1/7 ACLU Benefit feat. Baldinger, Brice, Collins, Friend, Lourette, & Ramírez @ White Whale

THIS SATURDAY…

Join local poets Kris Collins, Adriana Ramirez, Malcolm Friend, Jason Baldinger, Nicole Lourette, and Charlie Brice for a reading to help raise funds for the ACLU.

For nearly 100 years, the ACLU has been our nation’s guardian of liberty, working in courts, legislatures, and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties that the Constitution and the laws of the United States guarantee everyone in this country.

Whether it’s achieving full equality for LGBT people, establishing new privacy protections for our digital age of widespread government surveillance, ending mass incarceration, or preserving the right to vote or the right to have an abortion, the ACLU takes up the toughest civil liberties cases and issues to defend all people from government abuse and overreach.

With more than 1 million members, activists, and supporters, the ACLU is a nationwide organization that fights tirelessly in all 50 states, Puerto Rico, and Washington, D.C., to safeguard everyone’s rights.

BIOS:

Kristofer Collins is the books editor of Pittsburgh magazine and the publisher of Low Ghost Press. He lives in Stanton heights with his wife Dr. Anna Johnson.

Adriana E. Ramírez is a 2015 PEN/Fusion Award-winning nonfiction writer, storyteller, digital maker, and performance poet based in Pittsburgh. She teaches in the English Department at the University of Pittsburgh, co-runs the Steel City Poetry Slam, and co-founded Aster(ix) Journal. Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Guernica, Convolution, HEArt, Apogee, and Nerve.com, as well as on hundreds of stages across the country. Ramirez is the author of two poetry chapbooks, The Swallows (Blue Sketch Press) and Trusting in Imaginary Spaces (Tired Hearts Press); she is also the nonfiction editor of DISMANTLE (Thread Makes Blanket Press).

Nicole Lourette is a poet and event planner from Rochester, NY. She now lives here in Pittsburgh, PA after graduating with her MFA from Chatham University. She travels both for work and her own sanity as often as possible and manages to write, but never finish travel essays years after the fact. Her work has been featured in Pittsburgh Poetry Review, IDK Magazine and Vagabond City Journal.

Charlie Brice is the author of Flashcuts Out of Chaos, published by WordTech Editions (2016), and a card carrying member of the ACLU. His poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in The Atlanta Review, Hawaii Review, Chiron Review, The Pittsburgh Poetry Review and elsewhere.

Malcolm Friend is a poet and CantoMundo fellow originally from the Rainier Beach neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. He received his BA from Vanderbilt University, and is an MFA candidate in Creative Writing at the University of Pittsburgh. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in publications including La Respuestamagazine, the Fjords Review’s Black American Edition, Vinyl, Word Riot, The Acentos Review, Connotation Press: An Online Artifact, and Pretty Owl Poetry.

Jason Baldinger has spent a life in odd jobs. He’s traveled the country, and wrote a few books, The latest of which “The Lower 48” (Six Gallery Press) and the chapbook “The Studs Terkel Blues” (Night Ballet Press) are available now. A short list of recent publishing credits include: Uppagus, Anti Heroin Chic, In-between Hangovers, Your One Phone Call and Lilliput Review. You can also hear audio of some poems on the bandcamp website by just typing in his name.