Feeling (NYPD) Blue?

The Kelly Writers House recently announced its author lineup for Fellows this Spring. In case you've been holed up in Huntsman for so long that this doesn't mean anything to you, KWH Fellows, one of the coolest things Penn has to offer, brings three authors to campus each Spring to participate in a course, readings, and discussions with the Penn community. Past fellows have included Joan Didion (The Year of Magical Thinking), David Sedaris (Me Talk Pretty One Day, When You Are Engulfed In Flames), Art Spiegelman (Pulitzer Prize winning comic book, Maus), and more.

This year our friends at the Writers House have really outdone themselves, and will welcome Joyce Carol Oates (What I Lived For, Blonde), Susan Howe (My Emily Dickinson), and David Milch (NYPD Blue, Deadwood, John From Cincinnati). More info about the Fellows, courtesy of the KWH, after the jump.

Don't worry, you don't have to enroll in the class to get involved!  All students have a chance to attend free readings and discussions with the authors by reserving spaces ahead of time, but boy do they go quickly! To avoid being like some of us, who watched the livestream of Joan Didion's reading on a laptop from the porch of the Writers House, reserve your spot now by e-mailing whfellow@writing.upenn.edu. (Author descriptions via KWH)

Joyce Carol Oates: February 15-16, 2010

The author of many distinguished books in several genres, Joyce Carol Oates is one of America's most versatile contemporary writers. In addition to numerous novels and short story collections, she has published poetry, plays, literary criticism, and the book-length essay On Boxing.

Ms. Oates's writing has earned her much praise and many awards, including the 2005 Prix Femina, France's literary prize for the best novel published in their country, for The Falls, 2004 Fairfax Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Literary Arts, PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in short fiction, the Rosenthal Award from the American Academy - Institute of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the O'Henry Prize for Continued Achievement in the Short Story, the National Book Award for her novel Them, and in 1978, membership in the American Academy-Institute. What I Lived For was nominated for the 1995 PEN/Faulkner Award. In 1999 Ms. Oates was nominated for the Nobel Prize for the third time.

Susan Howe: March 22-23, 2010

Susan Howe has defied pat definitions of contemporary avant-garde poetry and has created a diverse body work in varied media and across many disciplines. Her critical work includes the book My Emily Dickinson, which has been called "one of our seminal works of creative scholarship" by the poet Michael Palmer. Ms. Howe has been active as an actress, a painter, and a radio producer, and has collaborated with experimental musician David Grubbs on a series of interdisciplinary projects including two audio compilations - Thiefth and Songs of the Labadie Tract.

Ms. Howe has received two American Book Awards and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1999. In 1996 she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and in 1998 she was a distinguished fellow at the Stanford Institute of the Humanities. She was elected a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets in 2000.

David Milch: April 26-27, 2010

Screenwriter and producer David Milch is known for complex, rich characters and drama that is at once beautiful, profane, complex and sublime; modern and Elizabethan; low and high; comic and tragic. Mr. Milch is the creator (and, often, the main writer) of the television series NYPD Blue, Deadwood, and John From Cincinnati and has worked as executive producer on those shows and others. His joining the writing team at Hill Street Blues (in season 3) many credit as the turning point in that long-running drama.

He is currently developing Last of the Ninth, a drama set in the New York Police Department during the 1970s, with collaborator and friend Bill Clark.

Mr. Milch won the "Outstanding Writing in a Drama Series" Emmy in 1983 for Hill Street Blues and in 1995, 1997 and 1998 for NYPD Blue, among many nominations. He has also won three Humanitas Prizes and two Edgar Allan Poe Awards, which honor mystery writers of all kinds. In 1994, Mr. Milch was named Television Producer of the Year by the Producers Guild of America and in 1999 he was the recipient of the Laurel Award from the Writers Guild of America for Television Writing Achievement. A star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame was dedicated to Mr. Milch in 2006.