I’m honored to have been the faculty mentor/advisor for Cosmic Writers (aka Word Camp). Click here for a Penn Today article about the project. Cosmic Writers brings free creative writing education to school-aged children. In the photo below: recent graduates Rowana Miller and Manoj Simha lead the new nonprofit supported by...
Wendy Bach returned to Penn (she was my student in the late 80s/early 90s) and I had the honor of hosting & moderating a conversation with her about her forthcoming book “Prosecuting Poverty, Criminalizing Care.” Here’s a photo of us before the event. Below is a link to the video...
“Celebrating poetry and literature at Penn since 1985, Al Filreis, Kelly Family Professor of English, continues to create community at the home for writers he founded in a Locust Walk house a quarter-century ago.” The opening of a profile about me written by Louisa Shepard. HERE is your link to...
Recently the son of a long-time friend of writer Jerre Mangione sent me a typescript he found among his mother’s papers—an unpublished version of Jerre’s “Life Sentences” series. These were single-sentence poem-like things, satires all. Here’s one of them.
I was honored to receive the Faculty Award of Merit given by the Penn alumni in 2020. The ceremony was delayed by a year, and in October of 2021 the ceremony was presented via livestream. Here is a recording of the brief talk I gave in response to receiving the...
An article published in Tablet magazine about Charles Bernstein mentions PennSound, Jacket2, and the Kelly Writers House—and Penn: But my bond with Charles also formed around the University of Pennsylvania. I told him I had graduated from Penn in 1991, where I’d studied early American lit with Dr. Elisa New, which was...
I am honored to be part of our collaboration with Penn’s Abramson Cancer Center—founded in 2014, it’s called “Writing a Life”—through which oncology patients are encouraged to write about their lives of health and illness. Here is a short history of the program: https://media.sas.upenn.edu/writershouse/Writing-a-Life-History-April-2021%20.pdf
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.
In 1995 the local news station decided that the way I was teaching modern poetry was innovative. So they researched and then filmed a story about it all. This was and is English 88, now also known as ModPo. Here is the LINK to the old video (with thanks to...
This is David Slarskey, tweeting all these years later about his experience in English 88, the course on modern and contemporary experimental poetry I’ve been teaching now for 34 years. David took the experimentalism seriously, as you’ll see. This being twitter, you’ll need, of course, to read from bottom to...
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.