Franklin & Marshall College

Wednesday, February 13 • 7:00pm 

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.

Hannah Tinti's short story collection, Animal Crackers, has sold in sixteen countries and was a runner-up for the PEN/Hemingway award. Her best-selling novel, The Good Thief, is a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, recipient of the American Library Association’s Alex Award, winner of the John Sargent Sr. First Novel Prize, and winner of the Quality Paperback Book Club’s New Voices Award.

Tuesday, February 19 • 7:30pm                         @ Rochel Performing Arts Center

Sarah Ruhl’s plays include, In the Next Room, or the vibrator play(Broadway 2009, 2010 Pulitzer Prize Finalist), The Clean House(2005 Pulitzer Prize Finalist; The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, 2004); Passion Play, a cycle (Pen American Award, The Fourth Freedom Forum Playwriting Award from The Kennedy Center);Dead Man’s Cell Phone (Helen Hayes Award for Best New Play);Melancholy Play; Demeter in the City (9 NAACP Image Award nominations), Eurydice; Orlando; and Late: a cowboy song. Her plays have been produced at Lincoln Center Theater, Goodman Theatre, Playwrights Horizons, Second Stage, Arena Stage, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Yale Repertory Theatre, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Cornerstone Theater, The Wilma Theater, Madison Repertory Theatre, and the Piven Theatre, among others. Her plays have also been produced internationally, and have been translated into Polish, Russian, Spanish, Norwegian, Korean, German and Arabic.

Wednesday, February 20 • 4:30pm

Community meetings at the Writers House 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.  All are welcome! Food will be served.

Tuesday, February 26 • 7:30pm                         @ Green Room Theatre with reception to follow at the Writers House 

Come celebrate the release of professor Montemarano's new novel The Book of Why at a public reading and reception.

Nicholas Montemarano is the author of the short story collection If the Sky Falls , a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice, and the novel A Fine Place.

His short stories have appeared in Esquire, Zoetrope: All-Story, Tin House, The Southern Review, AGNI, The Gettysburg Review, and many other publications. His fiction has been reprinted in The Pushcart Prize (2003) and cited as distinguished stories of the year in The Best American Short Stories for 2001, 2002, 2005, and 2006.

Wednesday, March 6  • 7:30pm

Andy Bragen was a 2009-2010 Workspace Resident with the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.  His plays The Hairy Dutchman, commissioned by the University of Rochester, was produced at the university in April 2009.  Spuyten Duyvil, which Andy developed at the 2004 Seven Devils Playwrights Conference, was produced by Brown/Trinity Playwrights Rep. in July 2008.  Greater Messapia was produced at Queens Theatre in the Park in March 2004.  This Is My Office was produced by Brown/Trinity Playwrights Rep in July 2010, and at Studio Roanoke in May 2011.  It is scheduled to be produced Off-Broadway in the autumn of 2013 by The Play Company. Other plays and translations have been seen and heard at numerous theatres in New York and elsewhere, including The Guthrie Theatre, The Goodman Theater, Ars Nova, Rattlestick, and LAByrinth, He is a core member of the Playwrights Center, and a member of New Dramatists.  More information is available at www.andybragen.com. 

Tuesday, March 19 • 7:00pm 

Like Shakespeare? We do, and we're performing rehearsed readings of aselection of the Bard's best scenes, from Hamlet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Winter's Tale, and more. You need not participate--other thanlistening!--but for certain scenes we will welcome you to take part in the readings. 

Monday, March 18 • 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.

Wednesday, March 20 • 4:30pm

Community meetings at the Writers House 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.  All are welcome! Food will be served.

Tuesday, March 26 • 7:30pm

Virginia Morell is a prolific contributor to National Geographic, Science, and Smithsonian, among other publications. She is also the author of Ancestral Passions, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year; Blue Nile; and coauthor with Richard Leakey of Wildlife Wars. Her newst book, Animal Wise, will be released in February.

