Nate and Neil

Nate Chinen was one of the first members of the Writers House staff--and circa 1997-98 was a real denizen at 3805 Locust. He founded and led the KWH band, "The Virgin House Quartet," which played in our Arts Cafe every late Thursday night for several years. Nate is now an art critic and is emerging as one of the go-to guys for the New York Times Arts page. Now he reviews Neil Young's NYC concert. And our Al Filreis blogs a bit about this.

Writers without Borders

Our final reading of the 2008 Writers without Borders series is Breyten Breytenbach, the acclaimed South African poet, novelist, memoirist and painter. Breytenbach will join us at 6:00 PM on Thursday, December 4th. No RSVP required!

meisel gallery

On November 13, several Writers House-affiliated staff, students, and alumni, convened in SoHo at the Meisel Gallery for our seventh annual Writers House New York. Every year since 2002, Susan and Louis Meisel have hosted a benefit in their gallery to support the Writers House and after a harrowing Philly-to-New York van ride through rain and wind, the KWH-team was especially delighted to see so many friends gathered to welcome us.

homecoming at the KWH

Visit the Writers House on November 1st for Homecoming!

3:00 PM – 4:30 PM: Stop by our OPEN HOUSE for coffee and informal conversation with fellow alumni and members of the Writers House community.

4:30 PM: Our Alumni Authors Series presents EXTREME SPORTSWRITING: a raucous, full-contact panel discussion about the future of sports and journalism with STEFAN FATSIS (C'85), BUZZ BISSINGER (C'77), JON WERTHEIM (Law '97), and moderator STEPHEN FRIED (C'79). EXTREME SPORTSWRITING is co-presented by Kelly Writers House, The Nora Magid Mentorship Prize, and the Penn Alumni Club of Philadelphia.

RSVP to whhomecoming@writing.upenn.edu.

over at PennSound

Things are humming at PennSound, the digital archive of poetry and poetics co-directed by Charles Bernstein and Al Filreis, and managed by Mike Hennessey. Mike writes the "PennSound Daily" which provides detailed commentary on recent updates to the archive and offers just enough history and context to invite you in for more. The Writers House provides a regular percentage of material for the archive -- but PennSound goes broad and deep and all over, curating material from other vibrant places and decades. Dig around John Ashbery's author page for readings from New York the 60s through Haverford in 2008 or visit the Segue Reading series page to hear readings from the Bowery Poetry Club.

our new website

You've noticed (we hope) that we've been changing our website. Thanks to the lovely design work of Bill Sulit of fusion:communications, the complex re-coding work of CPCW IT & Multimedia Manager Mark Lindsay (with help from student webmasters, especially Kathryn Lipman), and the gorgeous photography of Writers House documentarians such as John Carroll, we're slowly reworking each part of our site, page by page. This process may take quite a while and there are sure to be glitches along the way. Don't hesitate to get in touch (wh@writing.upenn.edu) if you find something strange or if you see something you like. As always, we'd love to hear from you. Here are some cool pages: Writers House Fellows, featured visitors, and current student highlights. Look around!

KWH-TV: Tune in on Thursday

Thanks to an anonymous gift that allowed us to acquire state-of-the-art video equipment, we can now easily webcast Writers House events, whatever's going on in the Arts Cafe: readings, seminars, recording sessions, happenings, the whole range. (We've produced webcasts since 1999, but with the new camera and specially configured computer, we've essentially automated the process.) In other words, by simply logging in from home or work, you can see LIVE VIDEO of what's happening here. We hope you'll tune in. The next KWH-TV event is Thursday, October 16th at 6:00 PM: Tom Moon and Anthony DeCurtis will discuss Moon's book, 1000 Recrodings to Hear Before You Die. To listen in, visit our instructions page. If you have Quicktime already installed on your computer, you'll just click "Start webcast" from this page at 6:00 PM or just after.

job opportunities for students

Are you a work-study eligible Penn student looking for a job? Do you love the Writers House? We're hiring and we'd love to chat with you about your interest. Check out our open positions. Our student staffers help out in every aspect of the Writers House project.

