Master of Professional Writing's Page

Author Visit: Danzy Senna
Monday, October 12, 7 pm – 8:30 pm
Leavey Library Auditorium

Danzy Senna was born in Boston, Massachusetts and is the daughter of the author Carl Senna (The Black Press and the Struggle for Civil Rights) an Afro-Mexican poet from a struggling single-parent household, and Fanny Howe, an Irish-American poet and novelist born into privilege. They met and married while both were activists during the American Civil Rights Movement (1955-1968). Senna received her B.A. from Stanford University and MFA in creative writing from the University of California, Irvine, where she received several creative writing awards. 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...” and the latter describing its “...impressive beauty and power”. Senna’s latest work is a memoir entitled Where Did You Sleep Last Night?: A Personal History (2009). In the book, she 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. Senna lives in Los Angeles with husband, novelist Percival Everett.

RSVP: mpw@college.usc.edu


Critics Talk Shop: Writing Books, Music, Food, Film, and Why it Matters Intellectual -- With Kenneth Turan, LA Times Film Critic; David Ulin, LA Times Book Editor; Jonathan Gold, LA Weekly’s Restaurant Critic; and Evelyn McDonnell, Music Critic. Organized and moderated by Dinah Lenney, MPW
Monday, October 26, 7 pm – 9 pm
Commons, Doheny Library

Jonathan Gold is the LA Weekly’s restaurant critic and the author of "Counter Intelligence: Where to Eat in the Real Los Angeles." He has been restaurant critic for California, the Los Angeles Times, and Gourmet, where he was the first food writer ever to be nominated for a general national award in criticism, and he has won James Beard Awards for both magazine and newspaper restaurant reviews. In 2007 he became the first food writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for criticism.

Evelyn McDonnell has been writing about popular culture and society for more than 20 years. She is the author of three books: Mamarama: A Memoir of Sex, Kids and Rock ‘n’ Roll, Army of She: Icelandic, Iconoclastic, Irrepressible Bjork and Rent by Jonathan Larson. She coedited the anthologies Rock She Wrote: Women Write About Rock, Pop and Rap and Stars Don’t Stand Still in the Sky: Music and Myth. She has won several fellowships and awards, including an Annenberg Fellowship at USC.

David Ulin is the book editor for the Los Angeles Times and author of 2004’s The Myth of Solid Ground: Earthquakes, Prediction, and the Fault Line Between Reason and Faith. He received a California Book Award for editing Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology. Ulin’s essays have been featured in The New York Times Book Review, The Nation and The Atlantic Monthly. Ulin taught in the Creative Writing Program at Antioch College and will teach a workshop on Reviewing at the USC’s MPW in the spring of 2010.

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 is the author of Never Coming To A Theater Near You and Now In Theaters Everywhere published by Public Affairs Press and is coauthor of Call Me Anna: The Autobiography of Patty Duke. His latest book is Free For All: Joe Papp, the Public and the Greatest Theater Story Ever Told. Turan teaches in the Master of Professional Writing Program at USC and is on the board of directors of the National Yiddish Book Center.

RSVP: mpw@college.usc.edu


Writing for Stage and Screen: T.V./Playwriting
Monday, November 30, 7 pm – 9 pm
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. Participants will include Michael Price (THE SIMPSONS) Regina Corrado (DEADWOOD), Julie Hebert (E.R. and NUMB3RS) and Alexander Woo (TRUE BLOOD).

RSVP: mpw@college.usc.edu