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October 2008

Wednesday, 10/1

8:00 PM in the Arts Cafe: Speakeasy: Poetry, Prose, and Anything Goes!

Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)

Thursday, 10/2

6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe: EMERGENCY presents Sueyeun Juliette Lee and Christopher Stackhouse.

Sueyeun Juliette LeeSueyeun Juliette Lee grew up three miles from the CIA and currently lives in Philadelphia, PA where she edits her small chapbook series, Corollary Press, and is pursuing her PhD in English from Temple University, where she holds fellowships with the Center of Humanities and the Institute for the Study of Race and Social Thought. Previously, she received her MFA in poetry and certificate in Advanced Feminist Studies from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Her poetry has appeared in journals such as Chain, 26, The Columbia Poetry Review, Effing, and MiPOesias' Asian American collection. Her poem "Down the mountain (an afternoon appearance of man and mystery)," a response to African-American painter Lamar Peterson's work, was included in the anthology Painters on Poets. Her chapbooks include Trespass Slightly In (online with Coconut), Perfect Villagers (Octopus Books) and Mental Commitment Robots (Yo Yo Labs). As an editor, Sueyeun specifically seeks out authors whose aesthetics challenge the boundaries of intelligibility for suitably "raced" work, such as painter and African-American poet Christopher Stackhouse's lyric meditations on the visual line in Slip (Corollary 2006) or Indian emigre Bhanu Kapil's hybrid memoir of displacement, colonialism, and mental illness in Water Damage (Corollary 2007). Her forthcoming book of poetry, That Gorgeous Feeling (Coconut, 2008), explores East/West discursive circulations through the notion of celebrity.

Christopher StackhouseChristopher Stackhouse is the author of Slip (Corollary Press, 2005); is co-author of Seismosis (1913 Press, 2006) a collaboration with writer/professor John Keene (Northwestern University), that features Stackhouse's drawings in dialogue with Keene's text. He holds and MFA in Writing/Interdisciplinary Studies from Bard College. He is a Cave Canem Writers Fellow. His essay "Everyone's Own Color Red" that compares the poetry of Hart Crane and Bob Kaufman, is published in the Spring 2008 issue of American Poet: The Journal of the Academy of American Poets. In the new curator program "New Voices, New York @ Chashama's ABC Gallery" in New York City, he participates as co-curator with artist/curators Kelly Kivland and Alisoun Meehan, bringing together the current group exhibition titled "Contranym" that features mixed media work of artists Robert Delford Brown, Victoria Fu, Brian Kim Stefans, John Cage, and Stephanie Loveless. In January 2009, he will be performing with John Keene during the month long writing and performance festival "When Does It or You Begin? (Memory as Innovation)" curated by Amina Cain & Jennifer Karmin at the performance space *Links Hall* in Chicago. He will also be a guest faculty member in the Naropa University Summer Writing Program 2009, at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics in Boulder, Colorado. Currently completing a manuscript of poetry, while also doing research for the development of a non-fiction book on poetics, Stackhouse lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)

Friday, 10/3

12:00 PM in the Arts Cafe: the Sylvia Kauders lunch series presents Gerald M. Stern discussing his new book The Scotia Widows: Inside Their Lawsuit Against Big Daddy Coal, introduced by Al Filreis. RSVP to wh@writing.upenn.edu or call (215) 573-9748.

Gerald M. Stern, author of The Scotia Widows: Inside Their Lawsuit Against Big Daddy Coal(Random House, 2008), was a founding partner of the Washington, D.C. law firm of Rogovin, Stern & Huge. Prior to that he was a partner with Arnold and Porter for eleven years, where he was the lead counsel for the survivors of the Buffalo Creek Disaster. He wrote about that experience in The Buffalo Creek Disaster, a recently reissued book still widely used in law schools. Before joining Arnold and Porter he was a trial attorney with the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice, trying voting discrimination cases in the South. He wrote about those experiences in two books, Southern Justice and Outside the Law. He has also served as General Counsel of Occidental Petroleum Corporation and as Special Counsel to the United States Department of Justice. Presently, he is a legal consultant and lives in Washington, D.C.