Readings and Craft Talks April 17, 18, 19

The Emerging Writers Festival at Franklin & Marshall College is a three-day celebration of the work of talented and promising younger American writers. Each year, the Festival brings five fine younger writers to campus all at once for three days, giving them opportunities to mix often and informally with students and with one another.

The Emerging Writers Festival is generously supported by Richard and Edna Hausman, parents of a Franklin & Marshall graduate and tireless and generous supporters of the arts at the College.

Wednesday, January 23 • 4:30pm

Community meetings at the Writers House 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.  All are welcome! Food will be served.

Wednesday, January 30 • 5:30pm

Jerome Hodos is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Franklin & Marshall.  He is the author of Second Cities: Globalization and Local Politics in Manchester, England, and Philadelphia, which earned the 2012 Urban History Association’s Kenneth Jackson Best Book Award, an annual honor presented for the best work relating to North American Urban History. The book explores the economics, culture, migration patterns and other qualities of Manchester and Philadelphia, comparing urban centers that are often viewed as second fiddles to their larger counterparts on the global scene.  This event is co-sponsored by the Department of Sociology and the Ware College House and is free and open to the public.

Thursday, January 31 • 7:30pm

Stephanie Reents is a fiction writer whose short story collection, The Kissing List, was published in 2012. Stephanie has been a Bread Loaf Conference Scholar, a Stegner Fellow, and a Rhodes Scholar, and her fiction has been included in the O. Henry Prize Stories, noted in Best American Short Stories, and has appeared in numerous journals, including Epoch. A former Visiting Professor of English at Franklin & Marshall College, she teaches creative writing at College of the Holy Cross.  This event is co-sponsored by the English department and is free and open to the public.

September 12, 2012 • 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!

Friday, September 21 • 7:30pm

Join team members and coaches from the College’s fabulous women’s athletic teams for an evening with journalist Robert Strauss.  Strauss  has been a reporter at Sports Illustrated,  a feature writer for the Philadelphia Daily News, and a news and sports producer at KYW-TV in Philadelphia, but now he is the (often perplexed) dad of teenaged girls, Ella and Sylvia. His book, Daddy’s Little Goalie, chronicles the Strausses’ negotiation of the dad-daughter life in the harrowing 21st Century. This event is co-sponsored by the Athletics Department.

Tuesday, October 2, 2012 • 7:30pm

The Writers House will be partnering with Laura Brady '13 and Katie Tucci '15, students in Comparative Literary Studies, and their advisor Professor Jon Stone to host a visual exhibit and literary reading that explore the work and legacy of the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova.  Her career spanned the emergence of the Russian avant-garde and the brutal repression of the Stalin era.

Friday, October 5, 2012

From 3-5 pm, look for Poetry Paths tour guides and fun activities throughout downtown Lancaster and at many of our completed sites. 

From 6-8 pm, come to the Ware Center for a community party as we celebrate the many people who have supported and created Poetry Paths -- including you!  Look for live music, food, poetry, free stuff, and fun!    

“From The Anatomy of Melancholy to Criminal Trials: How the English Major Shaped a Career”  

Wednesday, October 17, 2012  • 4:30pm

Stanley Brand is a 1970 graduate of the college where he majored in English and earned Departmental Honors for his independent study: The Anatomy of Melancholy: A Mean in All Things. He has a J. D. from Georgetown University Law School. From 1976-1983 he was General Counsel to the US House of Representatives under Speaker Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill. He entered private practice in 1984 and as former client George Stephanopoulos wrote in his autobiography, he “specializes in cases at the intersection of politics, criminal law and communicating in the Washington echo chamber”. Since 1992 he has served as vice president of Minor League Baseball  and was counsel to MLB in the congressional steroid hearings in 2005.  He has been a trustee of the College since 2005. 

