Franklin & Marshall College

Friday, February 10 at 11:30-12:30

Come to our first ever lunchtime meeting to discuss the programs and business of the Writers House. First time attendees are welcome, and food will be served.

Tuesday January 24, 2012  • 7:30pm

Big Girls Small Kitchen is a food website for twenty-something cooks looking for user-friendly, affordable ways to navigate their kitchens started by Phoebe Lapine and Cara Eisenpress in 2008.  Through their own experiences and experiments in their small kitchens (some good, some bad, some that went straight in the trash), they offer accessible recipes, entertaining tips, and kitchen strategies to help all home cooks of limited resources—whether time, space, money, or skill—make the most of their tools available, big kitchen or small.  Their first cookbook In the Small Kitchen: 100 Recipes from Our Year of Cooking in the Real World was published in 2011.

Thursday February 2, 2012 • 4:30pm

The ten letters that Rainer Maria Rilke wrote to an aspiring young poet from 1902 through 1908 comprise a much-loved trove of advice on living a purposeful life in or out of the arts. Letters to a Young Poet is a new translation by Mark Harman, a Professor of English and German at Elizabethtown College whose translations of Kafka have been widely acclaimed. Harman’s view is that translation can be like a coating of dust on a painting, lending a patina that doesn’t actually reflect the underlying work. He undertook this new translation in an attempt to remove some of the accretion he saw in other English translations, so as to let the original art of Rilke’s letters show through.  Poet Billy Collins praises Harman’s “fresh translation” for reminding us that “Rilke is addressing not just his young correspondent but everyone, and that his advice is not only about how to write poems but how to live a deliberate, meaningful life. In these overly excited times, it is inspiring to listen to the patient counsel of this meditative man, this champion of solitude.”

Thursday February 16, 2012  • 7:30pm              

Visiting Assistant Professor of Spanish Lorenzo Helguero is originally from Lima, Peru and has published five books of poetry: Sapiente Lengua, Boletos, Beissán o el abismo,  El amor en los tiempos del cole,  Poeta en Washington D.C., and  Insomnio. He has also published a book of short stories, Fiesta de promoción, and the novel Entre el cielo y el suelo.                                                              

Monday February 20, 2012 • 7:30pm in the Other Room Theatre

Can someone be owned? Can a song free you? What's the cost of freedom? These are the gutsy questions Amanda Kemp takes on through her soulful dramas that will leave you tapping your feet and wiping your eyes. See for yourself at Theatre for Transformation's "Sister Friend:  Phillis Wheatley and Obour Tanner on Freedom, Love and the Divine" written by Dr. Amanda Kemp and directed by Dave Ebersole. "Sister Friend", a play infused with spirituals and gospel music, uses actual letters to imagine the friendship between enslaved  celebrity poet Phillis Wheatly and her best friend Obour Tanner. Come get informed and get inspired! Doors open at 7pm. Performance begins at 7:30pm.

POSTPONED- date TBA

Roger Rubin has been a sportswriter in New York for the past seventeen years, covering subjects from the World Series to the NCAA Final Four and the NBA Playoffs to the Sugar and Orange Bowls. He has worked at Sports Illustrated, New York Newsday, and the New York Daily News, where he’s been for the last ten years. His stories have received awards from the Associated Press Sports Editors and the New York State Publishers Association. He is the coauthor of The Great New York Sports Debate: Two New York Sportswriters Go Head to Head on New York’s 50 Most Heated Sports Debates.

Wednesday, February 22 through Friday, February 24

The Wide Eyed Film Festival at F&M presents a collection of nationally recognized short and feature length films as well as a Student Cell Phone Movie Competition,  which guest filmmakers will jury.  A committee of students, professional staff, and faculty selected films and filmmakers that best represent new visions and approaches in cinematic exploration and expression. Sponsored by the Department of Theatre, Dance and Film, Brooks College House, and the Philadelphia Alumni Writers House.

