our Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing

The Kelly Writers House is affiliated with CPCW, the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing. KWH was founded in 1994-95; then, in 2003, all of Penn's writing programs converged to form a center with associated organizations: the Creative Writing Program, the Critical Writing Program, the Writers House, and then, soon, PennSound (now the largest archive of recorded poetry anywhere), the Bassini Writing Apprentices, the CPCW/ICA yearlong seminar on contemporary art and writing, the PoemTalk podcast series, RealArts@Penn, and others. All friends and denizens of the Writers House are invited to explore our community, and give us a call at 215-746-POEM or stop by 3805 Locust if you ever have any questions about how to take fullest advantage of the resources of our writing block down here at 38th.

Video excerpt from a celebration of Gertrude Stein

Dylanfest on October 20 at 6 PM

Nine Dylanists each talk about - and briefly play - one favorite Dylan song. It's Thursday, October 20, at 6 PM, to help celebrate Dylan's 70th birthday. We've got quite a line-up. Cecilia Corrigan on "Leopard Skin Pill Box Hat"; Anthony DeCurtis on "The Groom's Still Waiting at the Altar"; Greg Djanikian on "Señor"; Al Filreis on "Series of Dreams"; John Giannotti on "Bob Dylan's Dream"; Jessy Ginsberg on "Up to Me"; Alan Light on "Where Are You Tonight"; Ralph Rosen on "Idiot Wind"; Nina Wolpow on "Don't Think Twice." And Jessy Pepi Ginsberg will perform her own arrangement of "Up to Me."

Beijing-based journalist for "Science" - October 6

October 6, a lunch talk with Mara Hvistendahl, supported by the Maury Povich Fund for Journalism Programs, 11:30 AM in the Arts Cafe.

Mara Hvistendahl is a Beijing-based correspondent for Science. Her first book, Unnatural Selection, is a captivating and at turns sinister technological history that examines not only the consequences of the misbegotten policies underlying sex selection but also the West's role in creating them. Her award-winning writing has also appeared in Harper's, Scientific American, Popular Science, The Financial Times, and Foreign Policy. Proficient in both Spanish and Chinese, she has spent half of the past decade in China, where she has reported on everything from archaeology to the space program. A former contributing editor at Seed magazine and journalism professor at Fudan University in Shanghai, Hvistendahl sits on the advisory board of Round Earth Media, an organization founded to promote international journalism.

lunchtime seminar on pastoral

“PASTORAL ORIGINS,” A CONVERSATION WITH ANNIE SEATON

12:00 PM in the Arts Cafe

rsvp: email wh@writing.upenn.edu or call 215-746-POEM

Since Theocritus, the pastoral has been about origin, loss, and difference. This stands against the cliched image of the pastoral as idealized nature scenes of frolicking, hyper-sexual shepherds. In fact, those cliches, along with the dryly canonical nature of much of the secondary literature on the pastoral, have encouraged the neglect of some important and interesting themes. Quietly influential, the pastoral affect is, in fact, one of the dominant cultural modes by which the West represents itself — and it may even, in fact, be one of the earliest sources of the mythopoetic fashioning of cultural nationalism, considered broadly. This talk will consider passages from Theocritus to Heidegger, to read the pastoral as a search for lost origins vs. a clash with "difference." After a brief introductory talk by Annie Seaton, participants will be invited to consider and discuss passages.

Ann Seaton worked with Mary Lefkowitz and Frank Bidart at Wellesley, where she was a two-time undergraduate Academy of American Poets Prize winner and a Mellon Fellow. At Harvard, she studied American, French, and English literature and literary theory with Barbara Johnson. Subsequently, Annie was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Brown, and has taught at Skidmore, CUNY, and Bard College, where she is presently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Humanities. Annie is working on a book-length project, Pastoral Origins. Her main interests are in Ancient Greek, English Renaissance, French 18th and 19th century, and American 18th-20th century literature.

Susan Schultz visits the Writers House

On Wednesday, September 14, join us for a poetry reading given by Susan Schultz. It begins at 6 PM. Susan M. Schultz teaches at the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa. She has edited Tinfish Press, which publishes experimental poetry from the Pacific, since 1995. Among her books of poems and poetic prose is Dementia Blog (Singing Horse Press, 2008). She is also the author of A Poetics of Impasse in Modern and Contemporary American Poetry (University of Alabama Press, 2005), and of the Tinfish Editor's Blog, among other work. Susan will be spending the better part of a week with us, while she begins her sabbatical leave from teaching and makes her way from poetry spot to poetry spot on the US mainland. Susan Schultz's book, Dementia Blog, is an innovative look at the way memory works and, at once, a memoir of her mother's struggles with Alzheimer's Disease. An episode of PoemTalk was devoted to that work. Please listen.

2011-12 KWH online book groups announced

Shakespeare - David Foster Wallace - John O'Hara - Bob Dylan - romanticism
poetics & motherhood - John Barth - Lorrie Moore

We are pleased to announce our slate of 2011-2012 alumni online book discussion groups. All Penn alumni (and parents of current students) are eligible to participate. We have hosted these groups every year since 1999, and thousands of alumni have enjoyed wide-ranging conversations about books with Penn faculty.

Go here to see this year's groups. Sam Apple discusses David Foster Wallace. John Richetti, distinguished professor of English emeritus, leads a conversation about Shakespeare's sonnets. Myra Lotto and Michael Gamer team up to talk about romanticism. Patrick Bredehoft will lead a 10-day discussion of Bob Dylan's "talkin' songs." I will lead a month-long online seminar on the short fiction of John Barth. And more.

No special software or applications needed. All you need is a working email address. To register, write to whbook@writing.upenn.edu. We continue to be grateful for the generous support of David Roberts (W'83) who makes KWH Book Groups possible.