David Milch

David Milch is visiting us at the end of April. Seats are strictly limited; reserve seats by emailing whfellow AT writing DOT upenn DOT edu. For more info, click here.

Milch is known for complex, rich characters and drama that is at once beautiful, profane, complex and sublime; modern and Elizabethan; low and high; comic and tragic. Mr. Milch is the creator (and, often, the main writer) of the television series NYPD Blue, Deadwood, and John From Cincinnati and has worked as executive producer on those shows and others. His joining the writing team at Hill Street Blues (in season 3) many credit as the turning point in that long-running drama. Mr. Milch won the "Outstanding Writing in a Drama Series" Emmy in 1983 for Hill Street Blues and in 1995, 1997 and 1998 for NYPD Blue, among many nominations. He has also won three Humanitas Prizes and two Edgar Allan Poe Awards, which honor mystery writers of all kinds. In 1994, Mr. Milch was named Television Producer of the Year by the Producers Guild of America and in 1999 he was the recipient of the Laurel Award from the Writers Guild of America for Television Writing Achievement. A star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame was dedicated to Mr. Milch in 2006.

Before making his way to Hollywood, Mr. Milch attended Yale and earned an MFA from the Iowa Writers Workshop. Mr. Milch's fiction and poetry have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly and The Southern Review. There is no doubt that Mr. Milch's writerly strength and wild imagination have been the keys to his and his shows' success. The Washington Post has written that in its "beautifully ugly glory," Deadwood is, "magnificently gritty in appearance and poetically obscene in language."

Major League Baseball at KWH

We're excited to meet DOUG GLANVILLE, former MLB player and Penn grad, now "the academic ambassador to baseball" and an Op-Ed columnist for the New York Times. Doug will join us for lunch on Wednesday (March 3rd) at noon -- and there are still a few seats left! Do you want to hear about baseball from a baseball insider? Are you a budding sportswriter? Join us! reserve your seat by emailing wh@writing.upenn.edu or call (215) 746-POEM.

all our video & audio recordings

Our "medialinks" web database is a huge, huge, huge index of all recordings--in all formats--made at the Writers House over the years. A few date back to 1996, but for the most part the earliest recordings are from 1997. These days we make both video and audio recordings: the videos are in QuickTime format (.mov) and the audio is always mp3. In earlier years we made RealAudio and RealVideo. You can still download RealPlayer at real.com. In some cases we are converting the old Real formats into .mov and mp3. Here is your link to medialinks.

KWH'ers in Banff

Last night in Banff, Alberta, two time zones away from KWH: immediately after Charles Bernstein's stunning performance of his poetry there was a bit of a group hug among the Penn/Kelly Writers House-affiliated people who are attending the conference, which is entitled "Interventions" and entails presentations about new writing practices. From left to right they are: Julia Bloch, Al Filreis, Rebekah Caton, Charles Bernstein, Kimberly Eisler, Sarah Dowling, Nick Montfort, and Kenny Goldsmith. Nick, a longtime "hub" member and former grad student in Penn's computer science engineering department, is now an associate professor at M.I.T. (Thanks to Erin Moure for taking the shot.)

Joyce Carol Oates visits

In Tuesday's (Feb 16) Daily Pennsylvanian an article covering Joyce Carol Oates' visit to KWH begins this way:

Monday night, students packed into what one organizer described as a “sandbox of a space” to see famous author Joyce Carol Oates. The author of over 60 novels spent the evening in the Kelly Writers House reading four of her pieces, answering the audience’s questions and signing books for students, faculty and the general public. Her visit to the Kelly Writers House was a part of the Writers House Fellows program. Each year the students in the Fellows course read the works of three prominent authors.

For more about the Writers House Fellows program, click here

the snow man

The video recording of our annual January "Mind of Winter" event--which always begins with a reading of "The Snow Man" by Wallace Stevens--is now available: here.

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

snow cancellation: Michael Stolowitzky

It continues to snow! And the terrible weather will force us to postpone the scheduled discussion with survivor-writer Michael Stolowitzky, originally scheduled for 3:00 p.m., Thursday, February 11th. We want to be sure that you can join us for the conversation, so we'll find a less snowy day to host it; you'll hear about a new date soon. Meantime, check our web calendar for up to date programming information.

Sam Apple reading -- postponed

We're worried about the snow! and many of you are worried too and have called to ask about tonight's program, featuring Sam Apple (Tuesday, February 9th) .

So, as painful as it is, we have decided to POSTPONE the SAM APPLE READING.

We'll let you know when we have a new date.

Meantime: stay warm.

ArtsEdge program subsidizes artists' rent

We're pleased to see that our ArtsEdge program is mentioned in an article in today's Daily Pennsylvanian. We subsidize rent for emergent artists - one writer per year who is associated with the Kelly Writers House (and, often, will teach a course). The project is a collaboration with the Fine Arts department of Penn's School of Design and the Real Estate and Facilities division.

top 10 PennSound poets for January

Most oft-visited PennSound author pages in the past month: 1) Ginsberg, 2) Pound, 3) WC Williams, 4) Ashbery, 5) Creeley, 6) Olson, 7) Howe, 8) Baraka, 9) Christian Bok, 10) Spicer, 11) Reznikoff Holocaust page, 12) Berrigan, 13) C. Bernstein [60-Second Lecture page].

This last item is the video recording of a 60-second lecture given by Charles Bernstein on the topic, "What Makes a Poem a Poem?" It has a punchline ending, so be sure to watch.

Jacket magazine moves to KWH!

On Thursday evening, February 4, 2010, John Tranter and Al Filreis are sending out the following announcement:

Dear friends:

We are writing with news of a transition we both deem very exciting.

By the end of 2010, John Tranter and Pam Brown will have put out 40 issues of Jacket (jacketmagazine.com). It began in what John recalls as "a rash moment" in 1997 - an early all-online magazine, one of the earliest in the world of poetry and poetics, and quite rare for its consistency over the years. "The design is beautiful, the contents awesomely voluminous, the slant international modernist and experimental." (So said _The Guardian_.)

After issue 40, John will retire from thirteen years of intense every-single-day involvement with Jacket, and the entire archive of thousands of web pages will move intact to servers at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, where it will of course be available on the internet to everyone, for free, as always. But the magazine is not ceasing publication: quite the opposite.

Starting with the first issue in 2011, Jacket will have a new home, extra staff and a vigorous future as Jacket2. Jacket and its continuation, Jacket2, will be hosted by the Kelly Writers House and PennSound at the University of Pennsylvania.

The connection with PennSound, a vast and growing archive of audio recordings of poetry performance, discussion and criticism, is seen as a valuable additional facet of the new magazine, as is the relationship with busy Kelly Writers House, a lively venue for day-to-day poetic interchange of all kinds. The synergy in this three-way relationship has great potential.

Al will become Publisher and Jessica Lowenthal, Director of the Writers House, will be Associate Publisher. The new Editor will be Michael S. Hennessey (currently Managing Editor of PennSound) and the new Managing Editor will be Julia Bloch. John will be available as Founding Editor, and Pam will continue as Associate Editor.

More news about Jacket2 in the weeks and months to come. Meantime, the Jacket2 folks extend gratitude -- as many in the world of poetics do -- to John and to Pam Brown for the extraordinary work they've done. And John, for his part, is mightily pleased that Jacket will be preserved and will continue and grow in a somewhat new mode but with a continuous mission and approach.

- John Tranter & Al Filreis
jacketmagzine.com