Wide Eyed Film Festival Schedule:

Wednesday, February 22

 8:00pm Screening of Putty Hill with filmmaker Matt   

   Porterfield, Green Room Theatre

  9:30pm Opening Night Reception, Writers House

Thursday, February 23 

4:30pm Craft Talk with Matt Porterfield, Writers House

8:00pm Screening of selected short films by Lauren  

   Wolkstein and Alex Tyson, Green Room Theatre

 9:30pm Second Night Reception, Writers House

Friday, February 24

 5:30pm Craft Talk with Laura Wolkstein and Alex 

    Tyson, Writers House

 6:30pm Best of the 48 Hour Cell Phone Video Contest, 

    Green Room Theatre

 7:00pm Closing Reception, Writers House

Thursday, February 23 • 7:30 pm

Wayne Koestenbaum is an American poet and cultural critic and is the Distinguished Professor of English at the City University of New York Graduate Center. His books of poetry include The Milk of Inquiry, Model Homes, and Best-Selling Jewish Porn Films. His nonfiction works include The Queen’s Throat: Opera, Homosexuality, and the Mystery of Desire, Jackie Under My Skin: Interpreting An Icon and his most recent, Humiliation.

Wednesday February 29, 2012  • 4:30pm  

In this darkly comical look at the sinister side of our relationship with the natural world, Stewart has tracked down over 100 of our worst entomological foes-creatures that infest, infect, and generally wreak havoc on human affairs. From the world's most painful hornet, to the flies that transmit deadly diseases, to millipedes that stop traffic, to the "bookworms" that devour libraries, to the Japanese beetles munching on your roses, Wicked Bugs delves into the extraordinary powers of six and eight-legged creatures.

Wednesday, March 7, 2012 • 7:30pm

Johnson is a novelist who sometimes writes other things. He is the author of the novels Pym, Drop and Hunting in Harlem, the nonfiction novella TheGreat Negro Plot and the comic books Incognegro and Dark Rain. He is a faculty member at the University of Houston Creative Writing program.

Wednesday March 21, 2012  • 7:30pm

Kevin Brockmeier is one of America's most acclaimed and inventive young fiction writers. He is the author of three novels, The Truth About Celia, The Brief History of the Dead, and, most recently, The Illumination. He has published two collections of short fiction, Things That Fall From the Sky and The View from the Seventh Layer, and two children's novels. His short stories have appeared in many publications, including The New Yorker, McSweeney's, Tin House, and The Oxford American, and have been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories, O. Henry Prize Stories, and Granta Best of Young American Novelists. He has taught at the Iowa Writers' Workshop and lives in Little Rock, Arkansas.

The Bank Short Story Prize was endowed by Lawrence H. Bank, Esq. ’65 to honor and preserve the memory of his late brother, Jerome Irving Bank, Esq. Jerome Bank, a graduate of Hobart and of the New York University School of Law, always wanted to be a writer, but died before realizing this dream. Each year, any F&M student can submit a work to be judged. The winner of the $1,000 Bank Prize is chosen by a visiting short story fiction writer. Larry Bank hopes the Bank Prize will encourage students to take a chance by following a dream, something that he, too, wishes he had tried a long time ago.

Thursday March 22, 2012  • 8:00pm

John Guare is an American playwright who is best known as the author of The House of Blue Leaves, Six Degrees of Separation, and Landscape of the Body. His style, which mixes comic invention with an acute sense of the failure of human relations and aspirations, is at once cruel and deeply compassionate. In the foreword to a collection of Guare's plays, film director Louis Malle writes: “Guare practices a humor that is synonymous with lucidity, exploding genre and clichés, taking us to the core of human suffering: the awareness of corruption in our own bodies, death circling in. We try to fight it all by creating various mythologies, and it is Guare's peculiar aptitude for exposing these grandiose lies of ours that makes his work so magical.”

Thursday March 29, 2012 • 7:30pm

Mike Sacks has written for Esquire, GQ, The New Yorker, Time,The New York Times, The Washington Post, McSweeney’s, Radar,MAD, New York Observer, Premiere, Believer, Vice, Maxim, Women’s Health, and Salon. He has worked at The Washington Post, and is currently on the editorial staff of Vanity Fair. His first book, He is the author of And Here’s the Kicker: Conversations with 21 Humor Writers About Their Craft, and co-author of Sex: Our Bodies, Our Junk, with the Pleasure Syndicate, a comedy-writing group consisting of Scott Jacobson (Daily Show), Todd Levin (Tonight Show), Jason Roeder (Onion), and Ted Travelstead (Esquire). His latest book, Your Wildest Dreams, Within Reason, contains pieces from The New Yorker, Esquire, Time, Vanity Fair, McSweeney’s, and other publications.

