PHILADELPHIA –- Television talk-show host and University of Pennsylvania alumnus Maury Povich is making a $1 million gift to Penn’s Kelly Writers House to establish the Povich Fund for Journalism Programs.

In announcing the gift, Al Filreis, director of the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing Director, said, “Maury Povich has long been a friend of the Writers House and of Penn, having previously provided funding for journalism in the curriculum.”

In 2006, Povich and his wife, TV journalist Connie Chung, enabled the CPCW and Sschool of Arts and Sciences to appoint political reporter Dick Polman as the first-ever full-time Povich Writer-in-Residence at the CPCW.

“Now, we feel, Maury is completing the scene, by making it possible for us at the Writers House to organize the events and programs in support of the classroom learning already taking place in this rapidly changing field of writing,” Filreis said.  “We are grateful to Maury -- and to Connie -- for their strong belief in what we do at 3805 Locust Walk.”

The Povich Fund will support seminars, workshops, presentations, talks and symposia in journalistic nonfiction writing in all its forms at the Writers House as well as visits to the House by both eminent and emergent writers in the field of journalism.