6/15 Hemingway’s Poetry Series: Padua, Simms, Ussia, Walicki

7 PM ET, Tuesday, June 15…

White Whale Bookstore is thrilled and honored to help Joan E. Bauer and Kristofer Collins virtually host the 2021 Hemingway’s Summer Poetry Series! Our lineup for Week 4 features Jose Padua, Michael Simms, Matthew Ussia, and Bob Walicki.

Browse our whole 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.

Some of these writers’ books are available on our Bookshop.org list for recent and upcoming events. Check out our curated lists and picks on our main Bookshop.org affiliate page, or use the search bar in the upper center-right to look for any book. (Using the book’s ISBN usually works best.)

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 6/15. Please email events@whitewhalebookstore.com if you miss this cut-off and need a ticket. For questions, check out our FAQ for events here.

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About the Hemingway’s Series:

The Hemingway’s Summer Poetry Series was founded by Jimmy Cvetic in 1974 or thereabouts. It is co-hosted and curated by Joan E. Bauer & Kristofer Collins. You can RSVP to all the events in this series right here on our Eventbrite page or through www.whitewhalebookstore.com/events. An eight-week series on Tuesdays mostly, running May 4-August 10 @ 7 p.m. ET. Check out the audio archive of past series at www.hemingwayspoetryseries.blogspot.com.

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About tonight’s writers:

Jose Padua’s first full length book, A Short History of Monsters, was chosen by former poet laureate Billy Collins as the winner of the 2019 Miller Williams Poetry Prize and is now out from the University of Arkansas Press . His poetry, fiction, and nonfiction have appeared in publications such as Bomb, Salon.com, Beloit Poetry Journal, Exquisite Corpse, Unbearables, Another Chicago Magazine, Crimes of the Beats, Up is Up, but So Is Down: New York’s Downtown Literary Scene, 1974-1992, and others. He has written features and reviews for Salon, The Weeklings, NYPress, Washington City Paper, the Brooklyn Rail, and the New York Times, and has read his work at Lollapalooza, CBGBs, the Knitting Factory, the Public Theater, the Living Theater, the Nuyorican Poets’ Café, the St. Mark’s Poetry Project, and many other venues. He was a featured reader at the 2012 Split This Rock poetry festival and won the New Guard Review’s 2014 Knightville Poetry Prize.

Born and raised in Texas, Michael Simms has worked as a squire to a Hungarian fencing master, a stable hand, a gardener, a forager, an estate agent, a college teacher, an editor, a publisher, a technical writer, a lexicographer, a political organizer, and a literary impresario. He identifies as being on the spectrum and as a survivor of childhood sexual abuse who didn’t speak until he was five years old. He is the author of three full-length collections of poetry, most recently American Ash, as well as four chapbooks, three novels and a textbook about poetry, and he’s been the lead editor of over 100 published books. As the founding editor of Vox Populi and the founding editor emeritus of Autumn House Press and Coal Hill Review, he was recognized in 2011 by the Pennsylvania State Legislature for his contribution to the arts. Simms and his wife Eva live in the Pittsburgh neighborhood of Mount Washington .

Matthew Ussia is a professor, editor, podcaster, thereminist, writer softcore punk, social media burnout and all-around sentient matter. He is a founding editor of the Beautiful Cadaver Project and co-edited their Social Justice Anthologies. His writings have appeared in Mister Rogers and Philosophy, Winedrunk Sidewalk, Future Humans in Fiction and Film, North of Oxford, and The Open Mic of the Air Podcast among others. He is co-editor of The Dreamers Anthology: Writing Inspired by the Lives of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Anne Frank and Recasting Masculinity. His Theremonster alter ego performs doom metal on a theremin. Matt sang back up on the Silence LP The Countdown’s Begun. He lives in Pittsburgh . More info: www.matthewussia.com.

Robert Walicki’s work has appeared in over 50 journals, including Pittsburgh City Paper, Fourth River ,Chiron Review, and Red River Review. A Pushcart and a Best of The Net nominee, Robert has published two chapbooks: A Room Full of Trees (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2014) and The Almost Sound of Snow Falling (Night Ballet Press), which was nominated to the 2016 List of Books for New York City ’s Poets House. His first full-length collection, Black Angels, is available from Pittsburgh’s Six Gallery Press.

7/30 Hemingway’s Summer Poetry Series – Season Finale!

Don Wentworth sez,

I’ll be reading this coming Tuesday, July 30th, at 8 pm, at the Hemingway’s summer finale. The poets reading will try to put an exclamation point to what has been, arguably, the best season at Hem’s to date. My contribution will be 8 new haiku and 2 ghazals I have not read there before. Also a bonus free verse poem in which, seance-like, we will be attempting communication with Philip Larkin on the other side. Details below. Hope to see you there.

