KWH on YouTube

At right you see a videocap of Kaegan Sparks delivering her valedictory speech at last May's "Senior Capstone" program--our way of enabling departing members of the Writers House community to say a goodbye that's truly ALT-graduation. An excerpt of Kaegan's speech is available here on YouTube. Now, if you haven't spent any time watching our collection of video excerpts on YouTube, please go here and have a look. Thanks to Amaris, KWH"s YouTube maven, this collection is growing every week.

the writers' block at 38th

Since 2003 the Kelly Writers House has been affiliated with all of Penn's other writing programs through the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing (CPCW). CPCW is the home of the Critical Writing Program, which hosts the Marks Writing Center and through which all undergrads fulfill their writing requirement; the Creative Writing Program; PennSound; RealArts@PENN summer internships; the Bassini Writing Apprenticeships program; and the Chinese/American Association for Poetry and Poetics (CAAP). Go here and explore all of it. KWH is of course at 3805 Locust Walk and the rest of CPCW has its home at 3808 Walnut. These two buildings, though on different blocks along 38th Street, are back to back. We call it The Writers' Block.

we're closed this week but we're skittering across the snow

The Kelly Writers House is closed this week, so all the snow that fell on us here and on our many KWH affiliates who spend lots of time in New York didn't affect our operations or our programs. We are certainly looking forward a new semester of events, but in the meantime we're watching our happy pals skitter across the snow. A prime instance: in Manhattan on 12/27/10 Anthony DeCurtis' daughter Francesca and his wife Alex went out into Central Park to play, whereupon they were interviewed and filmed by CBS News. Click here to watch that night's CBS Evening News - go to 3:45 and you'll see Francesca and Alex. We imagine Anthony safe inside, drinking hot coffee and writing another of his fabulous reviews.

our very first live interactive webcast (July 1999)

On July 8, 1999, we at the Writers House held our first live interactive webcast. The discussion was all about William Carlos Williams's "To Elsie" (the pure products of America go crazy) from Spring and All. Al Filreis hosted and was joined by Bob Perelman, Shawn Walker (formerly our first director), and Kristen Gallagher. We fielded questions from people watching on the internet, among them Jena Osman and Terrence Diggory.

It was streamed as video in RealVideo format and preserved as a video later in the same format. (Those who have RealPlayers installed still can watch the grainy video.) Later we extracted the audio from the video and now we've segmented that audio into topical segments. Here are the segments:

[] Bob Perelman reading "To Elsie" (2:21)

[] Kristen Gallagher on facing alterity (4:30)

[] Al Filreis on the poem's uncertainty (1:54)

[] Bob Perelman and Al Filreis on "the pure products of America" and the issue of control (5:26)

[] Shawn Walker, Al Filreis, Kristen Gallagher and Bob Perelman on Williams' position towards Elsie (6:44)

[] Bob Perelman and Al Filreis on imagination (8:26)
audience comments and Bob Perelman on "peasant traditions" (3:17)

[] Bob Perelman on how the open architecture and "unsuccessful" quality of Williams' poems are relevant to poetics today

[] Al Filreis on Williams' attraction to the new "mixed" American culture

Here is the link to the page with links to audio and video.

Jamie-Lee's workshop students

Students in Jamie-Lee Josselyn's creative writing workshop performed their own writing at a recent event at the Writers House.

a few words from the Green Couch

We're sitting on the famous comfy Green Couch in our Karlan Family Alcove off the living room at the Writers House. Cozy and warm as always inside, and dismal early-winterish outside. Our programs slow down these days, as the university's semester winds down and faculty and students alike prep for big last papers and final exams. But we're also readying for a huge winter and spring of events, symposia, talks, performances and writing groups. (See the previous entry or click the audio stream just above for much more.)

January at the Writers House

Click here to listen to a summary of January 2011 events at the Writers House - including the several-day "North of Invention" program, a gallery exhibit of photographs by Linh Dinh, our annual "Mind of Winter" event, and the 5th birthday celebration of our Common Press. The photograph here, taken by John Carroll at the 2008 Mind of Winter program, gives you a sense of the fabulous soup we make on that wintry evening - or at least of the pleasure taken from said soup by Michelle Taransky.