Department of English

This first-year seminar is held at Penn’s vibrant literary arts hub, the Kelly Writers House. Meeting each week in this Victorian cottage for a three-hour seminar, attending events together and debriefing about them afterwards, and writing critically and creatively in response to what they experience in the Writers House Arts Café, students will work closely with visiting poets, novelists, journalists, and other writers and artists giving readings, workshops, and colloquia at KWH throughout the semester—in fall 2025, with a particular focus on this year’s programming theme: Truth and Disinformation. Our seminar will serve as a Truth and Disinformation Lab, in which we will explore how the tools of truth-telling, fact-checking, and witnessing in the writing arts offer innovative, broad-reaching solutions to the urgent challenges of living out democratic values in a shifting world. In addition to producing their own critical and creative work, students will collaboratively curate a public-facing literary event. The main objective of this course is to introduce students to the disciplines of English and Creative Writing by centering the living, evolving textures of contemporary writing. This first-year seminar is open to select upper-level students. Interested upper-level students can email blochj@writing.upenn.edu for permission to enroll.