How does a book make it from the author’s hand to your bookshelf? And what role does an agent play in this? Beth Kephart leads a panel of writers and agents at the Kelly Writers House to dig into the business of publishing and marketing a book. For full information...
After the construction of Perry World House we were able to build a new fence and then—just recently—enjoyed the planting of new flowers, bushes and trees for our Class of 1942 Garden. Today was a gorgeous Philly spring day so I took a few photos of the garden nearly in...
Last night at the end-of-academic-year “hub party” at the Kelly Writers House I had the pleasure of announcing the winner of the Beltran Family Award for Innovative Teaching & Mentoring—for 2017-18. She is Jamie-Lee Josselyn! Jamie-Lee is an utterly remarkable teacher. On the 0-4 scale used for student evaluations, Jamie-Lee’s courses...
The amazing group of people who formed the KWH Fellows Seminar for spring 2017 met for a final time last night—our “final words” session. Here are some photos I took of the gang. Click on any image for a larger view.
Lydia Davis spent three days with us as a Kelly Writers House Fellow. On April 24, 2017, she met with the students in the KWH Fellows Seminar for three hours and then gave a reading, in which she performed several dozen new micro-fictions (most of them unpublished; all of them...
On April 4, 2017, I moderated a discussion with Wesley Morris and Stephen Metcalf. In this video clip from the program, I ask Wesley about models for his own podcasting. The whole video (and also a link to the whole audio) can be found here at the Kelly Writers House...
When I teach my course on representations of the holocaust, I don’t lecture (for what it’s worth, it’s an ethical stance for me—but that’s for another comment sometime) and I rarely if ever record our sessions. As can be imagined—since, as I say, these are discussions, not lectures—the sessions are intense...
We typically give these gorgeous hand-printed letterpress broadsides for free to KWH audiences, so it’s a little disheartening (but also oddly exciting) to see them being sold later for $150 and up. But if you want them gratis, come to a Writers House event soon!
People associated with ModPo in the last few years will know Camara Brown as a TA and participant in a number of ModPo videos. We at KWH & ModPo are proud of her for being featured in this article: Proud and excited for my student, advisee, KWH staff colleague Camara...
My interviews with Matthew Weiner took place during his visit to the Kelly Writers House as a KWH Fellow in April of 2016. Links to the full recordings of both interviews can be found here at the KWH Fellows site. I’m grateful to Dylan Leahy who edited these three clips...
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 1960: When Art & Literature Confronted the Memory of World War II & Remade the Modern (Columbia University Press, 2021). He is currently writing a book about online pedagogy. He has taught a massive open online course, "ModPo," to 265,000 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.