Maury Povich & Connie Chung to endow Summer Workshop for Young Writers at the Kelly Writers House
I am thrilled and honored to announce that Maury Povich (College ’62) & Connie Chung have decided to make a significant gift to the Kelly Writers House to endow our annual Summer Workshop for Young Writers. The gift provides financial aid to support approximately half of the high school juniors and seniors who are selected to participate in the program, thus guaranteeing that applicants can join the program on the basis of their talent and 
potential as writers regardless of the distance they must travel to come to the Writers House in Philadelphia in the summertime and regardless of the capacity of their families to afford the program costs. The endowment fund we are creating as the result of this generous gift will yield interest sufficient to operate the program every year from now on, far off into the future. As founding Faculty Director of the Writers House, I feel personally so grateful for Maury’s and Connie’s vision and their amply demonstrated (here and in other ways) commitment to diversity and inclusion, and their devotion to creating opportunities for young writers. Henceforth students awarded financial aid grants to attend this annual 10-day residential program will known as Povich-Chung Fellows, a designation we expect over the years will widely attract deserved attention on resumés and in applications as they follow careers as writers, artists, and teachers.
Maury has supported the Writers House generously for many years. His first gift permanently endowed a Journalist-in-Residence position in the Creative Writing Program (a position that has been held by Dick Polman since its inception). His second gift, establishing the Povich Journalism Series, permanently endowed the seminars, workshops, and talks featuring working journalists at the Writers House. His third gift permanently endowed the RealArts Prize fund, which will always and forever support students who have found writing- or arts-related summer internships that are unpaid or underpaid and who apply for support available through this fund. At the same time, five years ago, Maury funded the Writers House Summer Workshop for Young Writers with annual gifts through its first years—a project, led by Jamie-Lee Josselyn, that has been so effective, its outreach so successful, that it has led to this new gift.
Maury Povich, whose father Shirley Povich was a legendarily progressive sports journalist and advocate of good writing for much of the 20th century, has been a member of the Kelly Writers House Board of Advisors nearly since the formation of that group. He has believed passionately in what we have done over the last 25 years to support writers and writing communities of all kinds, writers working in all genres—especially young writers whom he feels need a break to do their writing along with some timely support.
potential as writers regardless of the distance they must travel to come to the Writers House in Philadelphia in the summertime and regardless of the capacity of their families to afford the program costs. The endowment fund we are creating as the result of this generous gift will yield interest sufficient to operate the program every year from now on, far off into the future. As founding Faculty Director of the Writers House, I feel personally so grateful for Maury’s and Connie’s vision and their amply demonstrated (here and in other ways) commitment to diversity and inclusion, and their devotion to creating opportunities for young writers. Henceforth students awarded financial aid grants to attend this annual 10-day residential program will known as Povich-Chung Fellows, a designation we expect over the years will widely attract deserved attention on resumés and in applications as they follow careers as writers, artists, and teachers.Maury has supported the Writers House generously for many years. His first gift permanently endowed a Journalist-in-Residence position in the Creative Writing Program (a position that has been held by Dick Polman since its inception). His second gift, establishing the Povich Journalism Series, permanently endowed the seminars, workshops, and talks featuring working journalists at the Writers House. His third gift permanently endowed the RealArts Prize fund, which will always and forever support students who have found writing- or arts-related summer internships that are unpaid or underpaid and who apply for support available through this fund. At the same time, five years ago, Maury funded the Writers House Summer Workshop for Young Writers with annual gifts through its first years—a project, led by Jamie-Lee Josselyn, that has been so effective, its outreach so successful, that it has led to this new gift.
Maury Povich, whose father Shirley Povich was a legendarily progressive sports journalist and advocate of good writing for much of the 20th century, has been a member of the Kelly Writers House Board of Advisors nearly since the formation of that group. He has believed passionately in what we have done over the last 25 years to support writers and writing communities of all kinds, writers working in all genres—especially young writers whom he feels need a break to do their writing along with some timely support.
For more information about the Summer Workshop for Young Writers House, go here: http://writing.upenn.edu/wh/summer/
Al Filreis is Kelly Professor, Faculty Director of the Kelly Writers House, Director of the Center
for Programs in Contemporary Writing, Co-Director of PennSound, and Publisher of Jacket2—all at the University of Pennsylvania. Among his books are Secretaries of the Moon,
Wallace Stevens & the Actual World, Modernism from Left to Right, and Counter-Revolution of the Word: The Conservative Attack on Modern Poetry, 1945-60. His new book is 
Founder/Faculty Director, 