executive director of PHIT. In Philadelphia he performs longform with Industrial Improv. Prior to moving to Philadelphia in 2001 he lived outside Detroit, where he ran the sketch/improv group Second Suburb and appeared in the alternate production "Improv Survivor" at the Second City Detroit. He has also appeared at the UCB Theater and Magnet Theater in New York, and the Washington Improv Theater.

Gregg Gethard is a Philadelphia-based freelance writer/journalist and comedian. Professionally, his work can be seen on Madison Square Garden's website, the New York Knicks' official team website, FrontPageMagazine.com, Culture11.com, HeatingOil.com and Philly2Philly.com. Gethard also formed, produce and hosts Bedtime Stories, Philadelphia's longest running comedy show. Each month, Gethard selects a theme and local comics perform sketches, show videos, hold PowerPoint presentations or other bits somehow tied into that theme. Gethard also performs as a stand-up comedian under the monicker "The Greggulator." He was also a member of The Sixth Borough, a local sketch comedy group. In addition to performing in Philadelphia, Gethard has also performed at the Upright Citizen's Brigade Theater in New York City.

Meg Favreau is a member of the Philadelphia-based sketch comedy group Meg & Rob and a member of PHIT House Team Everything Must Go. Meg is a freelance writer whose work has been featured on The Smart Set, The Big Jewel, and McSweeney's. She is also the city editor of the Not For Tourists: Philadelphia (Not For Tourists, 2008) guidebook and a regular contributor to 23/6, the Huffington Post's humor website. Meg grew up in New Hampshire, a state that is very pretty and very, very boring.

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

Friday, 11/20

Arts in the City Year Crawl: Collaborative Writing Activities

1:00-3:00 PM

Join the Kelly Writers House and The New Philadelphia Poets for an afternoon of collaborative writing activities. No poetry experience is necessary! Come for a few minutes, or a few hours.

The New Philadelphia Poets are a group of poets from Philadelphia committed to expanding the space for poetry and supporting the local arts community. Members include Debrah Morkun, Patrick Lucy, Brian Cuzzolina, Sarah Heady, Jamie Townsend, Angel Hogan, Marion Bell, Gregory Bem, Carlos Soto Roman, Keith Vosseller and Matthew Landis. Visit www.newphiladelphiapoets.com for more information.

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

Saturday, 11/21

Sunday, 11/22

Monday, 11/23

Writers House Planning Committee Hub Thanksgiving

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.

"I'm thankful for this ginmormous turkey leg..."

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

Tuesday, 11/24

A Poetry Reading by Julian T. Brolaski and Thom Donovan

presented by the Emergency Poetry Series

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 at the Emergency Poetry Series PennSound author page

Emergency addresses North American poetic practice as it is centered around close-knit communities, long-distance mentorships, new media, and chapbook exchange, asking how theoretical stances and aesthetic practices are transmitted among poets at different stages in their careers. The series was launched in 2006 with support from the Kerry Sherin Wright Prize for programming at Kelly Writers House in Philadelphia, an award designed to support a project that demonstrates aesthetic capaciousness and literary communitarianism. All readings are held at the Writers House and are available online at PennSound.

Julian T. Brolaski is the author of the chapbooks Hellish Death Monsters (2001, Spooky Press), Letters to Hank Williams (2003, True West Press), The Daily Usonian (2004, Atticus/Finch) and Madame Bovary's Diary (2005, Cy Press), Buck in a Corridor (2008, flynpyntar) and the blog herm of warsaw. Xir first book gowanus atropolis is forthcoming from Ugly Duckling Presse. Brolaski lives in Brooklyn where xe writes poetry, serves as a Litmus Press editor, plays country music in The Low & the Lonesome, and curates th'every-other-monthly freakshow Mongrel Vaudeville.



Thom Donovan has edited Wild Horses Of Fire weblog since 2005 and coedits ON Contemporary Practice with Michael Cross and Kyle Schlesinger. He also curates the Segue reading series and PEACE events series and is an ongoing participant in the Nonsite Collective. His poetry and critical writings have appeared in various publications including, most recently, PAJ (MIT Press), O Books' War and Peace: Text and Image, The Brooklyn Rail, MUSEO, Critical Correspondences, and with Vigilance Society. A chapbook of his, Making Believe, is forthcoming with Wheelhouse Magazine. He teaches at Bard College and Baruch College, and holds a Ph.D. in Poetics from SUNY at Buffalo.


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

Wednesday, 11/25

Speakeasy: Poetry, Prose, and Anything Goes!

8:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

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, 11/26

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

Friday, 11/27

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

Saturday, 11/28

Sunday, 11/29

Monday, 11/30

LIVE at the Writers House PRESENTS LOCAL FICTION WRITERS

a live taping featuring Jeff Bender, Rachel Cantor, Rachel Carpenter, Tim Leonido, and Jeremy Rosenberg

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).

Jeff Bender
Jeff Bender		 Rachel Cantor
Rachel Cantor		 Jeremy Rosenberg
Jeremy Rosenberg

Jeff Bender is a Philadelphia native and resident whose work has appeared in Guernica and the compilation 101 Things Every Man Should Know. Glimmer Train selected his story "Roommates" as a finalist for its annual Short Story Award for New Writers and "Diet" as a Top 25 finalist for its Very Short Story Award. He earned an MFA from Columbia's School of the Arts where he received a Graham Fellowship and a Research Arts Fellowship. In 2008 he attended the Tin House Summer Writers Workshop in Portland, Oregon, and won a fellowship to write at the Jentel Artist Residency Program in Banner, Wyoming. Most recently he was awarded an October Writers Residency at the Montana Artists Refuge. He's working on novel about NCAA wrestling.

Rachel Cantor's stories have appeared or are forthcoming in the Paris Review, One Story, DoubleTake, Fence, Ninth Letter, New England Review, and elsewhere. They have twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and have been shortlisted by both Best American Short Stories and the O. Henry Awards. She lives in Philadelphia, where she has just finished a story collection and a novel.

Rachel Carpenter grew up in Center City and now lives in Germantown. Her short fiction has been published in Ploughshares, Subtropics, One Story, the Atlantic Online, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, and other venues; her nonfiction has appeared in McSweeney's Internet Tendency and the Philadelphia City Paper, and has been read on the NPR show Anthem. She also wrote four definitions for The Future Dictionary of America (2004, McSweeney's Books). She is completing her first novel.

Though grounded in literature, Tim Leonido has maintained a parallel interest in sound art, most recently in digital audio programs as a potential platform for the structural analysis of speech and music. Particularly curious about the accidental grouping of sounds, he explores the readiness with which disparate aural qualities can be woven into loops, forming curious networks with strange vocabularies.

Jeremy Rosenberg attended New York University, currently works as an editor at Cancer Research, and is working on a bunch of novels: a finished one called Analog that he's shopping around, and a seemingly endless parade of unfinished ones. Originally from Bensalem, PA, he lives with his wife in West Philly.

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