Thursday April 5, 2012 • 7:00pm             

Dunya Mikhail is an Iraqi-American poet. She has published five books in Arabic and two in English. The Arabic titles include The Psalms of Absence and Almost Music. Her first book in English, The War Works Hard was shortlisted for the Griffin Prize, and was named one of the 25 best books of 2005 by the New York Public Library. It also won the PEN Translation Award (translated by Elizabeth Winslow). It was the first contemporary poetry book by an Iraqi woman published in the US. Her latest, Diary of A Wave Outside the Sea, won the Arab American Book Award. In 2001, she was awarded the UN Human Rights Award for Freedom of Writing. She was born in Baghdad in 1965 and she left to the US in 1996.

April  11-13  Times and locations to be announced

The Emerging Writers Festival at F&M is a three-day celebration of the work of talented and promising younger American writers. The Festival brings five fine young writers to campus all at once giving them opportunities to mix often and informally with students and with one another in readings, workshops, and discussions. Times and locations of festival events coming soon.

Writers this year include:  

            Megan Mayhew Bergman (fiction writer)

            Jamaal May (poet)

            Anna Moench (playwright)

            Christine Hemp (poet)

            Paul Yoon (fiction writer)

Thursday, September 1 at 7:30pm

Mary Szybist is Assistant Professor of English at Lewis & Clark College and received her MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.  She is the author of Granted (2003). Her poem “All Times and All Tenses Alive In this Moment” is featured in the new Poetry Paths mural at the Pennsylvania College of Art & Design.

Wednesday, September 14 at 4:30pm 

Don’t miss the first Writers House Community Meeting of the year, for first years, seniors, faculty,  staff and everyone in between, even if you’ve never been to Writers House before.  Catch up with friends and meet some new ones and help plan events for the year! Free book giveaway!

Tuesday, September 27 at 6:00pm

Bring no more than five minutes of your writing (poems, fiction, nonfiction, plays, songs) to share in an innovative and kinetic workshop forum with professor and novelist Sands Hall.   Come prepared to have a terrific time, and leave with some great in sights into your own writing. This event is free and open  to the Franklin & Marshall  Community.  Food will be served.

Thursday, September 29 at 4:30pm

After her Common Hour presentation Lynn Powell will give a reading of her poetry at the Writers House.

 Thursday, September 29 at 7:30 p.m.

Writers House welcomes this interdisciplinary art exhibit sponsored by Elizabethtown College. A diverse group of poets and visual artists were selected to collaborate on a project with a common theme for a period of seven months with an outcome of a unique traveling exhibition of poetry and art.  Project participants created new works and responded to each other’s perspectives for the theme. Three of the poets, Jennifer Foerster, Ravi Shankar, and Carmine Sarracino, will read from their work alongside the artwork that inspired them. Featured artsists include Milt Freidly, Donald J. Forsythe, Carol Cole, and Claire Giblin. The exhibit will be in the Writers house through December. This event is free and open to the public

Thursday, October  at 7:30pm

Nick Lantz is visiting assistant professor in the English Department at F&M, where he teaches creative writing.He is the author of two books of poetry—We Don't Know We Don't Know and The Lightning That Strikes the Neighbors' House. His third book, How to Dance When You Do Not Know How to Dance, is due out in 2014. Lantz received his MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and has been awarded fellowships from the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. His work has been published in journals such as Gulf Coast, Indiana Review, Mid-American Review, Southern Review, and FIELD.

Wednesday, October 12 at 4:30 p.m.

Writers House  community meetings bring students, staff and faculty together to imagine and oversee the programs and business of the Writers House and to share writing and reading-related opportunities. This event is open to the Franklin & Marshall community.  First time attendees are welcome, and food will be served.

This event is open to F&M students and FPS only.

Thursday, October 13 at 6:00pm

Legendary cartoonist and former hula dancer Lynda Barry has been teaching her unique “Writing the Unthinkable” workshop to captivated fans across the country for over a decade. A Cartoonist in the Classroom explores the effects the workshop has on students with little or no knowledge of her work - a group of Haverford College students, members of an English as a Second Language, and finally, those behind bars at a Philadelphia prison.  With enthusiasm and humor, Lynda solicits the imagery of her student writers’ early days.  She inspires with theories and stories that illustrate her belief in storytelling as an inherent biological function. Q&A with the filmakers to follow and pizza will be served. This event is free and open to the public.

