PWC Tea Time
Every Friday 11 AM - 12 PM
Take a quick study break, meet new people, and try our snacks and tea!
Every Friday 11 AM - 12 PM
Take a quick study break, meet new people, and try our snacks and tea!
Join Penn Violence Prevention on Friday afternoons in October for a trauma-informed yoga practice. Each week (October 2, 9, 16, and 23) we will meet from 1-2PM in Studio 409. Feel free to arrive at 12:45pm to get ready for class. Class will be led by Nicole Pollard, and confidential staff from PVP are on site to chat and participate! Free and open to the Penn community. Attend one class or all four. Pre-registration is encouraged but not mandatory; classes cap at 40.
Do you like to bake? Are you a master of literary puns? This event is for you! Anyone is welcome to make, bake, or build an (edible) book for our annual Edible Books Party, held in memory of Blaze Bernstein. Prizes will be awarded in a number of categories, including Punniest, Best Use of a Single Ingredient, Most Literary, Most Literal, and Blaziest (i.e. the best). Your entry might look like book (a beautiful cake decorated to look like book jacket), or it might be a playful food pun on a book title (we’ve had flan jokes, pie jokes, and other punny play). You can make a book solo or as a team! To be considered for a prize, please register. (We’ll use your registration to make a fancy book cover/sign for your entry).
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeC_eWKBWOibvTlrjzd6C-jPMN8L-iz5Dl_6uiy6rC0daXYBA/viewform
Everyone is welcome to join the people of ModPo for this live, interactive webcast — in person or online. ModPo is a fast-paced introduction to modern and contemporary U.S. poetry, with an emphasis on experimental verse, from Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman to the present. Participants (who need no prior experience with poetry) learn how to read poems that are supposedly “difficult.”
A screening and discussion of "Outrider" with poet Anne Waldman and director Alystyre Julian
Please join us for a screening and discussion of Outrider, a film about the remarkable poet Anne Waldman. Our screening will be followed by a conversation with Anne Waldman and Outrider’s director, Alystyre Julian.
OUTRIDER explores Anne Waldman’s transcendent role as a visionary word-worker, from the downtown New York scene and the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church, to the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, to Big Sur, Mexico City, Morocco, and onward. Guided by ancestors of the Beat generation and poetic kinships with radical female musicians, Outrider channels the ancient, bardic tradition — celebrating the thunderous power of poetry. The poet Eleni Sikelianos writes of the film: “Outrider is a flash of lightning in the dark night, aglow with the life force of Anne Waldman. If you want to sneak up on the secret trajectory of U.S. culture, if you want to know the true, deep possibilities for art in our times — this is your poet. Waldman’s blazing, capacious soul is here at work and this portrait captures the restless luminosity of a whole poetry community in action. You can see the streaks of energy streaming across the screen. This is the work we need to witness now to carry us forward and through.”
Alystyre Julian is a writer, filmmaker, and photographer. She is the director of Outrider. In 2024, Julian co-curated Language and Light: The Films of Ed Bowes at Anthology Film Archives. She has been the stills photographer on award-winning feature filmsDiane (2018), Monsters and Men (2018), Goldie (2019), and others, and has directed and worked on numerous short films, videos, and documentary projects. She holds an MFA from Bard College, and previously taught creative writing at Long Island University, Montclair State University, and screenwriting at New York University. Her poems have been featured in publications such as Poetry Project Newsletter, Chain, Talisman, and Pharos. She lives and works in New York City, where she is at work on a new film project related to Black Mountain College.
Anne Waldman is an internationally acclaimed poet and the author of more than sixty books, including Fast Speaking Woman: Chants and Essays (1996), The Iovis Trilogy: Colors in the Mechanism of Concealment (2011), and Bard, Kinetic (2023). She is a founder and former director of the The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery, and along with contemporaries Allen Ginsberg and Diane DiPrima, founded the ‘Jack Kerouac School for Disembodied Poetics’ at Naropa University. Her poetry belongs to the lineages of the Beat, New York School, and Black Mountain Movements of New American Poetry. As a feminist, social activist, and powerful performer, she has read in the streets and literary institutions worldwide and continues to teach poetics all over the world.
