hear our season's greetings

Click here to listen to your friends at the Kelly Writers House hoping you'll find a good spot to read and write over the holidays. Be sure to have a look at our January calendar and plan to join us at 3805 Locust again in early 2010. We'll see you there!

Oates, Howe, Milch

We here are all looking forward to this winter/spring's annual Kelly Writers House Fellows: Joyce Carol Oates in February, Susan Howe in March and David Milch in April. Each visit enables two public events--a Monday evening reading/talk and a Tuesday morning interview/conversation. Seating is limited. Reservations: whfellow@writing.upenn.edu or (215) 573-9749.

student voices on XPN

Our pals in the Critical Writing program sponsor a course with XPN radio (xpn.org) and here are some of the radio pieces the students reported, wrote, and performed on the air. The course is led by Roger Lamay, XPN's general manager.

KWH'er along the Mississippi

Have you read the amazing Mississippi Project blog lately? You really should go back to it. KWH-affiliated guy (splendid writer) Gabe Crane and several friends took canoes down the Big Muddy a few summers back and blogged all the way (using a Palm Treo smartphone, mostly, and sometimes writing from inside the boat). Click here for the introduction and then link to the blog itself. On the blog, of course, you should read backwards--earliest entries first.

we remember Bob Lucid

The man in the center is Bob Lucid at Penn - escorting Norman Mailer and Richard Wilbur through campus. Bob died suddenly a few years ago, and we miss him. It was Bob who first cleared the way politically for the possibility of a house for writers, and who then advocated for the space at 3805 Locust and supported those of us--the original "hub" group--who convened in the old dilapidated cottage in October '95 to begin the planning process. And through the first ten years of KWH, Bob was here often. In his memory, we host an annual event featuring a novelist. (Bob was the first member of the English faculty at Penn who regularly brought contemporary writers to campus - to meet with classes, including undergraduate classes. He did this so often, in fact, that his courses were like Writers Houses.) Bob long dreamed of what he called "a loft space" - a non-curricular intellectual utopia in which people of all academic castes could gather, write, think and plan their interventions against literary obviousness. Be sure to check out our Bob Lucid memorial page.

Ted Solotaroff was here

The late Ted Solotaroff--one of the most important literary editors of the '60s and '70s--visited us in 2003. He had recently published his very frank memoir, First Loves. He had been an editor of Commentary and the editor of Bookweek before he founded the influential literary journal New American Review. He is the author of The Red-Hot Vacuum, A Few Good Voices in My Head, and First Loves: A Memoir. He taught at the University of Chicago, Yale, Columbia, the City College of New York, and the University of California at Berkeley. He lived in East Quogue, Long Island, and in Paris. It was in the pages of the New American Review where one might have found Max Apple's amazing short fiction for the first time. Even then, as one handled the paperback-formatted and -sized magazine, one had a sense of Solotaroff's editorial presence. It was strong and clear somehow.

[] Solotaroff at the Writers House: LINK
[] audio recording of his talk: LINK
[] New York Times obit: LINK

talkers talk a poem

On 11/30 we released the 26th episode of the PoemTalk podcast series. This one's a 25-minute conversation at the Writers House about Vachel Lindsay's wildly performed poem "The Congo." The talkers are Al Filreis (host), Michelle Taransky, Charles Bernstein and (visiting us from Penn State) Aldon Nielsen. Have a listen. PoemTalk is co-sponsored by the Kelly Writers House, PennSound and the Poetry Foundation. Above and at left: Aldon, Michelle, and Charles in Al's office on KWH's third floor.