Tuesday, September 1
6:00 pm — 8:00 pm

USC MPW READINGS AT LACMA: LEONARD CHANG AND SUE YON KIM: Writing the Korean American Experience

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) presents the first major museum exhibition in the continental United States in almost two decades to focus on contemporary art from South Korea. This late-night opening at the museum will feature theatre, music, dance as well as a reading organized by USC’s MPW and featuring MPW student Sue Yon Kim.

Tickets are $10. This event is open to the public.
RSVP: mpw@college.usc.edu

Author Visit: Danzy Senna
Leavey Library Auditorium

Danzy Senna’s latest work is entitled Where Did You Sleep Last Night?: A Personal History (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009).  Senna reconstructs a long-buried family mystery that illuminates her own childhood, her enigmatic father, the power and failure of her parents’ union and, finally, the forces of history.  Her first novel, Caucasia (1998), received the Book-of-the-Month Stephen Crane Award for First Fiction. It also received the Alex Award , American Library Association and has received praise from The New York Times and Newsweek, the former calling it “haunting and deeply intelligent...”

Free and open to the public.
RSVP: mpw@college.usc.edu

Featuring:
Jonathan Gold, LA Weekly restaurant critic, author of Counter Intelligence: Where to Eat in the Real Los Angeles, Pulitzer Prize winner

Evelyn McDonnell, USC Annenberg Fellow; author of Mamarama: A Memoir of Sex, Kids and Rock ‘n’ Roll,

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times film critic; author of books on film criticism

David Ulin, Los Angeles Times book editor; California Book Award winner 

Moderator:
Dinah Lenney, author of Bigger than Life: A Murder, a Memoir, USC Master of Professional Writing Program

Free and open to the public.
RSVP: mpw@college.usc.edu

Monday, November 9, 2009
4:00 pm — 6:00 pm

Fall ’09 Faculty Book Party & Reading
Intellectual Commons, Doheny Library

Featuring:
Amy Gerstler: Dearest Creature
Amy Gerstler received her B.A. in psychology from Pitzer College in 1978 and her M.F.A. in nonfiction from Bennington College in 2000. Her other books of poetry include Ghost Girl; Medicine, finalist for the Phi Beta Kappa Poetry Award; Crown of Weeds; Nerve Storm; Bitter Angel, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award; and The True Bride.

Kenneth Turan: FREE FOR ALL: Joe Papp, The Public, and the Greatest Theater Story Ever Told
Kenneth Turan is film critic for the Los Angeles Times and National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition” and the director of the Times’ Book Prizes. A graduate of Swarthmore College and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, he has been the Times’ book review editor and a staff writer for the Washington Post and TV Guide. He other books include Never Coming To A Theater Near You and Now In Theaters. He is also on the board of directors of the National Yiddish Book Center.

Free and open to the public.
RSVP: mpw@college.usc.edu

Writing for Stage and Screen: T.V./Playwriting
Intellectual Commons, Doheny Library

This panel of television writers will talk about their experiences writing for cable as well as network television.  The venues they represent include the sociopolitical, the astutely comic, the historical, as well as medical and police dramas; many of them have theatre backgrounds; all of them are reaching an audience. 

Featuring:
Michael Price, Emmy and Writers Guild award-winning writer/producer (“The Simpsons”)

Julie Hebert, writer/director working in theater, film and television (“Third Watch”, “ER”, “The West Wing”, “Numb3rs”); Peabody Award recipient

Alexander Woo, producer/writer (“True Blood”, “Sleeper Cell”)

Moderator:
Brighde Mullins, Director, Master of Professional Writing Program, author of Monkey in the Middle and Water Stories

Free and open to the public.
RSVP: mpw@college.usc.edu

Friday—Saturday, May 1-2, 2009
8:00 pm

THREE CUTTING EDGE PLAYS IN TWO DAYS
THE TOAD by Matt Cunningham
DRAGON SLAYING by Christine Rosensteel
FAILURE TO MATE by Katrina Spencer

USC Scene Dock Theatre
Free and open to the public. Space is limited/reservations suggested: mpw@college.usc.edu

Los Angeles Times Festival of Books
UCLA Campus
Booth 532, Zone E

USC MPW PWA Student Reading Series Special SCR Night
Book Soup 8818 W Sunset Blvd Los Angeles, California 90069
Guest readings from authors Seth Greenland, Marc Gold and Florence Murry from the new Spring 2009 issue of USC's Southern California Review Also, MPW Student/Alumni Readers: April Davila, John Fox, Nasha Khan
Host: Stephen Silke and Sandra Vahtel
SCR on sale: $10

Thursday, April 23, 2008
7:30 pm

The Literary Marketplace: The Changing Face of Publishing
The economy is in tatters, publishing is in a crisis, the internet has changed the old rules.  And yet we still write, and more people are reading books than ever before.  How does an aspiring writer find the right agent for a manuscript? What is a “good” publisher? What is effective PR? How do we find the imaginative and the economic sustenance to continue our work in the midst of so much change? A panel of experts from every area in the field will take on these and other questions. They will offer up-to-date and pragmatic insights to both aesthetic and practical success.