Each year, Penn Violence Prevention hosts "Paint Penn Purple" Day, a spin-off of Paint Philly Purple Day, which is recognized by organizations across the city. Purple is the color of the anti-domestic violence movement, and October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. PVP, Penn Women's Center and the LGBT Center will be honoring DVAM and giving out exclusive merch on Locust Walk from 11am-1pm.
Wear purple on Thursday, October 15 to show support for those impacted by relationship violence. Tag @penn_pvp in your Instagram story on 10/15 showing off your purple for a chance to win a sweatshirt!
Sergio de la Pava is a novelist, having published four works of literary fiction. He won the PEN/Bingham Award for Best Debut Fiction for his novel set in the NYC criminal punishment system, A Naked Singularity. His fourth novel, Every Arc Bends Its Radian, was recently released by Simon and Schuster resulting in the New York Times assessment that “De La Pava’s commitment to ideas – their creation and their interrogation – is so fervid that it lights up his prose.” Sergio was an Inaugural Member of the National Book Foundation’s Literature for Justice Committee and a member of National Book Award Judging Panel in Translated Literature. Additionally, Sergio is a careerlong public defender in New York City. He is the Legal Director of New York County Defender Services where he continues to engage in trial work, legal education and training, and large-scale criminal reform advocacy. Sergio is the recent recipient of the New York State Bar Association’s lifetime criminal defense practitioner award. He is the author of The Public Defender – a longform essay on two decades of representing indigent people accused of crimes, published in Harper’s Magazine (October 2020) and One Will be Provided for You, an essay on Gideon v. Wainwright included in Fight of the Century: Writers Reflect on 100 Years of Landmark ACLU Cases, published by Avid Reader Press (2020).
Join Penn Violence Prevention on Friday afternoons in October for a trauma-informed yoga practice. Each week (October 2, 9, 16, and 23) we will meet from 1-2PM in Studio 409. Feel free to arrive at 12:45pm to get ready for class. Class will be led by Nicole Pollard, and confidential staff from PVP are on site to chat and participate! Free and open to the Penn community. Attend one class or all four. Pre-registration is encouraged but not mandatory; classes cap at 40.
Tavia Nyong’o in conversation with Fayyaz Vellani
Tavia Nyong'o is William Lampson Professor of American Studies at Yale University. His award-winning books include The Amalgamation Waltz: Race, Performance, and the Ruses of Memory (2009); Afro-Fabulations: The Queer Drama of Black Life (2018), and Black Apocalypse: Afrofuturism at the End of the World (2025). A critic and essayist as well as a scholar, he writes across genres — from academic criticism to public-facing cultural commentary — with an ear for how form and voice carry ideas about race, performance, and futurity. He serves as Curator of Public Programs at the Park Avenue Armory and is an editor at Social Text.
Everyone is welcome to join the people of ModPo for this live, interactive webcast — in person or online. ModPo is a fast-paced introduction to modern and contemporary U.S. poetry, with an emphasis on experimental verse, from Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman to the present. Participants (who need no prior experience with poetry) learn how to read poems that are supposedly “difficult.”
Bob Perelman has published numerous books of poems, including: Chatty Fossils (Roof Books, 2026), Jack and Jill in Troy (Roof, 2019); Iflife (Roof, 2006); Playing Bodies, in collaboration with painter Francie Shaw (Granary Books, 2004); and Ten to One: Selected Poems (Wesleyan University Press, 1999). His critical books are The Marginalization of Poetry: Language Writing and Literary History (California, 1994); The Trouble With Genius: Reading Pound, Joyce, Stein, and Zukofsky (Princeton, 1996); Modernism the Morning After (Alabama, 2017). His work can be heard on PennSound; a feature on his work appears in Jacket 39. Visit his website for more information. He is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Pennsylvania.