The 2019 Hemingway’s Summer Poetry Series
Tuesday nights at 8 p.m. May-July
Hemingway’s Cafe, 3911 Forbes Avenue , Oakland
Founded by Jimmy Cvetic.
Co-hosted by Joan E. Bauer & Kristofer Collins
Open mic after featured readings as time permits

Tuesday July 30 – The Grand Finale curated by Kristofer Collins. Jen Ashburn, Jason Baldinger, Deena November, Deesha Philyaw, Adriana Ramirez, Ellen McGrath Smith, Meghan Tutolo & Don Wentworth

Jen Ashburn is the author of The Light on the Wall (Main Street Rag, 2016) and has work published in numerous venues, including the podcast The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor. Her poem “Our Mother Drove Barefoot” was selected for the 2018 Public Poetry Project by the Pennsylvania Center for the Book and distributed on posters across the state. She holds an MFA from Chatham University , where she taught creative writing to women in the Allegheny County Jail through Chatham ’s Words Without Walls program. She’s currently working on her second full-length poetry collection, tentatively titled Our Own Thin Ways, and a memoir.

Jason Baldinger is a poet from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. A recent Writer in Residence and Osage Arts Community, he has three recent books, This Useless Beauty (Alien Buddha Press) and the split books The Ugly Side of the Lake with John Dorsey (Night Ballet Press) as well as Little Fires Hiding with James Benger (Kung Fu Treachery Press). His work has been published widely in print journals and online. You can listen to him read his work on Bandcamp on lps by the band Theremonster and The Gotobeds.

Deena November is the author of Mean Mama (Main Street Rag, 2017) She has edited two anthologies, Nasty Women & Bad Hombres (Lascaux Editions, 2017) and I Just Hope It’s Lethal (Houghton Mifflin, 2005). Her poetry has appeared in Nerve Cowboy, Chiron Review, Women Write Resistance, Keyhole Magazine, Mom Egg Review, Pittsburgh Poetry Review and The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Her chapbook Dick Wad was published by Hyacinth Girl Press in 2012. She holds an MFA in Poetry from Carlow University where she then taught in the English and Women’s Studies programs. Deena teaches Creative Writing, Literature and Communications at Robert Morris University. She curates the Staghorn Poetry Series. Deena enjoys strolling through the gardens of Phipps with her toddlers and baby.

Deesha Philyaw is a Pittsburgh-based writer. Her fiction and nonfiction writing on race, gender, sex and culture has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Brevity, The Cheat River Review, The Baltimore Review, dead housekeeping, Bitch, Apogee Journal, and other publications. She’s a Fellow at the Kimbilio Center for African American Fiction and a native Floridian.

Adriana E. Ramírez is a Mexican-Colombian writer, critic, and performance poet based in Pittsburgh . She won the inaugural PEN/Fusion Emerging Writers Prize in 2015 for her novella-length work of nonfiction, Dead Boys (Little A, 2016), and in 2016 she was named Critic at Large for the Los Angeles Times Book Section. Her essays and poems have also appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Guernica/PEN America, Literary Hub, Convolution, HEArt, Apogee, and on Nerve.com. Once a nationally ranked slam poet, she cofounded the Pittsburgh Poetry Collective and continues to perform on stages around the country. She and novelist Angie Cruz founded Aster(ix) Journal, a literary journal giving voice to the censored and the marginalized. Her debut full-length work of nonfiction, The Violence, is forthcoming from Scribner.

Ellen McGrath Smith teaches at the University of Pittsburgh and in the Carlow University Madwomen in the Attic program. Her writing has appeared in The American Poetry Review, Los Angeles Review, Quiddity, Cimarron , and other journals, and in several anthologies, including Beauty Is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability. Smith has been the recipient of an Orlando Prize, an Academy of American Poets award, a Rainmaker Award from Zone 3 magazine, and a 2007 Individual Artist grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Her second chapbook, Scatter, Feed, was published by Seven Kitchens Press in the fall of 2014, and her book, Nobody’s Jackknife, was published in 2015 by the West End Press.

Meghan Tutolo is an artist and copywriter from Pittsburgh , PA. When she isn’t writing romance for olives and pasta or grading essays, she can be found cruising around on her pipsqueak motorcycle or holed up at home with her smoothy faced cats—writing and making things. Her poems have appeared in Rattle, Weave, Main Street Rag, Nerve Cowboy and Free State Review—among others. Her first chapbook, Little As Living, was published by Dancing Girl Press in 2014.

