November 2020
Sunday, 11/1
Monday, 11/2
Tuesday, 11/3
Wednesday, 11/4
Reporting on the Election
A conversation with Dick Polman
Povich Journalism Program
12:00 PM (ET) on Zoom
Register: here
Dick Polman teaches journalism at the University of Pennsylvania, where he has been the full-time Writer in Residence since 2006. For much of his journalism career, he covered national politics for The Philadelphia Inquirer, as a reporter and columnist. As a freelancer, he has written about politics for The Atlantic, Politico Magazine, and The Smithsonian magazine. He wrote political columns five times a week for WHYY News (Philadelphia's public media website) from 2010 to 2019, and he currently writes a column at dickpolman.net
SPEAKEASY OPEN MIC NIGHT
7:30 PM (ET) on Zoom and YouTube
Our student-run open mic night welcomes all kinds of readings, performances, spectacles, and happenings. You'll have three minutes on Zoom to read, sing, or perform (poetry, prose, music, stand-up: it's up to you!). Registration for the event will open soon!
Thursday, 11/5
Eric Bazilian: "My Life as a Song"
RealArts@Penn Program
6:00 PM ET on YouTube
Hosted by: Anthony DeCurtis
sponsored by: Creative Ventures
watch: here
Best known as a founding member of the Hooters and the writer of "One of Us," a Top 5 hit for Joan Osborne, Bazilian will discuss the art of songwriting and perform some of his work.
Friday, 11/6
Saturday, 11/7
Sunday, 11/8
Monday, 11/9
The Scholar-Artists
Arts at Homecoming Annual Launch Program
12:00 PM via YouTube
Hosted by: Al Filreis
RSVP: whhomecoming@writing.upenn.edu
watch: here
Among the members of Penn's faculty are scholars who are also practicing artists. Or, as they will argue at this exciting session: artists who understand their scholarly, critical and theoretical activity to converge with the art they make. Learn the stories of people who have thrived with this special convergence. Al Filreis will moderate a panel of such scholar-artists: Herman Beavers, Sharon Hayes, Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet, Ken Lum, and Simone White.
A meeting of the writers house planning committee
5:00 PM (ET) on Zoom
RSVP: jalowent@writing.upenn.edu
The Kelly Writers House is run collectively by members of its community. The Writers House Planning Committee – also known as "the Hub"— meets monthly to discuss Writers House projects and programs. Join us at this first meeting of the year to find out about some of the things we will work on this year and to find out how you can get involved with community-led events and projects. This meeting will take place on Zoom. Please register by email to jalowent@writing.upenn.edu
Tuesday, 11/10
Changing Lives: The RealArts@Penn Program
An Arts at Homecoming event
12:00 PM via YouTube
watch: here
Join us for a panel discussion featuring RealArts@Penn interns, hosts, and mentors. This will be an informational session about this dynamic program and the effects it has had on students and alumni over the last ten plus years.
RealArts@Penn is a program that encourages students to deepen their understanding of creative industries. Through internships, mentorships, and apprenticeships, RealArts@Penn provides a foundational introduction to a variety of creative fields.
Wednesday, 11/11
A reading by Derek Beaulieu
6:00 PM (ET) on YouTube
introduced by: Al Filreis
Derek Beaulieu is the author/editor of over twenty collections of poetry, prose, and criticism, including two volumes of his selected work, Please, No More Poetry (2013) and Konzeptuelle Arbeiten (2017). His most recent volume of fiction, a, A Novel was published by Paris's Jean Boîte Editions. Beaulieu has exhibited his visual work across Canada, the United States, and Europe and has won multiple local and national awards for his teaching and dedication to students. Derek Beaulieu holds a PhD in Creative Writing from Roehampton University and is the Director of Literary Arts at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. He can be found online at www.derekbeaulieu.wordpress.com
Thursday, 11/12
Portraiture Art Workshop
Led by Zahra Elhanbaly
7:00 PM by Zoom
Sponsored by the Brodsky Gallery
To register: email wh@writing.upenn.edu
Join Kelly Writers House and Equilibria magazine on for a workshop on portraiture art, led by Zahra Elhanbaly. Zahra is a graduating senior in the Weitzman School of Design, majoring in architecture, whose passion for portraiture comes from the infinite sources of inspiration that can be combined in one. No experience needed or expected — just a willingness to try! Bring a pencil and paper, or a digital drawing program of your choice.
Of portrait art, Zahra writes: "You can do a hundred different drawings of the same person, and still not fully capture them. You can try to capture all their facial expressions from different angles with various lighting conditions. You can experiment with colors and mediums; an oil painting looks and feels much different from a pencil drawing, even if it’s the exact same subject. You can play with abstraction or you can stick with realism, or something in the middle. And all that is just in with one person. When you try to consider doing this for every person you know or every face you see, you really can understand how there’s an infinite number of drawings you can make. That’s what I think makes portraiture special. It’s a process that never really ends There’s an endless supply of inspiration all around us everyday, from every person that we see, to our own reflections."