Saturday, October 20, 2012  • 7pm

Alan Cheuse has been reviewing books on All Things Considered since the 1980s. His challenge is to make each two-minute review as fresh and interesting as possible while focusing on the essence of the book itself. Formally trained as a literary scholar, Cheuse writes fiction and novels and publishes short stories. He is the author of five novels, two collections of short fiction, and the memoir Fall out of Heaven. His prize-winning novel To Catch the Lightning is an exploration of the intertwined plights of real-life frontier photographer Edward Curtis and the American Indian. His latest work of book-length fiction is the novel Song of Slaves in the Desert, which tells the story of a Jewish rice plantation-owning family in South Carolina and the Africans they enslave.

Wednesday, October 17  • 6:00 pm

Community meetings at the Writers House 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.  All are welcome! Food will be served.

Tuesday, October 23, 2012 • 7:30pm

How does a song come about?  Are they just plucked, effortlessly, from the air?  Or is it all about hard labor?  Maggie McKaig, an award winning songwriter, composer, arranger, musician, and performer, will be answering these questions and more in a workshop that will be both lecture and demonstration.

“Maggie McKaig is one of the finest musicians, singers, and songwriters performing today.” --Utah Phillips.

http://youtu.be/XutA-OBpsyw

http://youtu.be/pVPrs-1tNz8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sH5mXnwEMWI&feature=share&list=PLE222AC4665EE2123

Thursday, October 25

Craft Talk: Philadelphia Alumni Writers House, 4:30pm

The Hausman Lecture Series:  Barshinger Center for Musical Arts, 8:00pm

Poet, essayist, and naturalist, Diane Ackerman is the author of two dozen highly acclaimed works of nonfiction and poetry, including The Zookeeper’s Wife and A Natural History of the Senses. Her most recent book, One Hundred Names for Love, has been described by Booklist as: “A gorgeously engrossing, affecting, sweetly funny, and mind-opening love story of crisis, determination, creativity, and repair.” It was a Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Circle Critics Award.

Friday, October 26

On this trip to NYC, students will visit world-renowned places devoted to helping writers and readers of all ages, including Poets House and 826NYC. Open to all students. Contact Assistant Director Joanna Underhill, joanna.underhill@fandm.edu, to reserve a space.

Thursday, November 1 • 7:30pm

Erik Anderson is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the English Department, specializing in creative nonfiction and hybrid forms. As an essayist, his attention is wide-ranging, and his 2010 book, The Poetics of Trespass, deals with everything from the environmental art of Robert Smithson to the Paris riots of 2005, from the work of American poet James Schuyler to the research of contemporary physicists, from building projects in Dubai to the films of director Wong Kar-Wai. Educated at the Universities of Michigan and Denver, and at Naropa University’s Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, Anderson has also published extensively as a poet and book critic. 

Thursday, November 8 • 7:30 pm

Ware Center, 42 N. Prince St.

Please join us in celebrating Poetry Paths Poet-in-the-Schools Barbara Buckman Strasko’s first full length book of poems Graffiti in Braille. The reading will be followed by a reception and book signing. This event is co-sponsored by The Millersville University Writers Guild, The Philadelphia Alumni Writers House, and The Lancaster Literary Guild in conjunction with the Ware Center and Millersville University

Wednesday, November 14 • 5:30-7:30pm

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.

Wednesday, November 28 • 5:30pm

Sikka’s story “Uncle Musto Takes a Mistress” was selected for a 2009 PEN/O. Henry Prize. His fiction has been published in the journal One Story, the Toronto South Asian Review, Trikone Magazine, Tehelka, and in anthologies. Mohan’s story “The Railway Aunty” (Delhi Noir, Akashic Books and HarperCollins India) was adapted into an award-winning feature film entitled B.A. Pass. Cities and neighborhoods feature as characters in much of Mohan’s work. He recently had a non-fiction debut in National Geographic Traveler, India edition, writing about his current home borough, Brooklyn. Mohan is completing a story collection and working on a novel, both based in a fictitious town resembling Delhi.

