Shawn Walker reading - A digital recording of the reading to celebrate the book launch of Walker's first book, Purchase of a Day (Handwritten Press). For more about this event, click here. Listen: the whole program 51:29 (RealVideo) "If the Sound" 1:57 (MP3)

Shawn Walker writes: "Because for a poet writing is a daily preoccupation, I am interested in other daily habits too - the ones we create for ourselves and especially the ones we are somehow forced to assume in order to participate in what we call our society or our culture.... Money - the ubiquitous abstraction - is the daily habit I'm playing with in all these poems. For about a year and a half now, I've been writing down my daily purchases. At some point, I decided that I would rigorously document every dollar spent in 1999, and use those purchases as the formal spine of my poetic forms." -- from a general description of her "money" project Shawn Walker lives and works in West Philadelphia. She is a graduate of Penn's creative writing program, recipient of the Thuron Award and is now undergraduate academic advisor in Penn's department of History. In 1995-96 she was a founding member of the Writers House planning committee and in 1996-97 she was the first Writers House Resident Coordinator. The "Handwritten Press" edition of Purchase of a Day can be viewed on the "Handwritten Press" site. "Handwritten Press" books are made and winged by Kristen Gallagher. This event was followed by a reception. Writers House Webcast Archive