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.