Friday, November 30 • 9:00am

Saturday, December 1 • 8:00-10:00pm

After the success of the October coffee house, hosts  Elyse Flick ‘13,  Deirdre Roche ‘13, Ryann McMurry ‘15 , and Keiran Miller ‘15 are organizing another evening filled with coffee, tea, food, readings, instruments, and literary musings. Bring a poem, song, and a friend!  This event is open to the Franklin & Marshall community. 

Wednesday, December 5 • 4:30pm

Please join us for hot chocolate and cookies as we wrap up the fall sememster and look forward to the spring. We will also have some fun with a White Elephant gift exchange. Bring something that you no longer need or want (those potholders from aunt Agnes, the corn husk duck figurine that was a gift from a cousin’s trip to Mexico, that dvd of It’s A Wonderful Life your family keeps regifting to one another) and perhaps your gift will be just what someone else was looking for! This event is open to the Franklin & Marshall community.

May 23 at 6:30 Roschel Performing Arts Center

From December 2011 through March 2012, students from Lancaster’s public elementary schools have been studying and writing poetry inspired by our city. Help celebrate their work at our 3rd annual Kids Poetry Reading, featuring:

• Original poetry and art by 60+ students from and Fulton, Martin, Price, Ross, and Wickersham Elementary Schools
• Words from our Poet in the Schools, Barbara Strasko
• Music performances to local school ensembles
• Light reffreshments served afterwards

Tuesday, January 24  • 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 • 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.”

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.

Thursday February 16  • 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 • 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.

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  • 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.

Amy Stewart’s appearance is made possible by a collaboration of the North Museum of Natural History & Science, the Eiserer-Hickey Foundation, and the Franklin & Marshall Philadelphia Alumni Writers House. Accommodations provided by Lancaster Arts Hotel.

Wednesday, March 7 • 4:30pm

Join us in re-establishing one of Franklin and Marshall's oldest traditions and institutions!  The Goethean Literary Society will work towards promoting intellectual curiosity, growth, and the sharing of ideas among students from all academic backgrounds through literary pursuits.  Come discuss Neil Gaiman 's short story "How to Talk to Girls at Parties"  (link below), drink hot chocolate, and be a part of the creation of a society of students genuinely interested in sharing ideas.  Everyone welcome! 

http://www.neilgaiman.com/p/Cool_Stuff/Short_Stories/How_To_Talk_To_Girls_At_Parties/How_To_Talk_To_Girls_At_Parties_%28Text%29

Wednesday, March 7 • 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.

Thursday, March 8 • 4:30pm

Wednesday, March 21  • 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  • 8:00pm at the Rochel Performing Arts Center

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.”

Monday, March 26  • 7:30 pm Bonchek Lecture Hall, Barshinger Life Sciences & Philosophy building

Human Rights Awareness Week

Benjamin Skinner is a fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy of Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and a writer engaged in the study of the U.S. and global political economies, with a focus on the developing world and particularly modern slavery. He was named one of National Geographic’s “Adventurers of the Year 2008.” He is the author of A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face with Modern-Day Slavery (Free Press; 2008), and a contributor to Crimes of War 2.0: What the Public Should Know (W.W. Norton & Company; 2007). He has served as Special Assistant to Ambassador Richard Holbrooke and previously as Research Associate for U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. His articles have appeared in Newsweek International, Travel + Leisure, Los Angeles Times, The Miami Herald, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy and others.

Sponsored by Writer’s House, Arabic Studies, International Studies, The Ware Institute for Civic Engagement; The Human Rights Initiative

This event is open to the public.

