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Antioch University Los Angeles Announces New Partnership With PEN Center USA

On July 1, 2005, PEN Center USA will be moving to the campus of Antioch University Los Angeles in Culver City, California. This arrangement offers numerous benefits to both non-profit organizations. PEN's presence on the Antioch campus will enrich the university's literary life and advance its efforts toward social justice on an international scale. In turn, Antioch University offers PEN access to its physical facilities, array of services, and active community presence.

Antioch, which offers a highly respected MFA in Creative Writing program, will be given the opportunity to participate in numerous PEN programs. For example, PEN will allow Antioch students to meet visiting writers and to take part in mentoring and internships through the PEN in the Classroom program (teaching creative writing in L.A. schools) and Global Freedom to Write campaign, which carries out domestic and international advocacy for writers who have been censored or imprisoned. Antioch and PEN plan to co-host lectures, seminars, symposia, and other events, such as PEN's reading series and annual literary awards. PEN's screenings and other educational events will be open to Antioch faculty, staff, and students. Antioch also plans to collaborate on PEN's literary and human rights publications.

"This is a natural alliance," says LucyAnn Geiselman, Ph.D., president of Antioch University Southern California. "We're driven by the same values. The partnership is another way that Antioch extends its mission not only into our local community but into the world."

PEN Center USA is a non-profit membership organization made up of more than 1,200 writers working west of the Mississippi. Under executive director Adam Somers, PEN Center USA strives to protect the rights of writers around the world, to stimulate interest in the written word, and to foster a vital literary community among the diverse writers living in the western United States. Founded in 1943, PEN Center USA is one of two PEN centers in the United States and the third largest in the world.

Antioch University has offered distinctive, progressive education that advances humanitarian values and the literary life for more than 150 years. From its founding in 1852 in Yellow Springs, Ohio, Antioch became a leader among institutions of higher learning. It instituted an early policy that no applicant was to be rejected on the basis of race, allowed both men and women in the same curriculum, and was the first U.S. college to designate a woman as a full professor. The Antioch Review, launched in 1941, remains one of the oldest, continuously publishing literary magazines in America.

Today, Antioch University maintains five campuses: Yellow Springs, Ohio; Keene, New Hampshire; Seattle, Washington; Santa Barbara, California; and Los Angeles (Culver City), California. Antioch L.A. offers a B.A. completion program for working adults and graduate degrees in education, psychology, organizational management, and creative writing. Antioch LA's Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing Program is the preeminent low-residency MFA degree program on the West Coast. This program takes an exciting and academically rigorous approach to the study of fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. Its goals are to train writers in the skills of their craft, educate them about the role of the arts and artists in society, and also increase appreciation for culturally diverse writers and traditions.

Antioch University and the new PEN offices are located at 400 Corporate Pointe in Culver City, California.

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