Contemporary Writing at an Art School: A Reading by Alumni & Faculty from UArts

115AB, Pennsylvania Convention Center, 100 Level
Thursday, March 24, 2022
10:35 am to 11:50 am

How does an arts-centric education affect a student’s development as a writer? How does teaching at an art school influence a writer’s approach to craft? This reading features work by alumni and faculty from the University of the Arts, a uniquely arts-based university in Center City Philadelphia and home to the region's only Creative Writing BFA.

Participants

Moderator:

Elise Juska is an associate professor of creative writing at UArts, where she received the 2014 Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching. She is the author of five novels and numerous short stories, which have appeared in Ploughshares, the Gettysburg Review, the Missouri Review, and elsewhere.

Rahul Mehta is the author of a novel, No Other World; a short story collection, Quarantine, which won a Lambda Literary Award and the Asian American Literary Award for Fiction; and a forthcoming collection of poetry and essays. They teach at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia.

Steven Kleinman is the author of Life Cycle of a Bear, winner of the 2019 Philip Levine Poetry Prize. He is the interim director of the creative writing program at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and a contributing editor and podcast cohost at the American Poetry Review.

Glorious Piner is a poet from Philadelphia studying poetry at the University of Maryland. Her work can be found in journals such as the American Poetry Review and the Florida Review. She cohosts a forthcoming podcast on the study and practice of literature called "The Speakeasy."

MeeRee Orlandini is a poet and fiction writer based in Philadelphia. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in journals such as jubilat, the American Poetry Review, and the Cleveland Review of Books. She coordinates the University of the Arts' Pre-College Creative Writing Program and teaches at Germantown Friends School.

To purchase tickets or to view the full schedule, please visit awpwriter.org.

The Usual Uncertainties—Jonathan Blum's highly anticipated first collection—is storytelling at its finest. In precise, elegant prose, these stories follow characters and communities often consigned to the edge of the frame: a community college dropout, a geriatric care manager, a square dance bar mitzvah, a Scrabble club, an entrepreneurial Thai immigrant, and a South Florida country club. With echoes of Leonard Michaels, Mavis Gallant, and Lore Segal, Blum explores the ways our divergent histories tether us together and at times push us completely apart. The Usual Uncertainties revels in the persistent human struggle to love with abandon and marks a radiant voice in American short fiction.

JONATHAN BLUM is the author of two books of fiction: Last Word (Rescue Press, 2013), a novella, and The Usual Uncertainties (Rescue Press, 2019), a forthcoming story collection. Blum grew up in Miami and graduated from UCLA and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His short stories have appeared in Angels Flight • literary west, The Carolina Quarterly, Gulf Coast, Kenyon Review, Playboy, Sonora Review, and in Shanxi Literature, among others. He has taught fiction writing at The University of Iowa, Drew University, and the Iowa Summer Writing Festival, and is the recipient of a Michener-Copernicus Society of America Award, a Hawthornden fellowship in Scotland, and a grant from the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation. He has also been a guest writer at the Tianjin Binhai New Area International Writing Program in China. He lives in Los Angeles.

ZACH SAVICH is the author of several books, including Events Film Cannot Withstand and Diving Makes the Water Deep, both published by Rescue. His most recent collection of poetry, Daybed, was published last year. He teaches in the BFA Program for Creative Writing at the University of the Arts, in Philadelphia, and co-edits Rescue Press’s Open Prose Series.

MEEREE ORLANDINI is a poet and fiction writer based in South Philadelphia. She recently graduated from the University of the Arts with a BFA in Creative Writing. Her thesis works included a collection of short stories about childhood and place and a collection of poems, Sleeping with Heroes. She is a first grade assistant teacher at Germantown Friends School.

RSVP: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/jonathan-blum-presents-the-usual-uncertainties-at-penn-book-center-tickets-73851805739

Facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/388718952003877/

https://www.pennbookcenter.com/event/jonathan-blums-usual-uncertainties-w-zach-savich-meeree-orlandini

DOROTHEA LASKY is the author of six books of poetry and prose, most recently Animal, out this fall from Wave Books. She is an Associate Professor of Poetry at Columbia University School of the Arts and lives in New York City.

EMILY PETTIT is a poet, artist, teacher, and editor from Western, Massachusetts. She is an editor for Factory Hollow Press and jubilat. Emily is the author of Blue Flame (Carnegie Mellon University Press) and Goat In The Snow (Birds LLC).

MEEREE ORLANDINI is a poet and fiction writer based in South Philadelphia. She recently graduated from the University of the Arts with a B.F.A. in Creative Writing. Her thesis works included a collection of short stories about childhood and place and a collection of poems, Sleeping with Heroes. She is a first grade assistant teacher at Germantown Friends School.

Facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/513525209191536/

https://www.pw.org/literary_events/dorothea_lasky_and_emily_petit_with_meeree_orlandini

http://writing.upenn.edu/wh/calendar/1119.php