Praise for The Scotia Widows:

"Gerald M. Stern's The Scotia Widows is a little gem — a timely and timeless story about how the little guys, and their widows, can sometimes find justice in the courtroom."
–Jeffrey Toobin, author of The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court
"This is a very scary story, a guided tour of the grinding cogs and spinning wheels inside the machinery of justice. Gerald Stern's compassionate account of the ordeal of the Scotia widows shows you how horribly out of kilter it can all get when greed and self-interest are at the controls. Only with luck and the expertise of Stern does Justice emerge in the end, a bit tarnished but still intact."
–Jonathan Harr, author of A Civil Action

Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)

Saturday, 10/4

Sunday, 10/5

Monday, 10/6

12:00 PM in the Arts Cafe: A lunch talk with Michael Sokolove, hosted by Dick Polman.

RSVP required. To RSVP, please email wh@writing.upenn.edu or call 215-573-9748.

Michael SokoloveMichael Sokolove is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine, as well as the author of two previous books, The Ticket Out: Darryl Strawberry and The Boys of Crenshaw and Hustle: The Myth, Life, and Lies of Pete Rose. He has appeared on numerous national television and radio news shows, including ABC's Good Morning America and Prime Time Thursday, ESPN's Outside the Lines, and CNN's Paula Zahn Now. He has been a guest on the National Public Radio shows Fresh Air, The Tavis Smiley Show, and Only a Game.

At the New York Times Magazine, and previously with the Sunday magazine of the Philadelphia Inquirer, he has written on a wide range of topics — from life in inner-city America, to eco-terrorism, to presidential politics, to the question of whether would-be assassin John Hinckley should go free. Sokolove's specialty has been the sociology and culture of sports, and he has done some of the most important and provocative writing about sports today.

5:30 PM in the Arts Cafe: Writers House Planning Committee ("the Hub") meeting.

Please RSVP to jalowent@writing.upenn.edu. Join us for pizza and a discussion of upcoming projects.

Any Penn-affiliated person (student, staff member, faculty) is welcome to join the Writers House Planning Committee. Join us to learn more about how you can get involved.

Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)

Tuesday, 10/7

3:30 PM in the Arts Cafe: The podcast series "PoemTalk" records episode #15: Lyn Hejinian, "constant change figures."

Poemtalk logoJoin PoemTalk moderator and host Al Filreis and three friends in the poetics community as they discuss a single poem from the PennSound archive. Episode #15 features a discussion of Lyn Hejinian's "constant change figures." PoemTalk is sponsored by the Writers House and CPCW in collaboration with the Poetry Foundation. For more, see poemtalkatkwh.blogspot.com. If you would like to be a member of the live audience, RSVP to wh@writing.upenn.edu.

Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)

Wednesday, 10/8

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Thursday, 10/9

Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)

Friday, 10/10

Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)

Saturday, 10/11

Sunday, 10/12

Monday, 10/13

The Writers House is closed for Fall Break.

Tuesday, 10/14

The Writers House is closed for Fall Break.

Wednesday, 10/15

8:00 PM in the Arts Cafe: Speakeasy: Poetry, Prose, and Anything Goes!

Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)

Thursday, 10/16

Anthony DeCurtis Presents

Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)

Friday, 10/17

Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)

Saturday, 10/18

Sunday, 10/19

Monday, 10/20

7:00 PM in the Arts Cafe: LIVE at the Writers House, featuring Arts Sanctuary artists L. A. Banks, Solomon Jones, The Twin Poets (Al & Nnamdi), and Ed Shockley, with musical guest Monnette Sudler.

