Monday, July 26, 2010

2010-2011 ArtsEdge Resident

The Kelly Writers House and Facilities and Real Estate Services (FRES) of the University of Pennsylvania are excited to announce the recipient of the 2010-2011 ArtsEdge Residency: New York City-based poet and author Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz.

ArtsEdge is a collaborative residency project designed to encourage the careers of emergent writers. Residencies last for one year and include an apartment, studio space in the AIR Space artistic nexus on 40th street, and close affiliation with Penn's writing communities. ArtsEdge aims to support the work of emerging writers, to foster an environment that will inspire innovative writing, and to enrich West Philadelphia by encouraging young writers to live and work here.

Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz is the author of the non-fiction book Words in Your Face: A Guided Tour Through Twenty Years of the New York City Poetry Slam (Soft Skull Press, 2008) -- which we featured for the 2008 Caroline Rothstein Oral Poetry Program. She's also written five books of poetry, most recently Everything is Everything (Write Bloody Press, 2010). Cristin's work has appeared in a wide variety of places including McSweeney’s Internet Tendancies, Rattle, Conduit, Barrelhouse, Pank, decomP, kill author, and La Petite Zine. She lives in New York City, where she helps run the NYC-Urbana Poetry series at the Bowery Poetry Club.

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

eco-poetics comes to KWH

We're very pleased to announce that Marcella Durand will be the CPCW Fellow in Poetics & Poetic Practice here at Penn for next year. In the spring semester she will teach a creative writing course in eco-poetics. Durand's bio and a brief description of her course are here.

Friday, June 11, 2010

Emily Harnett really gets David Milch

David Milch visited us this spring and most of the students in the Kelly Writers House Fellows seminar were enthralled by his work and by him. Among these was Emily Harnett. Emily was dazzled by Deadwood and then surprised at how brilliant she finally thought John from Cincinnati is--the latter being Milch's supposed one-season HBO flop. Emily wrote a paper about JFC and our YouTube maven Amaris caught up with her and filmed her reading this great paper. Click here and watch.

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

KWH on YouTube


Subscribe to the Kelly Writers House YouTube channel. It's been there for a while, but this summer we're adding a slew of video clips from a selection of our programs. Click here and click "subscribe." We're thankful already to our own hub member/staffer Amaris who has been uploading videos and will continue to do so all summer.

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

welcome to the Writers House

These days, when you enter the Writers House at 3805 Locust Walk in Philly, you'll see to your left in the vestibule an exhibit case displaying a new 15th Room Press broadside or some other new art object. You'll also be able to put on some earphones and listen to and watch excerpts from three or four recent KWH programs. Welcome to the Writers House! (Thanks to our director Jessica Lowenthal, who designed the case; and thanks for Steve McLaughlin for editing the looping video.)

Monday, May 24, 2010

new PoemTalk: Howe's Dickinson

From left to right: Marcella Durand, Jessica Lowenthal, Jennifer Scappettone. They're in the faculty director's office at the Writers House, having just finished discussing Susan Howe's reading of Emily Dickinson's "My Life had stood - a Loaded Gun." It's the 32nd episode of the PoemTalk podcast. Please have a listen.

Saturday, May 15, 2010

Beth Kephart at Alumni Day

At left is Beth Kephart, reading from her work at KWH on Alumni Day, Saturday May 15. She read with Alice Eliot Dark--a fantastic pair of readings. Afterwards photos were taken as Al Filreis and Moira Moody gathered 'round with Beth and Alice. Then separately, Al and Beth went home and blogged about the gathering. Bear with us, as now you read what Al wrote in his blog and follow the link to Beth's blog:

Just a few hours ago today at the Writers House, with me from left to right: Alice Eliot Dark, Moira Moody, Beth Kephart. Alice and Beth read beautifully from their work. I was ready to explain the interlocking connections of these four, and planned to link from here to Beth's blog, which I read regularly. So naturally I went to Beth's blog to pick up the URL for the link and, lo and behold, Beth had driven home and had already written out the merge. So I need only refer to you her blog, which I do so happily. Let me only add that I've been a pleased and moved reader of Alice's "In the Gloaming" for years and was gratified that she chose to read from that very story this afternoon at KWH. Pretty soon we'll have a recording available and you can listen too.