Panelists:
Louisa Ermelino, Novelist, Reviews Director, Publishers Weekly Magazine

Eli Horowitz, Managing Editor and Publisher, McSweeny’s

Barbara Lowenstein, Lowenstein/Yost Literary Agency

Pat Walsh, Author, Editor-in-Chief, MacAdam Cage Publishers

Moderator: Gina Nahai, best-selling author, Caspian Rain, Cry of the Peacock, Moonlight on the Avenue of Faith, Sunday’s Silence, Lecturer, Master of Professional Writing Program

University Club, Main Dining Room
Free and open to the public.
RSVP: mpw@college.usc.edu

Tuesday, April 7th, 2009
7:00 pm

MPW PWA Reading Series
Skylight Books, 1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Feliz
Special guest: Holly Prado Northup
Student Readers: Timothy Green, Jacquelyn Lazo, and more
Host: Stephen Silke
Free

Honor Moore, Reading, Q and A and booksigning
Feuchtwanger Memorial Library, Doheny 206

DARWIN AMONG THE POETS: Endless Heroic Observations
Los Angeles Natural History Museum

Join poets JORIE GRAHAM and CAROL MUSKE DUKES
and writers M.G. Lord, Susan McCabe, Michael Quick, Craig Stanford

EXPLORE the connections between poetic and scientific query in this tribute to Darwin
Music and Cocktails
Free and open to the public.

"Darwin is my favorite hero, almost!" -- Elizabeth Bishop

Association of Writers and Writing Programs 2009 Conference
Hilton, Chicago

Poetry Reading w/ Molly Peacock
Doheny Intellectual Commons, Room 233

Molly Peacock was born in 1947 in Buffalo, New York. She attended the State University of New York at Binghamton and Johns Hopkins University, where she received an M.A. in 1977. Her collections of poetry include Cornucopia (W.W. Norton & Co., 2002), Original Love (1995), Take Heart (1989), Raw Heaven (1984), and And Live Apart (1980). She is also the author of prose, including How to Read a Poem, and Start a Poetry Circle (1999) and her literary memoir Paradise, Piece by Piece (1998).  She is the editor of the anthology, The Private I: Privacy in a Public World (2001), and co-editor of Poetry in Motion: 100 Poems from the Subways and Buses (1996). A President Emerita of the Poetry Society of America, she was one of the originators of Poetry in Motion, a popular program of that places poems on placards in subways and buses. Peacock has been a writer-in-residence and teacher at numerous universities, and is currently a member of the Graduate Faculty of Spalding University's Brief Residency MFA Program, Elliston Poet at the University of Cincinnati, and Lecturer at the Unterberg Poetry Center of the 92nd Street Y.She was an honorary fellow at The Johns Hopkins University, served as Poet-in-Residence at The American Poets' Corner, Cathedral of St. John the Divine, in New York City, and received awards from the Danforth Foundation, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation. Peacock has performed her one-woman show in poems, The Shimmering Verge, Off Broadway and throughout North America. She lives in Toronto.

MADE INTO MOVIES: From the Page to the Screen
with an admissions open house 6:30 pm — 7:00 pm
University Club, Main Dining Room
RSVP to ercunnin@college.usc.edu

Moderator: Gina Nahai, Lecturer, Master of Professional Writing Program

Panelists: Sanford Climan, Producer, Agent
Joel Gotler, Literary Agent
Neil Tolkin, Screenwriter
Marc Von Arx, Entertainment Attorney

Comedy & Politics
with an admissions open house 6:30 pm — 7:30 pm
University Club, Main Dining Room

Moderator: James R. Kincaid, Master of Liberal Studies Program, Aerol Arnold Professor of English

Panelists: Mark Evanier, Master of Professional Writing Program, comic book and television writer
Sandra Tsing Loh, writer and performer, KPCC and “Marketplace” commentator
Michael Price, writer and co-executive producer of “The Simpsons”

ARAM SAROYAN is an internationally known poet, novelist, biographer, memoirist and playwright. His poetry has been widely anthologized and appears in many textbooks. Among the collections of his poetry are ARAM SAROYAN and PAGES (both Random House). His largest collection, DAY AND NIGHT:BOLINAS POEMS, was published by Black Sparrow Press in 1999.Saroyan's prose books include GENESIS ANGELS: THE SAGA OF LEW WELCH AND THE BEAT GENERATION; LAST RITES, a book about the death of his father, the playwright and short story writer William Saroyan; TRIO: PORTRAIT OF AN INTIMATE FRIENDSHIP; THE ROMANTIC, a novel that was a Los Angeles Times Book Review Critics' Choice selection; a memoir, FRIENDS IN THE WORLD: THE EDUCATION OF A WRITER; and the true crime Literary Guild selection RANCHO MIRAGE: AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY OF MANNERS, MADNESS AND MURDER. Selected essays, STARTING OUT IN THE SIXTIES, appeared in 2001, and ARTISTS IN TROUBLE: NEW STORIES in early 2002. The world premiere of his play AT THE BEACH HOUSE, starring Orson Bean and Alana Ubach, is scheduled for the fall of 2005 in Los Angeles. The recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts poetry awards (one of them for his controversial one-word poem "lighght"). Saroyan is a past president of PEN USA West and a current faculty member of the Masters of Professional Writing Program at USC. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, the painter Gailyn Saroyan.

PWA New MPW Students Welcome Tailgate
Tailgate: USC vs. Ohio State
WPH “Courtyard”

PWA New MPW Students Welcome Tailgate
Tailgate: USC vs. Ohio State
WPH “Courtyard”

PWA Reading w/ special guest Gerald Locklin
Book Soup 8818 W. Sunset Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90069

Fall 2008 classes begin

2008 “Turning the Page" MPW Program Year-End
Celebration, 5:00 – 7:30 p.m., USC Town and Gown