Thursday, October 20 at 4:30pm

Amy Tan, author of the novels The Joy Luck Club, The Kitchen God’s Wife, The Hundred Secret Senses, The Bonesetter’s Daughter, and Saving Fish, a memoir, The Opposite of Fate, and two children’s books, The Moon Lady and Sagwa, The Chinese Siamese Cat, visits the Writers House for a craft talk.

 Thursday, October 20 at 8:00pm at the Ann & Richard Barshinger Center for Musical Arts

Born in the U.S. to immigrant parents from China, Tan rejected her mother's expectations that she become a doctor and concert pianist. She chose to write fiction instead. Her novels are The Joy Luck Club, The Kitchen God's Wife, The Hundred Secret Senses,The Bonesetter's Daughter and Saving Fish from Drowning.

Tuesday, October 25 at 6:00pm 

Bring no more than five minutes of your writing (poems, fiction, nonfiction, plays, songs) to share in an innovative and kinetic workshop forum with professor and novelist Sands Hall.   Come prepared to have a terrific time, and leave with some great in sights into your own writing. This event is free and open  to the Franklin & Marshall  Community.  Food will be served.

Thursday, October 27 at 4:30pm

Join us for a panel discussion with Scott Fiefer, Barry Kornhauser, and Barbara Buckman Strasko as they share their experiences writing  with youth and adults out in the community.  

Monday, October 31 at 4:30pm

Are you English curious? Do you wonder what English courses are out there, what an English major can do for you now, and what you can do with your English major when you graduate? For the answers to these questions come and enjoy some pizza while talking to members of the F&M English department.

Monday, October 31 at 7:00p.m.

This Halloween, help us revive a fantastic Writers House tradition: Dead Writers Night! Come dressed as your favorite deceased author, poet, or dramatist, and bring along an excerpt of his or her work or a spooky Halloween-appropriate piece to share. It’s a macabre night of fun costumes, good literature, and tasty Halloween treats.

Friday, November 4 at 12:00 pm

Chris Chappell, editor at Palgrrave McMillan,  will meet with students and faculty to discuss his work and offer career guidance and insight. A 2001 graduate of Franklin & Marshall College, where he majored in Music and English, Chris manages the scholarly programs for history, African American studies, and African studies at Palgrave. He has had the opportunity to work with a number of leading scholars, including Manning Marable, Sean Wilentz, Margaret Jacob, Akira Iriye, Mamadou Diouf, and Steven Aschheim, and he has at various points managed lists in religion, cultural studies, business, and economics. In his spare time he produces off-off-Broadway theater with his company Sneaky Snake Productions.  This event is open to students and FPS.  Food will be served.

Tuesday, November 1 at 4:30pm

Rajesh Gopie is a director/performer/writer from South Africa. In his play, Out of Bounds,  he takes audiences into the life and times of a South African Indian family, bringing to life some twenty-eight characters in this one-man show. Nobel-Prize winning Nadine Gordimer writes that “Rajesh Gopie is the most multi-talented young artist whose work I have come across in more than a decade of deep interest in theatre. He is a phenomenon to celebrate as a playwright, just as he is an actor.”

Friday, November 4, 5-8:00 pm. at the Ware Center, Millersville Lancaster, 42 North Prince St.

Poetry Paths,  The Writers House, Millersville University, and the MU Creative Writing  Guild  join in the First Friday fun downtown with a combination poetry reading and poetry slam.   For those not quite ready for a competition, poets may share their work in an open reading from 5:00pm-6:00pm. For those ready to perform their spoken word pieces, there will be a slam between 6:00pm and 7:00pm. The evening wraps up with performances by New York City poets Tyrek Greene and Mega.  Contact Astrid Barreras astrid.barreras@fandm.edu to sign up for the slam. This event is free and open to the public

Wednesday, November 16 at 5:30 p.m.