Don Wentworth’s work reflects his interest in the revelatory nature of brief, haiku-like moments in every day life. His poetry has appeared in Modern Haiku, bottle rockets, Frogpond, and Rolling Stone, as we l as a number of anthologies. He is the author of
three full-length poetry collections published by Six Gallery Press: Past All Traps (2011), Yield to the Willow (2014), and With a Deepening Presence (2016). Past All Traps was shortlisted for the Haiku Foundation’s 2011 Touchstone Distinguished Books Award. His poem “hiding” was selected as one of “100 Notable Haiku” of 2013 by Modern Haiku Press. Don has two new poetry books forthcoming: a collection of ghazals from Low Ghost and a collaborative collection of tanka written with the British haiku poet, Joy McCall. Since 1989, he has been the editor and publisher of Lilliput Review.

Listen in @ www.hemingwayspoetryseries.blogspot.com (our audio archive)

Follow us: https://www.facebook.com/Hemingwayssummerpoetryseries/

6/18 Hemingway’s Summer Poetry Series – Week 7

8 PM TUESDAY…

Hemingway’s Cafe, 3911 Forbes Avenue , Oakland
Founded by Jimmy Cvetic.
Co-hosted by Joan E. Bauer & Kristofer Collins
Open mic after featured readings as time permits.
Listen in @ www.hemingwayspoetryseries.blogspot.com
Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Hemingwayssummerpoetryseries/

Tuesday June 18 – Save the Planet! A reading w/ Paola Corso, Barbara Edelman, Mike Schneider, Michael Simms, Sheila Squillante & Arlene Weiner.

Paola Corso’s books are set in the Pittsburgh area where her Southern Italian immigrant family found work in the steel mill. A New York Foundation for the Arts Poetry Fellow and Sherwood Anderson Fiction Award Winner, she is the author of Catina’s Haircut: A Novel in Stories on Library Journal’s notable list of first novels in Fall 2010, Giovanna’s 86 Circles And Other Stories, a John Gardner Fiction Book Award Finalist, a book of poems, Death by Renaissance, and newly released poetry collections, The Laundress Catches Her Breath, winner of the Tillie Olsen Award for Creative Writing, and Once I Was Told the Air Was Not for Breathing about Pittsburgh steelworkers and garment workers in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. She also co-edited Politics of Water: A Confluence of Women’s Voices with Dr. Nandita Ghosh. She is currently poetry editor at The Thomas Merton Center for Peace and Social Justice and a book columnist for Group Against Smog and Pollution

Barbara Edelman’s first full length poetry collection, Dream of the Gone-From City, came out from Carnegie Mellon University Press in February, 2017. She’s the author of two poetry chapbooks, Exposure, Finishing Line Press, 2014 and A Girl in Water, Parallel Press, 2002 and has received a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant in poetry. She’s a lecturer in English at the University of Pittsburgh , where she coordinates the Writers’ Café.

Mike Schneider has published poems in many literary journals, including New Ohio Review, Notre Dame Review and Poetry. He received the 2012 Editors Award in Poetry from The Florida Review, and won the 2016 Robert Phillips Prize from Texas Review Press, which in 2017 published his chapbook, How Many Faces Do You Have?

Michael Simms, the founder and editor of Vox Populi, has been active in politics and poetry for over 40 years as a writer, teacher, editor, and community activist. He is the founder of Autumn House Press, a nonprofit publisher of books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. He’s also the author of four collections of poetry and a college textbook about poetry — and the lead editor of over 100 published books. Simms has an MFA from the University of Iowa and a Certificate in Plant-based Nutrition from Cornell University . He lives with his wife, Eva, and their two children in the historic Mount Washington neighborhood overlooking the city of Pittsburgh .

Sheila Squillante is the author of the poetry collection, Beautiful Nerve (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2016), and three chapbooks of poetry: In This Dream of My Father (Seven Kitchens, 2014), Women Who Pawn Their Jewelry (Finishing Line, 2012) and A Woman Traces the Shoreline (Dancing Girl, 2011). She is also co-author, along with Sandra L. Faulkner, of the writing craft book, Writing the Personal: Getting Your Stories Onto the Page (Sense Publishers, 2015). Recent work has appeared or will appear in places like Copper Nickel, North Dakota Quarterly, Indiana Review, Waxwing, Menacing Hedge andRiver Teeth. She teaches in the MFA program in creative writing at Chatham University , where she edits The Fourth River, a journal of nature and place-based writing. From her dining room table, she edits the blog at Barrelhouse. She lives in Pittsburgh , PA , with her husband, Paul Bilger, a philosopher and experimental photographer, and their children.