L. A. BanksL. A. Banks (aka Leslie Esdaile Banks) is the recipient of the 2008 Essence Storyteller of the Year award and has written over 30 novels and contributed to 10 novellas, thus far, in multiple genres under various pseudonyms. She mysteriously shape-shifts between the genres of romance, women's fiction, crime/suspense thrillers, and of course, paranormal lore. A graduate of The University of Pennsylvania Wharton undergraduate program with a Master's in Fine Arts from Temple University, one never knows how or when this enigma will appear. Her forms are many, her secrets of crossing genres vast, and she does this with her teenaged daughter and her black Lab from some remote, undisclosed lair in Philadelphia.


Solomon JonesSolomon Jones is the author of the critically acclaimed novels C.R.E.A.M., Ride Or Die, The Bridge, and Pipe Dream. He also writes the Weekend Warrior column for the Philadelphia Daily News. Jones is a spoken-word artist whose debut CD, Wisdom, is a collaboration with musician/composer Flemuel Brown III. Jones wrote the short story collection, Keeping Up With The Jones: marriage, family and life ... unplugged, and holds a journalism B.A. from Temple University. He has been published in Newsday, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia magazine, the Philadelphia Weekly, and the Philadelphia Tribune. A former adjunct professor at Temple University's College of Liberal Arts, Jones, who lives in Philadelphia with his family, recently completed his forthcoming novel, Payback.

The Twin PoetsThe Twin Poets (Al & Nnamdi) are devoted to the empowerment of our community, especially our youth. As social workers and spoken word artists, they exemplify the role of the activist. Their commitment to lyrical integrity and the social work that accompanies their words has earned them numerous awards; most recently: the 2006 Village Awards from the State of Delaware Department of Youth and Families and the 2005 Christi Award for Community Service through the Arts and Mentors of the Year Awards. Al & Nnamdi were part of HBO's Peabody Award-winning Def Poetry series. The brothers travel nationally and internationally, sharing their work and their words. They have been artist in residence at many high schools, colleges and universities, among them Camden Medical Arts, Doane College and Gettysburg College. The Twin Poets have been instructors with the Art Sanctuary for 3 years. They are currently working on their fourth CD, A Protest of Two Brothers, and their first full length poetry/social commentary book, Essays of our Existence.

Monnette SudlerMonnette Sudler's earlier recordings on the Danish based jazz record company, Steeplechase Records, showcase her as a dynamite guitarist, writer, composer, and arranger. The Philadelphia-born artist has played with many all-time jazz greats, such as Hugh Masekela, Philly Joe Jones, Grover Washington, Jr., Byard Lancaster, Sounds of Liberation and Kenny Baron, as well as hot new artists like bassist Gerald Veasely. She has performed in Europe, Japan, South Africa, Jamaica and the United States. Sudler has her degree from Temple University's Esther Boyer College of Music. Her background covers composition, music therapy and performance. She conducts guitar workshops, private instruction, workshops on creative development and composition.


Ed ShockleyEd Shockley served for over 10 years as Artistic Director of the Philadelphia Dramatists Center and in more recent years for the American Concert Theatre. He is author of more than 50 plays, dozens of these produced, as well as numerous professional articles and educational materials on the arts of playwriting and directing. He has founded two college theater companies, assisted in the design and founding of numerous arts organizations, and received many theatrical awards, including the W. Alton Jones Foundation grant (shared with musical collaborator James McBride). He has taught theater courses at Temple University, NYU, and Nassau Community College; he currently teaches play/film writing and World Theatre history at the University of the Arts and Rutgers Camden.


LIVE at the Writers House is a long-standing collaboration between the Kelly Writers House and WXPN FM (88.5). Six times annually between September and April, Michaela Majoun hosts a one-hour broadcast of poetry, music, and other spoken-word art, along with one musical guest, all from our Arts Cafe onto the airwaves at WXPN. LIVE is made possible by generous support from BigRoc. For more information, contact Producer Erin Gautsche (gautsche@writing.upenn.edu).

Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)

Tuesday, 10/21

6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe: A reading and conversation with Jim Shepard. Co-sponsored by Creative Writing.

