I am often asked to recommend my five favorite episodes of PoemTalk. I mean, there have been 158 of them since 2007, so naming five is a tall order. I’ve loved many of them. Found dozens of them so powerful—such a moving experience, even in the middle of my scrambling...
It was an honor to be asked to be part of this week’s Slate Culture Gabfest (which I have listened to since it started in something like 2005). I talked with Steve Metcalf and Dana Stevens about Lawrence Ferlinghetti and we listened to a performance of “Baseball Canto”: https://slate.com/podcasts/culture-gabfest/2021/03/the-woody-allen-scandal-reviewing-allen-v-farrow Enjoy the...
Rolf Potts returned to the Writers House recently and, after leading a public program he and I went into the Wexler Studio to record an episode of his fine podcast series, “Deviate.” It was a long interview. Even after some editing, it’s still 93 minutes long. You can listen to...
Two voices I hear via podcast series—Stephen Metcalf, who hosts the Slate “Culture Gabfest,” and Wesley Morris of the New York Times who since September ’16 has hosted “Still Processing“—came along with their whole selves, to the Writers House, the other day. I moderated a conversation with them. And HERE is...
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.