Dear Friends,
On October 1st, I will be moving.
I will leave my familiar digs of South Philly/Beck Street, to head to West Philadelphia. I am moving because I was recently selected as the FIRST-ever Resident Writer for a project called ArtsEdge, a new program created by the Kelly Writers House and the University of Pennsylvania.
The program is designed with a couple major aims in mind: to nurture cross-disciplinary art collaborations and to build bridges between UPenn and the artistic community of Philadelphia at-large. To do this, they're partially-subsidizing an apartment in West Philly, which will house myself and a visual artist, encouraging her and I to create at least one on-going project together that can be shared with the community.
The visual artist (her name is Adrienne Gale and her work is really impressive) and I will also receive dedicated studio space (for free) with several other artists as part of the 40th Street Artists project. The residency lasts until the end of August, 2009.
In conjunction with this, starting in the spring, I will be teaching a class in the Creative Writing department of The University of Pennsylvania. Which means, I'll be teaching at an IVY LEAGUE school. Holy cow!!!
All of this is very exciting to me and this opportunity should continue to push me towards becoming a better artist and a better human. Additionally, West Philly is my favorite part of the city (because its creativity, activity, and beauty makes it feel like Austin to me) and I will be much happier living there.
Big thank yous to the awesome people at Kelly Writers House (Jessica Lowenthal and Erin Gautsche), The Rotunda (Gina Renzi) and the Creative Writing Program at UPenn (Greg Djanikian) for making this possible. Huge thank yous as well to Philadelphia artist Rebecca Ennen for sending me ArtsEdge's original call for artists.
My new address (home also of my new writing studio), come and visit me there!!!
4007 Chestnut St
Philadelphia PA 19104
rock on,
ROMERO