Past Events

In contemporary literature, "realism" is often used as shorthand for "literary." The implication is that serious writing happens only within a faithful representation of reality. But this is a strictly modern idea—…

DAVID DALEY is the author of the national best-seller Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn't Count (Norton). He is the former editor-in-chief of Salon, a senior fellow at FairVote, and a digital…

Now more than ever, journalists are thinking about the importance of accuracy and credibility of reporting. Join us for a lunch talk with BEN YAGODA, journalist, film critic, and author of a dozen books…

The Hartman Family Screenwriting Series allows us to host an annual event with a successful professional screenwriter so that aspiring moviemakers in the Writers House community can get a taste of the writers' room.…

CARMEN MARIA MACHADO's debut short story collection, Her Body and Other Parties, is forthcoming from Graywolf Press in 2017. She is a fiction writer, critic, and essayist whose work has appeared or is…

Experimental poet and jazz musician CLARK COOLIDGE has written more than forty books, including Sound as Thought, which was chosen for the New American Poetry Series, and the recent 88…

Join us for a discussion with Rolling Stone editor and Penn faculty member Anthony DeCurtis about the life and music of Lou Reed. In his new book Lou Reed: A Life, DeCurtis, who knew Reed and…

MATTHEW NUSSBAUM is a White House reporter at POLITICO. He joined POLITICO in January, 2016 and covered the federal budget before hopping on the campaign trail in July, 2016 to cover GOP Vice…

HERMAN BEAVERS is Professor of English and Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, where he has been teaching African American Literature and Creative Writing since 1989.

Our annual "Writing about TV” program features personal essays, critical analysis, and smart talk about TV. For this year's event, six people will present about six different television shows, using the concept of “…