6/4 Hemingway’s Summer Poetry Series – Week 5

8 PM TUESDAY…

Hemingway’s Cafe, 3911 Forbes Avenue, Oakland
Founded by Jimmy Cvetic
Co-hosted by Joan E. Bauer & Kristofer Collins
Open mic after featured readings as time permits
Listen in @ www.hemingwayspoetryseries.blogspot.com
Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Hemingwayssummerpoetryseries/

Tuesday June 4 – Michele Battiste, Kristofer Collins, Leslie Anne Mcilroy, Emily Mohn-Slate & Bob Walicki

Michele Battiste is the author of three poetry collections, including Waiting for the Wreck to Burn, which received the 2018 Louise Bogan Award from Trio House Press and will be published in Spring, 2019. Her other books are Uprising (2014) and Ink for an Odd Cartography (2009), both from Black Lawrence Press. She is also the author of several chapbooks, including Left: Letters to Strangers (Grey Book Press). Her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, The Rumpus, Memorious, and Mid-American Review, among others. Michele has taught poetry workshops for Wichita State University , the Prison Arts Program in Hutchinson , KS , Gotham Writers’ Workshops, and the national writing program Teen Ink. A finalist for the National Poetry Series, she has received grants and awards from the New York Foundation for the Arts, AWP, the Center for the American West, the Jerome Foundation, and the NY State Senate. She lives in Colorado where she raises money to save the planet.

Kristofer Collins is the Books Editor at Pittsburgh Magazine, as well as being a frequent contributor to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. He is the publisher of Low Ghost Press and Coleridge Street Books. His latest poetry collection, Salsa Night at Hilo Town Tavern, was published by Hyacinth Girl Press in 2017. He lives in Stanton Heights with his wife Dr. Anna Johnson and their son Cassidy.

Leslie Anne Mcilroy won the 1997 Slipstream Poetry Chapbook Prize for Gravel, the 2001 Word Press Poetry Prize for Rare Space and the 1997 Chicago Literary Awards. Her second book, Liquid Like This, was published by Word Press in 2008 and Slag by Main Street Rag Publishing Company in 2014. Leslie’s poems appear in Grist, Jubilat, The Mississippi Review, PANK, Poetry Magazine, the New Ohio Review, The Chiron Review and more. Leslie works as a copywriter in Pittsburgh where she lives with her son Silas.

Emily Mohn-Slate is the author of FEED, co-winner of the Keystone Chapbook Prize, forthcoming from Seven Kitchens Press (2019). Her poems and essays can be found in New Ohio Review, At Length, The Adroit Journal, Indiana Review, Tupelo Quarterly, and elsewhere. Her manuscript, THE FALLS, was a finalist for the Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize offered by Kent State University Press, and the Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize offered by University of Pittsburgh Press.

Robert Walicki’s work has appeared in over 40 publications including Fourth River , Stone Highway Review, Red River Review, and others. A Pushcart and a Best of The Net nominee, Robert currently has two chapbooks published: A Room Full of Trees (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2014) and The Almost Sound of Snow Falling (Night Ballet Press), which was nominated to the 2016 Poet’s House List of Books in NYC. His first full length collection, Black Angels, is out now from Six Gallery Press.

5/14 Hemingway’s Summer Poetry Series – Week 2

8PM TUESDAY…

The 2019 Hemingway’s Summer Poetry Series
Tuesday nights at 8 p.m. May-July
Hemingway’s Cafe, 3911 Forbes Avenue, Oakland
Founded by Jimmy Cvetic.
Co-hosted by Joan E. Bauer & Kristofer Collins
Open mic after featured readings as time permits.
Listen in: ww.hemingwayspoetryseries.blogspot.com

Tuesday, May 14 – Pittsburgh Poetry Society
Introduction by Christine Aikens Wolfe
Sally (Sarah) Davis, Nancy Esther James, Christine Pasinski,
Fred Peterson, Christine Aikens Wolfe & Judy Yogman
with guest poet Monica Prince

Sally (Sara) Davis’s chapbook, Spent, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2014. Her work has been anthologized in Lavandaria, A Mixed Load of Women, Wash, and Words, published by City Works Press, Voices from the Attic, Riverspeak, Threads, Broad River Review, Evening Street Review, and in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and is forthcoming in Blueline Magazine.

Nancy Esther James has had her poems published in various journals and literary magazines including Christianity and Literature, Time of Singing, and Poet Lore, as well as in publications such as Friends Journal and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Her poem, “To a Friend,” originally published in Christianity and Literature, was reprinted in the 2003 Poet’s Market. Her collection of poems, No Time to Hurry, was published by Dawn Valley Press (Westminster College) in 1979. She has taught poetry workshops at the St. Davids Christian Writers Conference and The Writing Academy Seminar and has judged poetry contests for St. Davids and for the Pittsburgh Poetry Society. Her chapbook, Resilient Spirit: Poems for Lorraine, was published in March 2013 by Finishing Line Press.

