John Ashbery on aging and memory

John Ashbery is interviewed by KWH Faculty Director Al Filreis on February 12, 2013, during Ashbery's stint as a KWH Fellow. Here they discuss poetry, aging and memory.

a history of the Writers House in 19 minutes

This is a video recording of the 15th anniversary celebration of the Kelly Writers House, held during homecoming weekend that year. Three of Al Filreis's former students, and KWH's first Director, Kerry Sherin Wright, presented their work. But before they did that, Al gave a high-speed talk on the founding of the Writers House three times in succession: first a "conservative" narrative of KWH, then a liberal narrative, and finally a radical narrative.

Locust Street looking east in 1953

This photograph was taken on May 29, 1953, on the 38th block of Locust Street in West Philadelphia. The photographer was looking east toward the center of the University of Pennsylvania. Today, from this vantage, one would see Locust Walk (not Street), and in the distance one would see the street go upward over the 38th Street pedestrian bridge. Along the right side of this view today one would see the edge of Harnwell House ("High Rise East") and then, further away, the front edge of the Class of 1920 Commons. The Samuel Sloan-designed house at 3805 Locust Walk - now the Kelly Writers House - is not visible here (as it is set back from the street), but near where we've placed a red dot is the street-side path that leads to the porch and front door of the house. For more information about this photograph, click here.

Ken Lum

Ken Lum, new director of undergraduate Fine Arts at Penn and important language-y artist, visited KWH recently for a lunchtime program moderated by Al Filreis. For more about the event and about Ken, click here.

This video is an excerpt from "pitch night" for our "Entrepreneurial Jounalism" class taught by Sam Apple. These two student presentations proposed new applications to address current trends and problems in long-form nonfiction writing and publishing. You can watch the complete video - with all the student pitches - here. This program was sponsored by our Creative Ventures program.