summer at the KWH

We've hit the summer stride: interns and summer staffers are busy sewing & folding books for the 15th Room Press, making scrapbooks in new and old media, installing new furniture, and reaching out to the class of 2012, who'll visit us for NSO Speakeasy on September 1. We've re-discovered or revamped many old web pages (here's a listserv collage from 1996; here's a collection of writing by KWH poets, published in the Inquirer). We hope you'll dig around in our website and find other treasures.

end of semester

Tomorrow, April 30th, we'll celebrate the end of the year, with our annual KWH Hub party. Each spring, toward the end of the semester, the Writers House Planning Committee invites friends, colleagues, classmates, co-workers and other community members to celebrate another year gone by. We fire up the grill, mingle in the Class of 1942 Garden, and then gather in the Arts Cafe to toast and roast old friends and recognize the contributions of various Hub members to this incredible project. If you can't make it, be sure to check back soon for photos and MP3s.

arts & crafts

When you visit us for Alumni Day, when we'll feature alumni poets, or for our Senior Capstone program, which celebrates the graduating class of 2008, you'll notice a new Arts & Crafts sign out front to welcome you home.

cherry pie all night

If you didn't make it to our marathon reading of Lolita, check out these great photos -- of a portable manual Olivetti, a sinful cherry pie, an invisible melon, and matching Humbert Humbert t-shirts (modeled by Sam Allingham and Erin Gautsche).

Holocaust survivor

Leo Bretholz -- who leapt from a train bound for Auschwitz in 1942 -- visited the Writers House Friday, April 11th to share his survival story. Leo stayed to sign copies of his book Leap into Darkness, which chronicles his story in harrowing detail. Go here for a recording of his talk at the Writers House.

of being numerous

Monday, April 7th, 6:00 PM: 100 minutes of talk and poetry in honor of George Oppen's 100th birthday, hosted by Thomas Devaney & Rachel Blau DuPlessis, and featuring Stephen Cope, George Economou, Al Filreis, Michael Heller, Ann Lauterbach, Tom Mandel, Bob Perelman, and Ron Silliman. Stay until the end for a screening of rare video footage of Oppen reading in 1973.

kwh art

Our final KWH Art show of the year, on Wednesday, April 2, 2008 at 8:00 PM, is "Lines Inside the Color: Mixed Media Work by Margery Amdur." Amdur's work is coloful and complex and has been shown all over the world. The opening will include a screening of her short film, The Frenzy and the Calm. Gallery curator Kaegan Sparks (C'10) has done a stellar job in her first year organizing shows. Come celebrate her achievement!

fiction in the house

Check out the recently uploaded reading by Adrian Khactu and his mentor Samuel "Chip" Delany, our first annual Cheryl J. Family Fiction Program. Graduate student Mecca Sullivan introduced Chip -- and Adrian and Chip read to a full house. Each year, from now on, thanks to Cheryl's generosity, we'll host a fiction reading that will feature a young writer like Adrian.

our website

We're getting serious about updating the online archive of our programs and projects. Check out our Series, Programs, and Groups page for listings and entries for new and old projects alike. Look at our new Projects page for descriptions of other ongoing initiatives. Over the next several months, you'll start to see many changes on our website: new pages, new text, new navigational tools. If you notice broken links or odd problems, please don't hesitate to get in touch (wh@writing.upenn.edu).

alumni day

Mark your calendars! On Saturday, May 17th at 4:00 PM, in honor of Alumni Day, we will celebrate Dan Hoffman -- who was for many years the Poet-in-Residence and Director of Creative Writing at Penn before his retirement. Join us for readings by four of Dan's former students, poets Christina Davis (C'93, G'93), Michael Jennings (C'71), Jay Rogoff (C '75), and J. Allyn Rosser (G'88, GR'91), followed by Dan himself, who'll read selections from the work of his late wife, the poet Elizabeth McFarland Hoffman. After the readings, we'll convene in the dining room for good food and conversation. Join us! RSVP to whalumniweekend@writing.upenn.edu.

endless chocolate cakes

As I type, we're in hour three of our marathon Lolita reading. We have cherry pies and lollipops and other sweet snacks in endless supply and gallons of coffee to keep our readers amped up for the afternoon and into the night. We'll hope to post the entire reading on our website -- but it'll be large and long so stop by for a live bit of Humbert Humbert and slice of chocolate cake.