A career educator, Christine Pasinski taught secondary English in the West Mifflin Area School District for over 36 years. Following her career in public education, she supervised student teachers for Penn State University. A lifelong devotee of poetry, she took her high school and her university students to the International Poetry Forum, where she served on the Advisory Council for 36 years. Currently, she enjoys membership in the Pittsburgh Poetry Society. Her poems have been published in numerous literary journals, and she has read them at various venues in the city. In 2011 she published a book of her poetry, Rustlings of Regret.

Fred Peterson grew up on rice farms throughout Southeast Arkansas in the 1940’s and 1950’s, the son of a sharecropper and the seventh of eight children. His poetry takes one on a journey with a family rich in love. A teacher early in his career, his life-path took him from Arkansas to St. Louis and to Pittsburgh with his life-partner where they have lived for 30 years. He is past president of Pittsburgh Poetry Society. His book of poetry, Writing by Flashlight, was published by Awesome Books in 2012.

Monica Prince received her M.F.A. in poetry from Georgia College & State University and her B.A. from Knox College, and is currently an assistant professor of activist and performance writing at Susquehanna University. Her debut collection of poetry, Instructions for Temporary Survival, launches in July 2019 with Red Mountain Press. Her choreopoem, How to Exterminate the Black Woman, premiered to sold-out audiences at Susquehanna, and will be published in 2020 by [PANK]. In addition to teaching at Susquehanna, Prince is the managing editor for the Santa Fe Writers Project Quarterly and a 2018-2019 fellow with the 5th Woman Poetry Collective in Tennessee.

Christine Aikens Wolfe is a reading specialist with the Pittsburgh Public Schools. Christine has published poems in Sonnetto Poesia, a bi-lingual quarterly out of Ottawa since fall 2006. Her poetry, fiction, and articles have appeared in the publications of the Western Pennsylvania Writing Project, including Parachute, the WPWP Bulletin, Riverspeak, and Threads, and in the Pittsburgh Poetry Society’s bi-annual magazine, The Potter’s Wheel. Her poetry has also been published in Woman Becoming and Poetry Magazine, and the multi-media book, Fission and Form. She is the co-editor of The Poetic Classroom (Autumn House Press) and currently serves as president of the Pittsburgh Poetry Society. Her full-length book of poetry, Garland Green, was published by Dos Madres Press in 2018.

Judy Yogman is a retired ESL teacher. She enjoys trying new poetic forms, misses Anita Byerly’s little workshop and recently became a member of the Pittsburgh Poetry Society. Though lazy about submitting poems, she has submitted work that has appeared in the Post-Gazette and in various anthologies, including Out of the Rough: Women’s Poems of Survival and Celebration, Along These Rivers, and Written on Water: Writings about the Allegheny River. She is married, with three sons, three granddaughters and a new grandson.

5/7 Hemingway’s Summer Poetry Series – Week 1

8PM TUESDAY…

The 2019 Hemingway’s Summer Poetry Series
Tuesday nights at 8 p.m. May-July
Hemingway’s Cafe, 3911 Forbes Avenue, Oakland
Founded by Jimmy Cvetic.
Co-hosted by Joan E. Bauer & Kristofer Collins
Open mic after featured readings as time permits.
Listen in: www.hemingwayspoetryseries.blogspot.com

Tuesday, May 7 – Madwomen in the Attic: Introduction by Jan Beatty.
Valerie Bacharach, Doralee Brooks, Daniela Buccilli, Kara Knickerbocker, Jamilla Rice, Bernadette Ulsamer & Sarah Williams-Devereux

Valerie Bacharach’s poetry has appeared in several publications including Pittsburgh Quarterly, US 1 Worksheets, The Tishman Review, Topology Magazine, Poetica, The Ekphrastic Review, and Voices from the Attic. She is a member of Carlow University’s Madwomen in the Attic workshops and conducts weekly poetry workshops at CeCe’s Place, a halfway house for women in recovery from drug and alcohol addiction. Her first chapbook, Fireweed, was published in August 2018 by Main Street Rag.

Doralee Brooks, a Writing Project Fellow (1995), teaches at the Community College of Allegheny County where she chairs the developmental studies department. Her poems have appeared in Uppagus, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, Voices from the Attic, and The Paterson Review. Her chapbook, When Damballah Laughs, was a finalist for the 2016 Coal Hill Review Chapbook Prize. In 2017, her poem, “Trending This Fall,” was published in the anthology Nasty Women and Bad Hombres edited by Deena November and Nina Padolf. She writes with the Madwomen in the Attic poetry workshop.