Jim Shepard

Jim Shepard is acclaimed for his work as a fiction writer and novelist. His awards for fiction writing include the Transatlantic Review Award, Henfield Foundation for "Eustace," the Massachusetts Cultural Council artists' grant in fiction, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Award, and both the Library of Congress/Massachusetts Book Award for Fiction and the Alex Award for Fiction from the Young-Adult Library Science Services Association for his novel Project X. He was a finalist for the 2007 National Book Award for his collection of short stories, Like You'd Understand, Anyway.

Shepard is best known for his novels, both for adult and young adult readers, and his award-winning short stories. His novels include Flights (1983), Paper Doll (1987), Lights out in the Reptile House (1990), Kiss of the Wolf (1994), Nosferatu (1998), and Project X (2004). His short story collections include Batting for Castro (1996), Love and Hydrogen: New and Collected Stories (2004), and Like You'd Understand, Anyway (2007). He has also written sports fiction for young adults jointly with William Hollinger in the "Johnson Boys Series" under the joint pseudonym of Scott Eller: The Football Wars (1992), First Base, First Place (1993), That Soccer Season (1993), and Jump Shot (1994). He also co-wrote Short Season (1985) and Twenty-first Century Fox (1989) with Hollinger under the same pseudonym.

Shepard attended Trinity College in Hartford, obtaining his BA in 1976, before relocating to Brown to work on his Master's Degree, which he completed in 1980. He lectured in creative writing from 1980-1983 at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, after which he started on as an assistant professor at Williams College. In 1990 Shepard became a full professor there, and he teaches courses in fiction and film at Williams to this day.

He has been an editor for such publications as You've Got to Read This: Contemporary American Writers Introduce Stories That Held Them in Awe (1994), Unleashed: Poems by Writer's Dogs (1995), Writers at the Movies: Twenty-six Contemporary Authors Celebrate Twenty-six Memorable Movies (2000), and Spellbound: Contemporary American Writers Introduce Stories That Held Them in Awe. He contributes to various periodicals, including Atlantic Monthly, Tin House, McSweeney's, Gentleman's Quarterly, Playboy, Esquire, Harper's, New Yorker, and Redbook.

Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)

Wednesday, 10/22

12:00 PM in the Arts Cafe: The Sylvia W. Kauders series presents "Blogging in the Presidential Election," a lunch discussion with Will Bunch, hosted by Dick Polman.

RSVP required. To RSVP, please email wh@writing.upenn.edu or call 215-573-9748.

Will Bunch

Will Bunch, a senior writer at the Philadelphia Daily News, blogs about his obsessions, including national and local politics and world affairs, the media, pop music, the Philadelphia Phillies, soccer and other sports, not necessarily in that order on his blog, Attyhood. He is the senior writer for the Philadelphia Daily News and its former political writer. Will's been covering presidential campaigns and conventions all the way back to Jesse Jackson's historic 1984 bid. Working for the spunky Philly paper that GQ once called "arguably the best tabloid in America," he's gained national recognition for his scoops on the mysteries of 9/11, the crash of Flight 93, the war in Iraq and the beheading of Nick Berg.

Before coming to Philadelphia, Will was a key member of the New York Newsday team that won the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for spot news reporting. His magazine articles have appeared in a number of national and regional publications, including the New York Times Magazine, and he is a contributing editor at his alma mater Brown's Alumni Magazine.

Will is also the author of the critically praised 1994 book Jukebox America: Down Back Streets and Blue Highways in Search of the Country's Greatest Jukebox. He lives in Philadelphia; has two children, an 11-year-old daughter and a 9-year-old son; and when he's not dissecting politics he's probably either still searching for Philly's best jukebox or brooding over the Phillies or 76ers.

6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe: Theorizing presents Lytle Shaw, "Olson's Archives: Fieldwork in New American Poetry."