Friday, 11/13
Saturday, 11/14
Sunday, 11/15
Monday, 11/16
A conversation with Aline Brosh McKenna
Hartman Screenwriting Symposium
6:00 PM (ET) on YouTube
Hosted by: Kathy DeMarco Van Cleve
Aline Brosh McKenna is best known for her adaptation of the popular novel, The Devil Wears Prada. For that screenplay, McKenna garnered Writers Guild, BAFTA, and Scripter award nominations. McKenna’s other feature film credits include 27 Dresses, starring Katherine Heigl; Morning Glory, starring Rachel McAdams and Harrison Ford and the Cameron Crowe-directed, Matt Damon-starrer, We Bought a Zoo. In 2014, McKenna added television to her resume when she and Rachel Bloom co-created the critically acclaimed, Emmy Award-winning comedy series, Crazy Ex- Girlfriend, on which McKenna was showrunner and executive producer. McKenna also directed the finale episodes of all four seasons of the series. McKenna currently has multiple film and television projects in development through her company, Lean Machine. Next year she will write/direct and produce the Netflix film Your Place Or Mine, starring Reese Witherspoon. Recently, McKenna and Eisner Award-winning artist Ramon Perez created the graphic novel Jane, a contemporary version of the Jane Eyre story. The novel received two Eisner Award nominations, including Best Publication for Teens.
Tuesday, 11/17
Breaking Through: Taylor Johnson
A collaborative review led by Simone White
5:00 PM on YouTube
Taylor Johnson is from Washington, DC. Their poems recently appear in The Paris Review, Academy of American Poets, and The Baffler. Their first book, Inheritance, will be published in November with Alice James Books.
Wednesday, 11/18
A conversation with Hope Edelman
Sponsored by: The Creative Writing Program
12:00 PM (ET) on YouTube
Hosted by: Jamie-Lee Josselyn
Hope Edelman has been writing, speaking, and leading workshops and retreats in the bereavement field for more than 25 years. She was 17 when she lost her mother to breast cancer and 40 when her father died, events that inspired her to offer grief education and support to those who cannot otherwise receive it. Her first book, Motherless Daughters, was a #1 New York Times bestseller and appeared on multiple bestseller lists worldwide. Hope is the author of seven additional nonfiction books, including Motherless Mothers and the memoir The Possibility of Everything. Her book The AfterGrief was published in October 2020. She was the recipient of the 2020 Community Educator Award from the Association for Death Education and Counseling and has won a Puschcart Prize for her creative nonfiction. Hope lives and works in Los Angeles and Iowa City.
A conversation with Diana Henriques
Weber Symposium
6:00 PM via YouTube
Hosted by: Al Filreis
Photo credit: Fred Conrad
Diana B. Henriques is the author of A First-Class Catastrophe: The Road to Black Monday, the Worst Day in Wall Street History and the New York Times bestseller The Wizard of Lies: Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust, both published by Henry Holt. She is currently at work on a history of Wall Street regulation for Random House.
A contributing writer for the New York Times, which she joined in 1989, she was previously a staff writer for Barron's magazine, a Wall Street correspondent for the Philadelphia Inquirer, and an investigative reporter for the Trenton (N.J.) Times. In 2005, she was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize and won a George Polk Award, the Worth Bingham Prize for Investigative Reporting and Harvard's Goldsmith Prize for her 2004 series exposing insurance and investment rip-offs of young military consumers. She was also a member of the New York Times team that was a Pulitzer finalist for its coverage of the 2008 financial crisis.
In May 2017, HBO released its film-length adaptation of The Wizard of Lies, with Robert De Niro starring in the title role and Ms. Henriques playing herself and serving as a consultant to the screenwriting team. The film was nominated for four Emmy awards, including “best picture.”
Henriques is also the author of three previous books: The Machinery of Greed, Fidelity's World and The White Sharks of Wall Street. She is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the Elliott School of International Affairs at the George Washington University, on whose board of trustees she served from 2011 until 2019. She and her husband Larry live in Hoboken, N.J.
Thursday, 11/19
A conversation with David Browne
RealArts@Penn Program
5:00 PM ET on YouTube
Hosted by: Anthony DeCurtis
sponsored by: Creative Ventures
A senior writer at Rolling Stone, David Browne is the author of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young: The Wild, Definitive Saga of Rock's Greatest Supergroup and So Many Roads: The Life and Times of the Grateful Dead, among other books. Browne will join us for a discussion of his storied career as a music journalist, in a conversation hosted by Anthony DeCurtis.
Friday, 11/20
Saturday, 11/21
Sunday, 11/22
Monday, 11/23
Tuesday, 11/24
Wednesday, 11/25
Thursday, 11/26
Friday, 11/27
Saturday, 11/28
Sunday, 11/29
Monday, 11/30
A reading by Amir Ahmadi Arian
Bob Lucid Memorial Program in Fiction
12:00 PM (ET) via YouTube
hosted by: Fatemeh Shams
Amir Ahmadi Arian has published a collection of stories, a nonfiction book, and
two novels in Persian. In English, his work has appeared in The New York Times,
New York Review of Books, Paris Review,
The Guardian. He currently lives in New
York where he earned an MFA in the NYU Creative Writing Program as The Axinn
Foundation/E.L. Doctorow Fellowship recipient, and teaches literature and
creative writing at CUNY City College and Baruch College.