Daniela Buccilli’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in publications that include Paterson Literary Review, Cimarron Review, Cider Press Review, US 1 Worksheets, and an anthology. She is completing her second MFA, this time in poetry. She has taught at public high schools for 25 years. Her poetry chapbook How Much It Takes To Carry will be published in 2019 by Main Street Rag. She is also working as an editor for Show Us Your Papers: A Poetry Anthology.

Kara Knickerbocker is a writer and world traveler from Saegertown, Pennsylvania and the author of the chapbooks The Shedding Before the Swell and Next to Everything that is Breakable. She is currently earning her MFA at Carlow University/Trinity College Dublin. Her most recent poetry and essays appeared in or are forthcoming from: Longridge Review, Moledro Magazine, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, One Sentence Poems, Uppagus, and the anthology Voices from the Attic, Vol. XXII, among others. Knickerbocker lives in Pittsburgh, where she works at Carnegie Mellon University, writes with the Madwomen in the Attic, and co-curates the MadFridays Reading Series.

Jamilla Rice dreams of when she can own her days and write. Until then, she squeezes out the time between being an athlete, educator, speaker, aunt, gardener, book nerd, baker, and British detective drama junkie. She’s been published in Voices from the Attic, among other anthologies and periodicals. You may have heard her read at Penguin Bookshop, White Whale Books, Delanie’s Coffee House, on WESA’s Prosody, or that random open mic in Toronto.

Bernadette Ulsamer earned an MFA from Carlow University where she is a member of Madwomen in the Attic. She is the author of the chapbook “Trestling” published by Flutter Press. Her poetry has appeared in Pittsburgh City Paper, The Main Street Rag, Cossack Literary Journal, Roar Magazine, The Broken Plate, Meat For Tea: The Valley Review, and has been anthologized in Voices from the Attic, and Along These Rivers.

Sarah Williams-Devereux is a poet and teacher of writing. Her poetry has appeared in Snapdragon: A Journal of Art & Healing, Sampsonia Way Magazine, Pittsburgh City Paper; the anthologies Pittsburgh Love Stories and Nasty Women & Bad Hombres; and WESA-FM’s Prosody. She leads poetry workshops for the Madwomen in the Attic. She is certified in writing group leadership from Amherst Writers & Artists and volunteers for the Transformative Language Arts Network. She is pursuing her MA in teaching writing from Johns Hopkins University.

7/31 Hemingway’s Summer Poetry Series Grand Finale w/ Gainey, Gegick, Grochalski, Jakiela, Malinenko & Silsbe

8PM TUESDAY…

Hemingway’s Cafe, 3911 Forbes Avenue, Oakland

Co-hosted and curated by Jimmy Cvetic and Joan E. Bauer  

Open mic following featured readings!

www.hemingwayspoetryseries.blogspot.com  Listen in!

Grand Finale w/ guest-host Scott Silsbe. Featuring Celeste Gainey, Rich Gegick, John Grochalski, Lori Jakiela, Ally Malinenko & Scott Silsbe.

Celeste Gainey is the author of the full-length poetry collection, the GAFFER (Arktoi Books/Red Hen Press, 2015), and the chapbook In the land of speculation & seismography (Seven Kitchens Press, 2011), runner-up for the 2010 Robin Becker Prize. The first woman to be admitted to the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) as a gaffer, she has spent many years working with light in film and architecture. www.celestegainey.com

Richard Gegick is from Trafford, PA. He lives in Pittsburgh where he writes and waits tables for a living.

John Grochalski is the author of The Noose Doesn’t Get Any Looser After You Punch Out (Six Gallery Press 2008), Glass City (Low Ghost Press, 2010), In The Year of Everything Dying (Camel Saloon, 2012), Starting with the Last Name Grochalski (Coleridge Street Books, 2014), The Philosopher’s Ship (Alien Buddha Pres, 2018) and the novels, The Librarian (Six Gallery Press 2013), and Wine Clerk (Six Gallery Press 2016).  Grochalski currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, where the garbage can smell like roses if you wish on it hard enough.

Lori Jakiela is the author of four memoirs, including BELIEF IS ITS OWN KIND OF TRUTH, MAYBE, which received the William Saroyan Prize for International Writing from Stanford University and was named one of 20 Nonfiction Books Not to Miss in 2015 by The Huffington Post. Her most recent book is PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A BINGO WORKER, a collection of essays about work and the writing life, published in August by Bottom Dog Press. In 2016, she received the City of Asylum Pittsburgh Prize, which sent her on a month-long residency to Brussels, Belgium. She is also the author of the poetry collection SPOT THE TERRORIST! and several limited-edition poetry chapbooks. A native of Trafford, PA, Jakiela now runs community writing workshops in her hometown and lives with her husband, the author Dave Newman, and their two children.

