Walker’s successor, Kerry Sherin Wright C’87, describes her first year as “wacky.” When she moved in, the renovation “wasn’t quite done.” Adding to the ambiance were student musicians whose basement practice sessions reverberated throughout the house. “My parents came to visit … and all these guys were noodling away on their jazz instruments and the dust was hanging like drapes, and I was quite harried because there was so much to do,” she says. “They laughed [and] thought, ‘She’s totally lost it.’ But they were very big supporters of the Writers House.”

Sherin Wright, who went on to become director of the House, recalls shopping for “homey” furniture with Steinberg and his wife, architect Jane Stevens GAr’82. They kept the grass-green couch that “everybody said reminded them of their grandmother’s couch. It was scratchy and when you sat on it, you went straight to the floor. That ended up being the most beloved piece of furniture in the house.”

During her seven years at the Writers House, programs sprouted up in all directions: an open mic “speakeasy,” a reading series for Penn staff, an alumni writers series [“Penn & Ink,” May/June 1999]. Sherin Wright likes to joke that if she asked Filreis whether she could “pour gasoline on this fire,” he probably would have said yes to that as well.

That sense of barely controlled chaos and what Bob Lucid has described as a kind of secular zeal continues in the former chaplain’s house. “It’s crazy, busy, wonderful,” says Dr. Jennifer Snead C’94, who’s been director since 2003 and leaves this summer to join the English department at Texas Tech University. She’ll take along memories of playing wiffle ball in the garden, cooking crepes for Pulitzer-winning author Michael Cunningham, and fielding the energetic ideas of undergraduates. “We’re all literary entrepreneurs [here],” says Snead.

The formal events “are only the tip of the iceberg,” she adds. “One of the afternoons I remember the most was [when] a group of us just photocopied an essay about American poetry and mass media and translation [on the spur of the moment] and sat in the alcove on the green couch and drank coffee and talked for about two and a half hours.”

To get the fullest flavor of Writers House, she tells people, “Hang out, do your homework here … come to meetings, and start listening in on the kinds of conversations that get struck up. Because there are just endless possibilities here.”

 

“Norman Mailer told me that I reminded him of his first wife,” Snead recalls. “I just decided I would let that one go. And John Ashbery once picked at my mashed potatoes at dinner. He said, ‘Are you eating those? Can I try that?’” Sure, she said, thinking all the while, “John Ashbery is eating off my plate!”

Some literary guests truly made themselves at home: The poet Bernadette Mayer took a nap on one of the couches. “She was all stretched out and sound asleep,” Sherin Wright recalls. “The dust was sort of hovering over her.” Another famous (and now deceased) poet took the writers’ community concept a step further, inviting Sherin Wright to share a bath with him in one of the House tubs. Sputtering, she declined—but later memorialized his proposition with a poem. “I thought, ‘I’m glad it’s me and not a student.’ That he would go for someone in her 30s was to his credit.”

The Writers House Fellows program, another project launched with support from Paul Kelly, offers a chance for readers and eminent writers to engage in conversations that go deeper than the exchanges found at a typical bookstore signing. Undergraduates taking the Writers House Fellows seminar get to spend two days with the writer.

For Filreis, it’s difficult to select the most memorable visit, but he settles on Tony Kushner, who was a fellow in 2001. “Angels in America was huge. He was sitting in this circle with 20 kids—undergraduates. And at first I think he was wary. [Wondering] ‘Where are the grad students and faculty?’”

But Filreis’ students had done their homework. “They just went to town on Kushner’s lesser work, his earlier work, and he was amazed.

“There was this one kid, a gay Republican, who was very open about his rejection of Kushner’s politics,” Filreis says. “Kushner wrote some essays about being gay, and why, inherently, gay Americans needed to be liberal … The kid was across the room from Tony, and Tony said, ‘Let’s have it out here, because I think it would be interesting’ … He was completely engaged, he started talking really fast, and the kid was doing the best he could to hold on,” Filreis says.

During a break Kushner called the sheepish student over to sit next to him, and they continued to talk. They sat together at dinner. “By the end of the evening, this kid’s politics hadn’t changed … but his life is different because … this public intellectual was serious enough to take a lot of time for him,” says Filreis. “Some version of this happens here all the time.”

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