Thursday, March 29

Truly learning about a topic involves engaging yourself with it in a multidisciplinary way. On March 29, 2012 SEE seminar students will be given this opportunity through a day-long exploration of one of the most diverse and intriguing residents of our planet: the insect.   The students will begin with a visit to the North Museum Science and Engineering Fairs Public Day in order to see how student scientists approach these creatures in experimental studies. Then they'll progress to the North Museum to view Bugs: Out of the Box and Wicked Bugs, two premier travelling exhibits that show bugs through the eyes of some professional artists and writers. Finally, with the assistance of students from the Philadelphia Alumni Writers House, the SEE group will try their hand at creative writing, drawing inspiration from the day’s activities and their new six-legged friends.  

This event is a collaboration between the Writers House, the North Museum, and IU13, and is designed for IU13's SEE students only. 

Thursday March 29 • 7:30pm

Mike Sacks has worked at The Washington Post and currently works on the editorial staff of Vanity Fair magazine. He has written for The New Yorker, Time, Esquire, Vanity Fair, GQ, Radar, Believer, Vice, Women’s Health, Salon, Premiere, New York Observer, McSweeney’s, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Cracked, MAD, and other publications.
 
Sacks has published three humor books: And Here’s the Kicker: Conversations with 21 Humor Writers About Their Craft (F+W Press); SEX: Our Bodies, Our Junk (Random House); Your Wildest Dreams, Within Reason (Tin House).
 
Sacks contributed to the books Esquire Rules and Esquire Presents: Things A Man Shouldn’t Do After the Age of Thirty; and Mountain Man Dance Moves: The McSweeney’s Book of Lists.
 
Sacks is also the editor of Care to Make Love in That Gross Little Space Between Cars (Random House), with contributions from Patton Oswalt, Judd Apatow, Dave Eggers, Nick Hornby, Sam Lipsyte, George Saunders, Amy Sedaris, and others.

Monday, April 2 • 7:30pm

One evening in the fall of 2009, five physicians, all from different specialties, sat down together in a room and decided to write—write about their patients’ suffering, about how that makes them feel, about the toll their sense of responsibility takes on them personally and on their families.  They decided to trust one another enough to write about their insecurities, mistakes that still haunt them, and how they feel when they become patients.  They also decided to write about happy things, like looking into the luminous brown eyes of a child whose life was spared because of surgery well done—and funny things, like watching a haughty attending physician, while teaching students on bedside rounds, confuse the symptoms and diagnoses of two patients sharing a room.

The physicians’ creative and reflective writing has been featured in prestigious, professional journals including the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), Annals of Internal Medicine, and Academic Medicine.  Publishing (so far 16 original pieces) in these forums enables our Penn State Hershey physician writers to promote human-centered dimensions of medicine and heighten professionalism on national and international levels.

Thursday April 5 • 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.

Thursday April 5 • 8:30pm in Steinman College Center

Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz is the author of five books of poetry as well as the nonfiction book, Words In Your Face: A Guided Tour Through Twenty Years of the New York City Poetry Slam, about which Billy Collins wrote “[this book] leaves no doubt that the slam poetry scene has achieved legitimacy and taken its rightful place on the map of contemporary literature.” Her recent awards include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry. Be inspired by Cristin and sign up to share your own poetry. This event is free and open to the public. Food will be served.

April  11-13 

The Emerging Writers Festival at Franklin & Marshall College is a three-day celebration of the work of 5 talented and promising younger American writers. 2012 marks the eleventh year of the Festival, which is generously supported by Richard and Edna Hausman, parents of a Franklin & Marshall graduate and great supporters of the arts at the College. Unless otherwise noted all events take place at the Writers House

WEDNESDAY 4/11

• 8:00pm Opening Night Reading featuring Rebecca  

  Makkai and Jamaal May at the Green Room Theatre

• 9:30pm Opening Night Reception

THURSDAY 4/12

• 10:00am Craft Workshop with Anna Moench 

• 12:45pm Craft Workshop with Jamaal May

• 4:30pm Craft Workshop with Rebecca Makkai

• 8:00pm Second Night Reading featuring Megan 

  Mayhew Bergman, Christine Hemp and Anna Moench  

  at the Green Room Theatre

• 9:30pm Second Night Reception

FRIDAY 4/13

• 10:00am Craft Workshop with Megan Mayhew Bergman 

• 11:15am Craft Workshop with Christine Hemp 

• 12:30pm Panel Discussion with the Emerging Writers

• 2:00pm Bye-bye Barbecue 

2012 Emerging Writers 

Megan Mayhew Bergman was raised in North Carolina and now lives on a small farm in Shaftsbury, Vermont with her family.  Her first collection of short stories, Birds of a Lesser Paradise, was published in March 2012.