Ally Malinenko is the author of the poetry collections The Wanting Bone, How to Be An American (Six Gallery Press), Better Luck Next Year (Low Ghost) and Fitting the Ocean in Your Mouth (Blue Hour) as well as the novel This Is Sarah (Bookfish Books). She lives in Brooklyn and tweets at @allymalinenko mostly about David Bowie and Doctor Who.

Scott Silsbe was born in Detroit and now lives in Pittsburgh. His poems and prose have appeared in a number of fine periodicals including Kitchen Sink, Third Coast, The Chariton Review, Nerve Cowboy, Words Dance, and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Six Gallery Press published his first full-length collection of poems Unattended Fire in 2012 and Low Ghost Press published The River Underneath the City in 2013.   His third collection, Muskrat Family Dinner, was published by White Gorilla Press in 2017.

7/24 Baldinger, Brice, Kitchens, November, Sargeson, & Stupp @ Hemingway’s

Joan Bauer sez…

The 2018 Hemingway’s Summer Poetry Series

Tuesday nights at 8 p.m. May-July  

Hemingway’s Cafe, 3911 Forbes Avenue, Oakland

Co-hosted & curated by Jimmy Cvetic and Joan E. Bauer

Audio archive: www.hemingwayspoetryseries.blogspot.com ; Listen in !

 

Tuesday, July 24 – Jason Baldinger, Charlie Brice, Romella Kitchens, Deena November, Kayla Sargeson & John Stupp

 

 

Jason Baldinger recently finished a stint as writer in residence at the Osage Arts Community. He’s the author of several books, the most recent are This Useless Beauty (Alien Buddha Press), The Ugly Side of the Lake (Night Ballet Press) written with John Dorsey and the chaplet Fumbles Revelations (Grackle and Crow).The collection Fragments of a Rainy Season (Six Gallery Press) and the split book with James Benger Little Fires Hiding (Spartan Press) are forthcoming. Recent publications include the Low Ghost anthology, Unconditional Surrender, Outlaw Poetry, Uppagus, Lilliput Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, Nerve Cowboy Concrete Meat Press, Zombie Logic Press, Solidarity and Resistance. 

For more on Jason, go to: jasonbaldinger.bandcamp.com

 

Charlie Brice is a retired psychoanalyst and is the author of Flashcuts Out of Chaos (WordTech Editions, 2016) and of Mnemosyne’s Hand (WordTech Editions, 2018). His poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in The Atlanta Review, Hawaii Review, The Main Street Rag, Chiron Review, Fifth Wednesday Journal, SLAB, The Paterson Literary Review, Spitball, Plainsongs and elsewhere.

 

Romella Kitchens is a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh. She is a poet, a quilter, a painter, and a playwright. Her work has appeared in 5 AM, California Quarterly, Chiron Review, Main Street Rag, The Autumn House Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry, Iodine Poetry Journal, Mudfish Review, uppagus, and others. She has done poetry residencies and has addressed many school groups concerning poetry. In 2014, she was a judge for the city-wide level of Poetry Outloud. Her chapbooks include Hip Hop Warrior, The Immortals, The Red Covered Bridge and The Heaven Of Elephants.

 

Deena November is the author of Mean Mama (Main Street Rag, 2017). She has edited two anthologies, Nasty Women & Bad Hombres (Lascaux Editions, 2017) and I Just Hope It’s Lethal (Houghton Mifflin, 2005). Her poetry has appeared in Nerve Cowboy, Chiron Review, Women Write Resistance, Mom Egg Review, Pittsburgh Poetry Review and The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette among others. Her chapbook Dick Wad was published by Hyacinth Girl Press in 2012. She holds an MFA in Poetry from Carlow University. Deena has taught at Robert Morris University, Carlow University, Seton Hill and The Art Institute of Pittsburgh Online. She curates the Staghorn Poetry Series. 

 

Kayla Sargeson is the author of the full-length collection First Red (Main Street Rag, 2016) and the chapbooks BLAZE (Main Street Rag, 2015) and Mini Love Gun (Main Street Rag, 2013). She serves as the poetry editor for Pittsburgh City Paper’s online feature Chapter & Verse and with Lisa Alexander, co-curates the Laser Cat reading series. Sargeson lives in Pittsburgh where she teaches at Duquesne University, Carlow University and the Community College of Allegheny County.

 

John Stupp‘s third poetry collection Pawleys Island was published in 2017 by Finishing Line Press. His manuscript, Summer Job, won the 2017 Cathy Smith Bowers Poetry Prize and will be published in August 2018 by Main Street Rag. His latest effort When Billy Conn Fought Fritzie Zivic is making the rounds. He lives in Sewickley.