7-up

For four years running, we've hosted an annual 7-up program: seven people speaking (singing, reading, musing) for seven minutes each about a shared topic. Last year's 7-up on Bitter featured a rabbi, a grumpy undergraduate, and a research associate from the smell and taste center. We heard about bitter herbs, the Truth (with a capital t), and taste receptors, and we contemplated the bittersweet with a decadent chocolate reception. Eric Karlan wrote about the event for his "Notes from the Green Couch" series. This year, we turned to rock: Rocky Horror, rock music, crystal dream therapy, Rocky, and stone soup. 7-up on Rock also featured plenty of rock-themed foods, from cave-aged cheese to rocky road.

Fred Moten

Tracie Morris, our CPCW Fellow in Poetics and Poetic Practice, invited poet and scholar Fred Moten to the Writers House on February 28th for a reading and discussion of his work. Tracie's brief description of the reading can be found on her blog, along with a great picture of Fred and Samuel Delany taken that night. You can download the reading from Fred Moten's PennSound page. And while you're there, check out Fred's lecture "Black Kant (Pronounced Chant)," a discussion of the relationship between race and the imagination in Kant's late philosophy.

light of my life, fire of my loins

Beginning at noon on March 27th and continuing, relentless, until we're done, a series of volunteers - you! - will read Nabokov's Lolita out loud from beginning to end, "light of my life" all the way through to "immortality." Whether you join us as a reader or a listener, for one hot minute or the whole day, you'll be treated to a delicious spread of treats plucked fresh from Lolita's pages: lollipops and road food, candy and ginger ale. We need all the readers that we can get! If you're interested in a ten-minute time slot (and the complimentary CD featuring the chart-topping pop hits of Lolita's day that you'll receive for your participation) email Erin Gautsche at gautsche@writing.upenn.edu. How could you say no? And do you have an idea for next year's marathon reading? (Last year we read On the Road). Email wh@writing.upenn.edu with your idea.

ten years of theorizing

Founded in 1996 and coordinated by graduate students in Penn's Program in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory, the Theorizing lecture series is an experimental forum for thinking through literature, philosophy, and culture beyond disciplinary boundaries. Each semester, the Theorizing team invites an exciting roster of guests to the Writers House, from philosopher and cultural critic Slavoj Zizek, who visited in September 2000, to Columbia Professor Martin Puchner, who visited last week (March 2008). For a full listing of past events (with audio recording when available) visit the Theorizing archives. To hear about upcoming lectures, please email wh@writing.upenn.edu with a request to join the Theorizing listserv.

recent photos

The online Writers House calendar serves as our archive for sound recordings, event descriptions, and photos -- lots and lots of photos. Look here for photos from Art Spiegelman's two day visit, here for photos from our book release party for Al Filreis, and here for photos of our annual Mind of Winter program, including a luscious picture of Erin Gautsche's yummy soups. Thank staffers Kathryn Lipman and John Carroll for their great photography!

PennSound readings available

You can listen to recent Writers House programs on PennSound, an ongoing CPCW project committed to producing new audio recordings and preserving existing audio archives: Brian Kim Stefans talking about digital literature, Rachel Blau DuPlessis reading from Torques (Salt, 2008), and Dorothea Lasky and Matthew Rohrer, reading for the Emergency series. Most Writers House readings and programs are available for free download through medialinks, which keeps an alphabetical catalogue of all recordings.

Thursday, March 6, 12 PM

The Sylvia W. Kauders series presents "The '08 Election & the Media Revolution," a lunch talk by Dick Polman. Spaces are limited! Please RSVP to wh@writing.upenn.edu.

Join us on Thursday, March 6th at noon for lunch and discussion with political columnist and Penn professor Dick Polman, who will discuss the print and online coverage of the presidential primaries and look at how the media revolution might well shape the autumn election. Will this race be more negative than ever before? This and other Writers House lunch programs are generously supported by Sylvia W. Kauders.