A message from Al & Jessica

A message sent by Al Filreis & Jessica Lowenthal to the Writers House community:

We unequivocally support justice for those murdered and brutalized by police: Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Tony McDade, and countless others. We unequivocally support justice for those lynched by civilians: Ahmaud Arbery, Nina Pop, and countless others.

Anything we might say in this time of rage, despair, and mourning would be inadequate and incommensurate as a response to these deaths, especially because so many members of our community are in pain and there is so much work to do. But we do want to state a few things simply and plainly:

We firmly now and always stand against racial injustice, inequality, and police brutality.

We resolutely affirm that Black lives matter.

And we are committed as always to amplifying the ideas and voices of our community, many of whom are engaged daily in the necessary work of change. That is what the Writers House was founded to do nearly 25 years ago and now more than ever we consciously intend to honor that mission.

We’re putting together a livestream event on Monday, June 15 at 6:00 PM that will feature some of our community members sharing thoughts, writing, and reflection. We’ll send more info soon. Meantime, please put that date and time in your calendar and we hope you’ll plan to participate.

And in the coming days, weeks, and months we plan to use outreach methods the Kelly Writers House has created and extended over the years — connecting a strong network of artists, writers, teachers, students, citizens — to share readings, writings, ideas, resources, and projects that provide urgently needed information, challenge racist assumptions and structures, might bring comfort, and are otherwise relevant to this extraordinarily difficult time. Here, for now, we share a few links, as recommended by some of our community members.

We hope you will join us in this effort by sending us links to and information about some of the projects, readings, ventures, stories, and work that you find important and relevant right now. We will share what we can with our networks via email and social media. Send your notes and suggestions to whresources@writing.upenn.edu .

Please click HERE for the full statement and the links posted on June 3.

COVID-19 UPDATE

To help protect the community from the spread of COVID-19, in accordance with the University of Pennsylvania’s guidelines and the CDC, and to protect our community, Kelly Writers House will be closed until further notice. 

We encourage you to follow us here and on social media for news of digital events, and to take time to explore our archive of recorded material. Resources include PennSound and Medialinks. 

If you are a prospective student looking to learn more about Kelly Writers House, please contact Jamie-Lee Josselyn.

KWH Post-Bacc Fellow 2019-20: Maya Arthur

We are thrilled to announce that MAYA ARTHUR (C’18) has been selected as the inaugural Kelly Writers House Post-Baccalaureate Fellow. The KWH Post-Bacc Fellows project extends a central objective of the Writers House: to direct resources toward opportunities, learning experiences, and foundational support for young writers. The position comes with a full year of support (a full-time salary, mentorship, and career-boosting learning opportunities). During the course of her fellowship, Maya will pursue a year-long, self-directed creative project, working closely with Professor Simone White, who has been named her faculty mentor. She will also work several hours a week at Writers House, where she will learn about PennSound and Jacket2, and will assist with public events. Here’s more about Maya: Maya is a writer and novice archivist/artist/researcher. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a BA in English with a concentration in Creative Writing. During her time at Penn, she gardened in graves, started a zine library, discussed witches at length, and ate as much Fu Wah banh mi as she could. Her senior year thesis was titled "Comma, Virginia," a collection of poetry that sought to find cohesion through the collision and estrangement of genre, perspective, and mobility. In her thesis, she focused on the intricacies and history of her father's family and the small, rural town they are from and still reside. She is currently based in New York but is so excited to come back to the Writers House community. Through the KWH Post-Bacc Fellowship, she hopes to expand her thesis into a multimedia project that explores creating one's own archive. She is a 2019 Lambda Poetry Fellow. More information about the KWH Post-Bacc Fellows Program is available here: http://writing.upenn.edu/wh/people/postbaccfellow/ . We’re excited to see what Maya will do! Please join us in congratulating her.

Your Language My Ear

Join us for Your Language My Ear! Click HERE for more info. This program is a translation symposium that brings together Russian and American poets, along with American scholars, translators and students of Russian poetry, for intensive translation of contemporary poetry from Russian to English and vice versa at the University of Pennsylvania. The third YLME symposium is scheduled for March 13-March 20 and will include events at Princeton University, our partner institution. Our guests for this iteration of the symposium include: Polina Barskova, Dmitry Kuzmin, Elena Mikhailik, Galina Rymbu, and Leonid Schwab. For more information, visit the project website.

9-day writer's residency—apply before 12/1/18

HOSTED BY BUZZ BISSINGER AND LISA SMITH AT THEIR FIVE-ACRE WATERFRONT PROPERTY IN THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST.

March 2 through March 10, 2018 (Penn’s spring break)

Buzz Bissinger and Lisa Smith, in collaboration with the Kelly Writers House, are sponsoring a writer’s residency at their guest cottage on the Long Beach Peninsula in the southwest corner of Washington State. Recipients of the Clearman Cottage Residency will reside at a fully appointed cottage (with kitchen, room to write, wifi connection, etc.) on magnificent Willapa Bay, minutes from the Pacific Ocean. The residency provides young writers with continuous writing time and space in an idyllic setting in order that they may make substantial progress on a significant writing project—a novel, short stories, literary nonfiction, journalism, play, memoir, screenplay, song lyrics, etc.

Domestic round-trip airfare, ground transportation, lodging, and a stipend for meals are provided.

HOW TO APPLY

Applications are due December 1, 2018. The application consists of (1) a cover letter not to exceed two pages describing your experience and interests as a writer, your affiliation with the Kelly Writers House and/or one of Penn’s writing programs, and what you hope to accomplish through the Clearman Cottage Residency; (2) a one-page description of your writing project, its scope, its likely state as of the start of the residency; (3) a short (1-5 page) writing sample, and (4) a resume, including a list of all writing courses taken at Penn (with names of instructors). Please submit application materials via email to RJ Bernocco.

You are eligible to apply if you are a currently matriculated undergraduate at Penn.

ModPo opens on 9/8/18 (ten week free course on poetry)

Since 2012 KWH has hosted a free, open, online course on modern & contemporary U.S. poetry called "ModPo." Yes, it's free (like everything else at KWH). Yes, it's truly open to all. Some 180,000 people have participated in these past six years. The new ModPo season starts on September 8. To enroll go here: https://www.coursera.org/learn/modpo . If you have questions, contact us at modpo@writing.upenn.edu.

computer-generated books

On February 5, 2018, the people of the Kelly Writers House welcomed Nick Montfort, Allison Parish, and Rafael Pérez y Pérez who joined us to talk about computer-generated book. Using Electricity is a series of computer generated books published by Counterpath Press, meant to reward reading in conventional and unconventional ways. The series title takes a line from the computer generated poem “A House of Dust,” developed by Alison Knowles with James Tenney in 1967. This work, a FORTRAN computer program and a significant early generator of poetic text, combines different lines to produce descriptions of houses. The series is edited by Nick Montfort. The first three books in the series are The Truelist by Nick Montfort, Mexica: 20 Years—20 Stories [Mexica: 20 años—20 historias] by Rafael Pérez y Pérez, and Articulations by Allison Parrish. You can watch the video recording of this event by clicking HERE. An audio recording is HERE.