7/3 Hemingway’s Summer Poetry Series w/ Ava C. Cipri, Karen Lillis, Deesha Philyaw, & Bill Steigerwald @ Hemingway’s

THIS TUESDAY…

The 2018 Hemingway’s Summer Poetry Series

Tuesday nights at 8 p.m. May-July  

Hemingway’s Cafe, 3911 Forbes Avenue, Oakland

Co-hosted and curated by Jimmy Cvetic and Joan E. Bauer. 

Open mic after after featured readings

Audio archive: www.hemingwayspoetryseries.blogspot.com  Listen in!

Tuesday, July 3 – Week 10: Poetry, fiction & creative non-fiction: Ava C. Cipri,  Karen Lillis, Deesha Philyaw & Bill Steigerwald

Ava C. Cipri is a poetry editor forThe Deaf Poets Society: An Online Journal of DisabilityLiterature & Artand teaches writing at Duquesne University. She is a Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee with an MFA from Syracuse University. Her poetry and prose appears or is forthcoming inCimarron, Cider Press Review,Rust + Moth,and Stirring’sManticore: Hybrid Writing from Hybrid Identitiesanthology, among others. Ava’sfirst chapbook,Queen of Swords,was published by dancing girl press (2018).Her forthcoming chapbook,Leaving The Burdened Ground(Stranded Oak Press,May 2018), was a finalist for the Robin Becker Chapbook Series and Grazing Grain Poetry/Hybrid Chapbook Contest.She resides at: www.avaccipri.com.

Karen Lillis is a writer and bookseller. She is the author of four poetic novels, including Watch the Doors As They Close (Spuyten Duyvil, 2012), works at Caliban Books during the day, and runs Karen’s Book Row, a pop up and online bookshop. Her writing has appeared in The Austin Chronicle, The Brooklyn Rail, Evergreen Review, LA Cultural Weekly, and the Occupy Wall Street Poetry Anthology, among others. An Acker Award winner for Avant Garde Excellence in Fiction, her recent publications include Submerging Zine, From Somewhere to Nowhere: The End of the American Dream, and forthcoming prose in Local Knowledge (Fall 2018).

Deesha Philyaw is the co-author of Co-Parenting 101: Helping Your Kids Thrive in Two Households After Divorce, written with her ex-husband. Her fiction and nonfiction writing on race, parenting, sex and culture has appeared in publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, McSweeney’s, brevity, Apogee Journal, Cheat River Review, and The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; Essence, and Ebony magazines. Deesha is a past Pushcart Prize nominee for essay writing in Full Grown People.

Bill Steigerwald  is a veteran journalist from Pittsburgh who worked at theLos Angeles Timesin the 1980s, thePittsburgh Post-Gazettein the 1990s and thePittsburgh Tribune Reviewin the 2000s. Steigerwald’s new nonfiction book30 Days a Black Mantells the story of an undercover mission byPittsburgh Post-Gazettestar reporter Ray Sprigle into the Jim Crow South in 1948. Sprigle’s nationally syndicated series, “In the Land of Jim Crow.” exposed the iniquities and humiliations suffered by ten million black Americans in the segregated South and started the first national debate in the media about ending America’s legal apartheid.Kirkus Reviewcalled30 Days a Black Manis “a fascinating account of an anti-Jim Crow muckraking adventure…” that Steigerwald turned “into rollicking, haunting American history.” In 2010 Steigerwald faithfully retraced John Steinbeck’sTravels With Charleyroad trip of 1960 and wroteDogging Steinbeck.  He and his wife Trudi live south of Pittsburgh in the woods. 

 

6/5 Deborah Bogen, Sheila Squillante, Kareem Tayyar, & Bob Walicki @ Hemingway’s

8PM TUESDAY…

The Hemingway’s Summer Poetry Series – 2018
Tuesday nights at 8 p.m. May-July
Hemingway’s Cafe 3911 Forbes Avenue in Oakland
Founded by Jimmy Cvetic. Open mic following most readings.
JBauer103w@aol.com / www.hemingwayspoetryseries.blogspot.com
Tuesday, June 5

Deborah Bogen, Sheila Squillante, Kareem Tayyar & Bob Walicki

Baldinger & Wentworth podcasts, Hemingway’s recordings

Catching up w/ some podcasts…

Don Wentworth (whose latest collection With a Deepening Presence launched at the Irma Freeman Center last month & which you should read immediately)

& Jason Baldinger (whose next collection will launch next year somewhere & whose back catalog you should read immediately)

interviewed by Marcia Epstein at LawrenceHits.com.

& here’s Jason again, on the We’re All Gonna Die! podcast w/ Matt U.

http://www.gonnadiepodcast.com/?powerpress_pinw=267-podcast

Also, recordings of the Hemingway’s readings are all up & available to listen to, poet by poet, here.