Excited to fête Paola Corso’s recent release, Vertical Bridges: Poems and Photographs of City Steps this February! She’ll be joined by Karen Lillis, Angele Ellis, and Robert Walicki for a reading.
Check out a wide selection of titles on our ready-to-ship website, which also has a wide selection of recommended and best-selling books, store merch, book subscription boxes, and more. You can request specific books you don’t see on the site through this form, too. All orders ship from our store in Pittsburgh.
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This event will be hosted on Zoom. You’ll receive the link to the Zoom meeting the day of the event via email. Free registration/ticket sales will end at 6:30pm ET on 2/26. Please email events@whitewhalebookstore.com if you miss this cut-off and need a ticket. For questions, check out our FAQ for events here.
Praise for Vertical Bridges:
“Under Corso’s nimble juggling of words and images, Pittsburgh’s staircases become a series of paths leading elsewhere-from China to Norway, from Italy back to the Three Rivers again. Together these narratives construct a fascinating ecology of urban spaces, emphasizing the delicate lives and quotidian strength of those who climb up and down: workers, immigrants, children, lovers. In each direction, these poetic flights offer an all-encompassing view.”
-LAURA E. RUBERTO, author of Gramsci, Migration, and the Representation of Women’s Work in Italy and the U.S. and co-editor of New Italian Migrations to the United States, Vol. 1 and 2
“I have expressed Pittsburgh’s city steps using maps and photographs. Here Paola Corso has done so with words and style, imagery and feelings. She offers a delightful way to experience the steps, not only in Pittsburgh but around the world.”
-BOB REGAN, author of Pittsburgh Steps and Bridges of Pittsburgh
“Pittsburghers will love Paola Corso’s mix of poetry and poetic imagery, from histories of the city’s staircases to stories that unfolded along them over time. It’s good to see the stairways being celebrated, preserved, and loved – in print and in real life.”
-BRIAN A. BUTKO, author of Greetings from the Lincoln Highway and editor of Western Pennsylvania History magazine
“In poems contemplative, lyric, hybrid, and explosive, Corso stays true to her working-class roots. Though the altitude is often dizzying, the elevation is well worth it-and the best of poems, like these, always give us a touch of vertigo. This is a remarkably imaginative book, replete with stunning archival photographs and equally stunning photographs by Corso herself. A marvel!”
-JOSEPH BATHANTI, author of The Life of the World to Come and East Liberty
About the writers:
Paola Corso‘s books are set in her native Pittsburgh, where her Italian immigrant family members were steel workers, most recently The Laundress Catches Her Breath, winner of the Tillie Olsen Prize in Creative Writing, Once I Was Told the Air Was Not for Breathing, a Triangle Fire Memorial Association Awardee, and Catina’s Haircut: A Novel in Stories. She is cofounder and resident artist of Steppin Stanzas, a grant-awarded poetry and art project celebrating city steps. She splits her time between New York’s grid and Pittsburgh’s grade.
Karen Lillis is a bookseller and the author of four novellas including Watch the Doors as They Close (Spuyten Duyvil) and The Second Elizabeth (Six Gallery Press). Find her work at Karen’s Book Row online.
Angele Ellis‘s haiku was featured on the marquee of the Harris Theatre after winning Pittsburgh Filmmakers’ G-20 Haiku Contest. Her poetry, fiction, and non-fiction have appeared in seventy publications and eighteen anthologies. She is the author of four books, two of which were published by Six Gallery Press—Under the Kaufmann’s Clock (2016), a fiction/poetry hybrid inspired by Pittsburgh, with photographs by Rebecca Clever, and Arab on Radar (2008), whose poems about her family and heritage won an Individual Fellowship in Poetry from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Angele lives in Friendship, both a Pittsburgh neighborhood and a state of mind.
Robert Walicki‘s work has appeared in a number of journals including Fourth River, Uppagus, Vox Populi, and Chiron Review. He currently has two chapbooks published: A Room Full of Trees (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2014) and The Almost Sound of Snow Falling (Night Ballet Press, 2015), which was nominated to the 2016 New York Showcase of Books at The Poet’s House in NY. His first full-length collection of poems is Black Angels (Six Gallery Press, 2019) and his latest book, Fountain, was just released from Main Street Rag Press.
Six Gallery Press 