Don’t miss our annual potluck feast! Make and bring a dish to share with the community (if you’re without a kitchen, a can of cranberry sauce will do just fine). And make sure to get here early - the line has been known to wrap upstairs and through the second floor! Please reply to Asst. Director Joanna Underhill, joanna.underhill@fandm.edu to tell us what you’ll bring. This event is open to the F&M Community

Tuesday, November 29 at 6:00pm

Bring no more than five minutes of your writing (poems, fiction, nonfiction, plays, songs) to share in an innovative and kinetic workshop forum with professor and novelist Sands Hall.   Come prepared to have a terrific time, and leave with some great in sights into your own writing. This event is free and open  to the Franklin & Marshall  Community.  Food will be served.

Wednesday, December 7 at 4:30 p.m.

Writers House  community meetings bring students, staff and faculty together to imagine and oversee the programs and business of the Writers House and to share writing and reading-related opportunities. This event is open to the Franklin & Marshall community.  First time attendees are welcome, and food will be served.

This event is open to F&M students and FPS only.

Monday, Feb. 7 at 7:30 p.m.
Emerging Writers Festival 10th Anniversary Event
More >

Feb. 8, at 7:30 p.m., Roschel Performing Arts Center
The American Shakespeare Center on Tour, the touring arm of the American Shakespeare Center and the Blackfriars Playhouse, presents Macbeth as part of its 2010/2011 Restless Ecstasy Tour.  More >

Feb. 16, at 4:30 p.m. First time attendees are welcome, and food will be served. More >

Monday, February 21 at 7:30 p.m. This event is free and open to the public. More >

Feb. 22 at 6 p.m. Bring no more than five minutes of your writing (poems, fiction, nonfiction, plays, songs) to share in an innovative and kinetic workshop forum with professor and novelist Sands Hall.

March 2 at 8 p.m., Schnader Theatre in Roschel Performing Arts Center. Norman comes to Franklin & Marshall College as our third annual Lapine Family Visiting Theatre Artist . More >

March 3, from 8-9:30 p.m. The Editors of Franklin & Marshall's literary and arts magazine, Epilogue, invite you to a launch party celebrating their spring 2011 issue. For more information, contact Sarah Medeiros at sarah.medeiros@fandm.edu.

Friday, March 4. Time TBD.
This event is open to current Franklin & Marshall students only. For more information and to register, contact Debra Saporetti at 358-4758.

Monday March 7 at 7:30 p.m.
Emerging Writers Festival 10th Anniversary Event
More >

March 9 at 7:30 p.m. Join us for Tohe's visit to Franklin & Marshall, an event curated by Professor Jill Ahlberg Yohe in the department of anthropology. More >

March 21 at 4:30 p.m., Stahr Auditorium
This event is co-sponsored by Dog Star Books and is free and open to the public. Seating is limited; please call the Writers House at 291-4244 to reserve your seat.

March 23 at 7:30 p.m. D’Ambrosio comes to Franklin & Marshall to give a reading of his own work and announce the winner(s) of this year’s annual Jerome Irving Bank Short Story Contest. More >

March 23 at 4:30 p.m. First time attendees are welcome, and food will be served.

Saturday, March 26 at 7 p.m. in the Steinman College Center Atrium. Join us for our first-ever Poetry Slam featuring nationally acclaimed spoken word poet Carvens Lissaint, with a slam to follow. More >

March 29 at 6 p.m. Bring no more than five minutes of your writing (poems, fiction, nonfiction, plays, songs) to share in an innovative and kinetic workshop forum with professor and novelist Sands Hall.

Thursday March 31 at 7:30 p.m.
Emerging Writers Festival 10th Anniversary Event.
More >

April 4 at 7:30 p.m. Joanne Diaz’s poems have recently appeared in AGNI, The American Poetry Review, DIAGRAM, and The Missouri Review. More >

Wednesday, April 6 at 7:30 p.m.
Leslie Daniels is the former fiction editor of Green Mountains Review. Her first novel, Cleaning Nabokov’s House, will be published spring 2011. More >

Thursday, April 14 at 11:30 a.m.
Common Hour presentation, Mayser Gymnasium

April 19 at 6 p.m. Bring no more than five minutes of your writing (poems, fiction, nonfiction, plays, songs) to share in an innovative and kinetic workshop forum with professor and novelist Sands Hall.

Monday, April 25 at 6:00 p.m. Serenade the members of the Writers House community who are about to graduate and allow them to serernade you with readings of their work. Then stay to enjoy a barbecue and party for all.  Ping-pong, door prizes, and food galore! 

This event is open to F&M students and FPS only.