PHILADELPHIA Jennifer Snead will be the director of the University of Pennsylvania Kelly Writers House, effective July 1.

Snead had been the assistant program coordinator at the Kelly Writers House and a research associate for the School of Arts and SciencesOffice of External Affairs.

" When some 50 viable candidates nationwide declared they wanted to be director of the Writers House, we knew our project had made a big impact on the literary scene at large,said Al Filreis, faculty director. hat Jennifer Snead, a Penn person and already a close Writers House affiliate, emerged as the best of these candidates truly bespeaks her qualities. She is a great find for us, for Penn and for the contemporary writing world."

Snead teaches courses at Penn in poetry and poetics, the novel and creative writing. Her interests include 18th-century print culture, history and contemporary culture of the book, science fiction and fantasy writing. She has a Ph.D. in English from Duke University and earned her bachelor degree from Penn in 1994.

She was a member of the Writers House volunteer collaborative planning committee where she organized a variety of projects and programs, including "Fringing the Page," a conference on Philadelphia poetry that coincided with the Philly Fringe Festival.

" I'm thrilled and awed,Snead said, o have the opportunity to lead this extraordinary writing community. I found a home at the Writers House when I returned to Penn, and I can't wait to be able to take good care of it as it has taken such good care of me."

Founded in 1995-96 by a group of writers and teachers, the Kelly Writers House is a 14-room Victorian cottage on Penn's campus run collaboratively by its members. It is a learning community for creative students, a reading and performance space for local artists, a salon for young writers seeking a place to gather and a site for experimentation in the arts related to writing.