June Jordan was a Kelly Writers House Fellow in 2001. She was battling through hard treatment for cancer and her usual great strength was diminished, and when toward the end of her public reading a student asked for a reprise of “Poem for a Young Poet” I could tell that...
In 2009 Robert Coover spent some days with us as a Kelly Writers House Fellow—thus I had the great great pleasure of reading & teaching most of his stunningly fabulous books. His visit was unforgettable. My interview/conversation with him is available here: https://writing.upenn.edu/wh/people/fellows/coover.html along with links to other aspects of...
Among my favorite pieces of prose is the long opening paragraph of Roger Angell’s New Yorker essay “In the Fire.” Here it is:
I ask Hilton Als about his remarkable essay “It Will Soon Be Here,” a reflection on traumatic memory and the figure of the wall that keeps us from direct access to it. (This is a 9-minute clip from an hour-long conversation that took place on March 30, 2021.) LINK TO...
I published a memorial comment on Paul Kelly in the March 15, 2021, issue of the Daily Pennsylvanian. It has been issued as a guest column and can be found HERE.
We at the Kelly Writers House are thrilled to welcome our first Writers House Fellow of 2019, fiction writer, poet, theorist, critic & translator John Keene, on February 11 and 12. John will visit us for two special programs: * a reading on Monday, February 11 at 6:30 PM; and * an...
We at the Kelly Writers House are thrilled to announce our 2019 Writers House Fellows events. This year, we will welcome fiction writer, critic, and (as of last month) MacArthur Foundation grantee John Keene, legendary poet Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, and eminent singer-songwriter and fiction writer Rosanne Cash. Seating is strictly limited for these programs, and an RSVP...
Excerpts from my interview with Jerome Rothenberg. (Thanks to Tyler Burke, who did the editing.) Jerome Rothenberg was selected as one of the Kelly Writers House’s 2008 Fellows. After meeting in class with students who had been studying his work for a third of their semester, he attended two programs...
Tyler Burke has now created two video excerpts from my one-hour interview/conversation with Nathaniel Mackey, an event held during his time at Kelly Writers House as a Fellow in March 2017.
Thanks to Tyler Burke for editing the recording of this Kelly Writers House Fellows interview/discussion down from 1+ hours.
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, Counter-Revolution of the Word: The Conservative Attack on Modern Poetry, 1945-60; 1960: When Art & Literature Confronted the Memory of World War II & Remade the Modern (2021); and The Difference Is Spreading: Fifty Contemporary Poets on Fifty Poems. His new book is The Classroom & the Crowd: Poetry & the Promise of Digital Community (2025). He has taught a massive open online course, "ModPo," to 315,000 participants in 192 countries since 2012.
Founder/Faculty Director, Kelly Writers House—intro video ][ events calendar
Convener/teacher, “ModPo.” an open online course on modern & contemporary U.S. poetry—overview of the course ][ intro video
Publisher of Jacket2 magazine—my Jacket2 commentary series ][ "First Readings"
Producer/host, PoemTalk podcast series—co-sponsored by Kelly Writers House & the Poetry Foundation
Director of the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing—Creative Writing ][ RealArts internships ]
Co-founder & co-director of PennSound—50,000 files ][ 15 million downloads annually
Teacher & host, "Kelly Writers House Fellows"—since 1999 ][ Susan Sontag, John Ashbery, Jamaica Kincaid, Laurie Anderson, Adrienne Rich, Joan Didion, John Edgar Wideman & more
Teacher, "Representations of the Holocaust"—a course on survivor testimony ][ my holocaust site
Click on the image for information about the book.