Join Penn Violence Prevention on Friday afternoons in October for a trauma-informed yoga practice. Each week (October 2, 9, 16, and 23) we will meet from 1-2PM in Studio 409. Feel free to arrive at 12:45pm to get ready for class. Class will be led by Nicole Pollard, and confidential staff from PVP are on site to chat and participate! Free and open to the Penn community. Attend one class or all four. Pre-registration is encouraged but not mandatory; classes cap at 40.
Alison Roman in conversation with Gabrielle Hamilton
Alison Roman is a New York-based cook, writer, and author of the recently released cookbook, Something from Nothing as well as the New York Times best-selling cookbooks Sweet Enough, Nothing Fancy, and Dining In. She’s the creator of the Home Movies series on YouTube, the author of A Newsletter, and the creator of the Solicited Advice podcast. In 2023, she opened First Bloom, a small grocery store in the Western Catskills full of local produce, near and far pantry staples and the best granola you’ve ever had. A second location is set to open in Brooklyn later this year. In 2025, she added A Very Good Tomato Sauce to the shelves, coming soon to a grocery store near you.
Don't Study Alone... Working on a project and wondering what tools could help bring your ideas to life? Drop in for Open Study & Office Hours: Design Tools for Projects with Learning Enrichment!
Bring your project questions and explore the hardware and software available to support your work—from digital design and media tools to hands-on equipment and creative resources. Staff can help you navigate possibilities available through spaces such as the Vitale Media Lab and the Educational Commons and help you think through which tools might be a good fit for your project.
The WIC will also provide a supportive space to work on your project, ask questions, explore new tools, and connect with resources that can help you move your ideas forward.
Need a reading from your course printed out for the Open Study Session? Click Official Page link for details.
Drop in for as much or as little of the session as you'd like. Light snacks will be provided!
LIVE at the Writers House is a long-standing collaboration between the Kelly Writers House and WXPN (88.5 FM). Five times annually between September and April, we gather at the KWH to record a one-hour show of poetry, music, and other spoken-word art for broadcast by WXPN. Edited by Zach Carduner and produced by Alli Katz, LIVE at the Writers House is made possible through the generous support of BigRoc.
Everyone is welcome to join the people of ModPo for this live, interactive webcast — in person or online. ModPo is a fast-paced introduction to modern and contemporary U.S. poetry, with an emphasis on experimental verse, from Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman to the present. Participants (who need no prior experience with poetry) learn how to read poems that are supposedly “difficult.”
Our student-run open mic night welcomes all kinds of readings and performances, so bring your poetry, your guitar, your or your flash fiction to share! You’ll have three minutes at the podium to perform (there will be a sign-up sheet available when you arrive). You’re also welcome to participate in the event as a member of the audience — no performance required. Come celebrate your classmates, colleagues, and fellow writers!
Don't Study Alone... Curious about podcasting or looking for a new way to engage with your course materials? Join Open Study & Office Hours: Old School & New School Podcasting with Learning Enrichment!
Explore the podcasting equipment available in the Vitale Media Lab, including microphones, recording equipment, and other tools you can use to create your own audio projects. Staff will be available to answer questions about the equipment, demonstrate how it works, and help you learn how to reserve and access the space and equipment for class projects or personal creative work.
We’ll also explore a “new school” approach to podcasting with AI. Bring your study notes and learn how AI tools can help transform your notes into a podcast-style conversation or audio study resource. This can be a creative way to review course material, hear concepts explained in a different format, and experiment with new approaches to studying and learning.
WIC will provide a supportive space to ask questions, experiment with podcasting tools, work on projects, and explore new ways to engage with course materials.
Need a reading from your course printed out for the Open Study Session? Click the Official Page Link for details.
Drop in for as much or as little of the session as you'd like. Light snacks will be provided!