Franklin & Marshall College Franklin & Marshall College

Events

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  • poetry paths logo
  • Poetry Paths Kids Poetry Reading
  • 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

 Spring 2012

  • Lapine & Eisenpress
  • Big Girls Small Kitchen: A guide to quarter-life cooking with Phoebe Lapine & Cara Eisenpress
  • 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.

  • letters to a young poet
  • Letters to a Young Poet: Reading and discussion with translator Mark Harman
  • 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.”

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  • Writers House Community Meeting
  • 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.

     
  • lorenzo helguero morales 100 125
  • Poetry reading with Professor Lorenzo Helguero Morales
  • 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 abismoEl amor en los tiempos del colePoeta 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.                                                              

  • sister friend
  • Sister Friend: Phillis Wheatley and Obour Tanner on Freedom, Love and the Divine
  • 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.

  • wide eyed film festival 2012
  • Wide Eyed Film Festival
  • 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

     
  • wayne koestenbaum
  • A Reading with Wayne Koestenbaum
  • 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.

  • wickedbugssm
  • Amy Stewart on Wicked Bugs
  • 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.

  • mat johnson
  • A Reading with Mat Johnson
  • 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.

  • john modern
  • Faculty Writers: Book release party for Professor John Modern
  • Thursday, March 8 • 4:30pm

     

    Please join us as we celebrate  John Lardas Modern’s Secularism in Antebellum America. Professor Modern teaches in the Religious Studies Department and is the author of The Bop Apocalypse: The Religious Visions of Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Burroughs, and he is a contributing editor of The Immanent Frame  and co-curator of Frequencies: A Collaborative Genealogy of Spirituality.
     
  • Philadelphia Alumni Writers House
  • English Department Pizza Party
  • Wednesday, March 21 • 4:30 pm

    Are you English curious? Do you wonder what English courses are out there for you to take next fall, 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. 

     
  • kevin brockmeier
  • Bank Prize Reading: Kevin Brockmeier
  • 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.

  • john guare
  • Lapine Family Visiting Theatre Artist: John Guare
  • 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.”

  • ben skinner
  • Benjamin Skinner Lecture: Human Trafficking
  • 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 InternationalTravel + LeisureLos Angeles TimesThe Miami HeraldForeign AffairsForeign 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.

  • North Museum
  • Bugs in Three Dimensions: A Creative Writing Workshop for IU13's SEE program, led by Franklin & Marshall Students
  • 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. 

  • mike sacks
  • A Reading with Mike Sacks
  • 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, EsquireVanity FairGQ, Radar, Believer, Vice, Women’s Health, Salon, PremiereNew York ObserverMcSweeney’sThe 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.

     
  • pencad
  • A Reading with the Physicians Writers Group
  • 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.

  • dunya mikhail
  • Poetry Reading with Dunya Mikhail
  • 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.

  • Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz
  • Poetry Open Mic Night with Spoken Word Artist Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz
  • 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.

     
     
  • ewfbg 2
  • Emerging Writers Festival
  • 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.

     
  • wilbert rideau
  • Craft Talk with Wilbert Rideau
  • 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.

     
  • tom+lorenzo
  • Craft Talk with bloggers Tom & Lorenzo
  • 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.

  • alumni arts review2
  • Alumni Arts Review Reception
  • 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.

     
  • WH End of Year Party
  • Writers House End of Year and Farewell to Seniors Party
  • 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.

     
  • f&mpubs
  • Student Publications Party
  • 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!

Fall 2011

  • mary szybist
  • A Reading with Poet Mary Szybist
  • 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.


  • Kevin at grill
  • Writers House Community Meeting & Welcome Back BBQ
  • 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!

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  • For You By You: Open Workshop
  • 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.

     
  • lynn powell
  • Poetry Reading with Lynn Powell
  • Thursday, September 29 at 4:30pm

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

    Lynn Powell is the author of two books of poetry,Old & New Testaments and The Zones of Paradise, and a book of nonfiction, Framing Innocence: A Mother’s Photographs, A Prosecutor’s Zeal, and a Small Town’s Response, which was awarded the Studs and Ida Terkel Author Fund Award.
  • talkinghands
  • The Handprint Identity Project: An Exchange Between Artists and Poets
  •  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


  • nick lantz
  • Poetry Reading with Nick Lantz
  • 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.

  • megan mclachlan
  • Writers House Community Meeting
  • 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.

  • lyndabarryfilmstill
  • Film Screening: A Cartoonist in the Classroom
  • 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.

     

     
  • amy tan
  • Craft Talk with Amy Tan
  • 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.

  • amy tan
  • Annual Hausman Lecture by novelist Amy Tan
  •  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.

  • sandshallportrait
  • For You By You: Open Workshop
  • 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.

  • profstory4photoj
  • Teaching in Community Panel Discussion
  • 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.  

    Scott Feifer is a 1987 graduate of Franklin and Marshall and conducts  “Writing Circle” workshops in a variety of schools,  shelters, placements, support groups, rehabilitation programs, detention centers, and prisons.

     

    Barry Kornhauser is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Franklin and Marshall and is the founder of the Fulton’s Youtheatre program, which has been recognized by the National Endowment for the Arts as a national model for providing arts education for at-risk, disabled and disadvantaged teens. 

     
    Barbara Buckman Strasko was the Poet Laureate of Lancaster County 2009-10. For many years, she has been a teacher, counselor and literacy coach in the School District of Lancaster. She currently teaches in the Poetry Paths in the Schools program.
     
     
  • pizza360
  • English Department Pizza Party
  • 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.

     
  • Writer's House Community
  • Dead Writers Night
  • 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.

     
  • Lunch with editor Chris Chappell ‘01
  • 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.

     
  • Rajesh Gopie in "Out of Bounds"
  • Craft Talk with Rajesh Gopie
  • 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.”

  • greenemega
  • Poetry Aloud/Poetry Slam
  • 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

    Transportation will be provided: Look for  F&M vans  in  front  of  the  Writers  House going to and from downtown bewteen 4:45pm and 8:30pm.

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  • Writers House Thanksgiving
  • 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

     
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  • For You By You: Open Workshop
  • 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.

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  • Writers House Community Meeting
  • 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.

     

 Spring 2011 Events

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  • American Shakespeare Center On Tour: Macbeth
  • 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 >

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  • For You By You
  • 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.

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  • Epilogue Launch Party
  • 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.

  • Careers in Writing and the Arts: A Road Trip to New York City
  • 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.

  • Laura Tohe
  • A Reading with Laura Tohe
  • 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 >

  • Lynda Barry
  • Writing Workshop with Lynda Barry
  • 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.

  • Charles D'Ambrosio
  • Bank Prize Reading: Charles D'Ambrosio
  • 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 >

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

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  • Poetry Slam featuring Carvens Lissaint
  • 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 >

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  • For You By You
  • 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.

  • Joanne Diaz
  • A Reading with Joanne Diaz
  • 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 >

  • Leslie Daniels
  • A Reading with Leslie Daniels
  • 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 >

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  • For You By You
  • 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.

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  • Writers House End of Year Party and Farewell to Seniors
  • 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.