Christine Hemp has been called a “poetry adventurer.” She has aired her poems on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition, she has sent a poem of hers into space on a NASA mission, and her program Connecting Chord, which unites cops and youth offenders through poetry, was called a “milestone event” by the London, U.K. Chief of Police.

Rebecca Makkai is a Chicago-based writer whose first novel, The Borrower,  is a Booklist Top Ten Debut, an Indie Next pick, an O Magazine selection and one of Chicago Magazine’s choices for best fiction of 2011. London’s Daily Mail called it an “astonishingly assured novel.”

Jamaal May is a Cave Canem Fellow, Callaloo Fellow and graduate of Warren Wilson’s MFA for writers. He is the author of two poetry chapbooks, The God Engine and The Whetting of Teeth and editor of the Organic Weapon Arts Chapbook Series. 

Anna Moench’s plays include Hunger, In Quietness, Great Eastern, and The Pillow Book.  Other productions of her work have been seen at the Old Vic, The Flea, Dance Theater Workshop, and Dixon Place.

Tuesday, April 17 • 4:30 pm

Since his 2005 trial and release after 44 years in prison, former editor of  the prisoner-produced news magazine Angolite and award-winning journalist Wilbert Rideau has continued to devote himself to educating people about the realities of the world behind bars. His autobiography, In the Place of Justice: A Story of Punishment and Deliverance, was published in 2010. Co-sponsored by the English 276, U.S. Prison Poetry class. This event is free and open to the public and food will be served.

Friday April 20 • 4:30pm

A fabulous and opinionated gay couple of a decade-plus, Tom and Lorenzo decided the internet was incomplete without their voices, so they launched their first blog, Project RunGay in 2006 in order to enrich the masses with our thoughts and words. They thought they’d slap up some funny pictures and bitchy comments about Project Runway just to get it out of theirsystems. But an audience found them and, to their delight, encouraged them to keep posting. They renamed their site Tom+Lorenzo are now a pop culture blog  about those parts of pop culture that they personally find interesting; from runway shows to red carpets; Mad Men to Glee. Think of it like an extended water-cooler conversation with the two funny, bitchy gay guys you work with. In addition to blogging on their own site, they’ve been writing television reviews for The Huffington Post and celebrity interviews for the Metrosource magazine.  Tom and Lorenzo will also be serving as judges for the Trashion Show sponored by the Wohlsen Center for Sustainable Environment at 7pm.

Friday, April 20  •  5:30 pm

at the Frey Atrium of the Barshinger Life Sciences & Philosophy Building

Come celebrate the release of the inaugural issue of the Alumni Arts Review. F&M is proud that as a College it continues the fine tradition of a classic liberal arts education. The word “arts” in this case does not just mean the fine arts, or the literary arts; rather, it refers to educational disciplines that are considered essential if one is to be an effective citizen of the world. This event is free and open to the public.

Wednesday, April 25 • 5:00pm

Enjoy a barbecue and pot luck dinner while we celebrate the Seniors of the Writers House Community who are graduating. Please email Asst. Director Joanna Underhill to sign up for the pot luck. joanna.underhill@fandm.edu. This event is open to F&M students and FPS only.

Friday, April 27 •  7:00 pm

A celebration to honor the work of  the  artists, writers, and staff members of Badaboom, The College Dispatch, The College Reporter, Epilogue, Kituhwan, and Plume. Food will be served, and there will be prizes to be won!

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.