Lytle Shaw is Assistant Professor of English at New York University. He is author of Frank O'Hara: The Poetics of Coterie (University of Iowa Press, 2006) and editor of Nineteen Lines: A Drawing Center Writing Anthology (Drawing Center/Roof, 2007). A contributing editor to Cabinet Magazine and an art critic for journals including Parkett, Documents and Artforum, Shaw's art catalog publications include essays on Gerard Byrne (Koenig Books, 2007), Robert Smithson (Dia Center/University of California, 2005) and The Royal Art Lodge (The Drawing Center, 2003). His poetry books and art collaborations include Cable Factory 20 (Atelos, 1999), The Lobe (Roof, 2002) and The Chadwick Family Papers: A Brief Public Glimpse (with Jimbo Blachly [Periscope, forthcoming 2008]). Shaw is currently completing two book projects: Field Authorities, on site-specific poetry and art as forms of experimental historiography and ethnography; and Specimen Box, on new forms of collecting in relation to the history of institution critique.

Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)

Thursday, 10/23

6:00PM in the Arts Cafe: the second annual Cheryl J. Family Fiction Program, featuring Ben Fountain.

Ben Fountain

Ben Fountain's fiction has appeared in Harper's, The Paris Review, Zoetrope-All Story, and he has been awarded an O. Henry Prize and two Pushcart Prizes. His collection of short stories Brief Encounters With Che Guevara was awarded the 2007 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for a distinguished first book of fiction. He lives with his wife and their two children in Dallas, Texas.

"Brilliant..."
— Seattle Times
"Fountain ... gets his message across without forsaking characterization and vivid descriptiveness ... a revealing view of the human condition."
— Miami Herald
"In this first collection the author brings the virtuosity of Greene and le Carre to tales of foreign adventures."
— Boston Globe
"...exceptional story collection..."
— New York Times Book Review

Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)

Friday, 10/24

Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)

Saturday, 10/25

10:00 AM in the Arts Cafe and Dining Room: A Brunch for Advisee Parents and Families.

RSVP to Jamie-Lee Josselyn at jjossely@writing.upenn.edu.

Sunday, 10/26

Monday, 10/27

7:00 PM in the Arts Cafe: HOLD for KWH Art Opening.

Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)

Tuesday, 10/28

6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe: the third annual Caroline Rothstein Oral Poetry Program, featuring Tracie Morris and Band, with Marvin Sewell and Val Jeanty.



Tracie Morris

Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)

Wednesday, 10/29

5:00 PM in the Arts Cafe: A Radio Play by Jill Budd.

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Thursday, 10/30

3:30 PM in the Arts Cafe: The podcast series "PoemTalk" records episode #16: Robert Creeley, "I Know a Man."

Poemtalk logoJoin PoemTalk moderator and host Al Filreis and three friends in the poetics community as they discuss a single poem from the PennSound archive. Episode #16 features a discussion of Robert Creeley's "I Know a Man" with Randall Couch, Jessica Lowenthal and Linh Dinh. PoemTalk is sponsored by the Writers House and CPCW in collaboration with the Poetry Foundation. For more, see poemtalkatkwh.blogspot.com. If you would like to be a member of the live audience, RSVP to wh@writing.upenn.edu.

6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe: A screening and discussion of The Polymath, Or The Life and Opinions of Samuel R. Delany, Gentleman, (2007) directed by Fred Barney Taylor.

Co-sponsored by the Creative Writing Program and the LGBT Center.

Kenny Goldsmith and English 111 are pleased to present The Polymath, a documentary on the life and times of the celebrated writer Samuel R. Delany. The grandson of a slave, he is an award-winning writer who has written 25 novels, numerous critical essays and theoretical tracts, an autobiography, pornography, and several issues of Wonder Woman. Delany teaches writing at Temple University. He has been called by some one of the greatest writers of the second half of the 20th century. The film, directed by Fred Barney Taylor, was awarded the Juror's Award for Best Documentary Feature at July's Philadelphia International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival. Following the film, there will be a interview Q&A between the filmmaker and Mr. Delany.

Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)

Friday, 10/31

Meetings and classes (may require registration or permission; email for more info)