2/26 White Whale Bookstore Presents: Vertical Bridges virtual book launch w/ Corso, Ellis, Lillis, & Walicki

First Six Gallery reading/book launch of the year & it won’t be the last, hosted by Anna Claire Weber of White Whale Bookstore.

Step to Eventbrite to RSVP.

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.

All 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 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.

Vertical Bridges has gotten a little bit of press so far

https://www.littsburgh.com/start-reading-vertical-bridges-poems-and-photographs-of-city-steps-by-paola-corso/

https://www.pghcitypaper.com/pittsburgh/paola-corsos-vertical-bridges-pays-tribute-to-pittsburghs-beloved-city-steps/Content?oid=18561395

https://triblive.com/local/valley-news-dispatch/harrison-natives-book-encourages-readers-to-climb-to-new-heights/

& even made its way onto the “Steps of Pittsburgh” Wikipedia entry, so you know it’s legit.

Available at bookshop.org & wherever else sells it (booksellers can get it straight from Ingram).

7/18 Virtual Reading: Nikki Allen, Jason Baldinger, Victor Clevenger, John Dorsey, & Karen Lillis

7 PM TONIGHT, White Whale Bookstore says,

Join us for a reading featuring Nikki Allen, Jason Baldinger, Victor Clevenger, John Dorsey, and Karen Lillis!

Check out our curated lists and picks on our main Bookshop 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.) We also have a number of books available ready-to-ship from our store in Pittsburgh.

Please register for this event by snagging a ticket on Eventbrite! There are both free tickets and pay-what-you-can tickets available. Registration will end at 6:30pm EDT on 7/18.

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 EDT on 7/18. Please email events@whitewhalebookstore.com if you miss this cut-off and need a ticket. For questions, check out our FAQ for events here.

About the authors:

Nikki Allen is a lover and a writer. She believes in strong coffee, revolution, the hard knocks and the sweetness. Find more of her writing at honeydunce.com.

Jason Baldinger is a poet from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvaninia. A former Writer in Residence at Osage Arts Community, he is co-founder of The Bridge Series. He has multiple books available including and Everyone’s Alone Tonight with James Benger (Kung Fu Treachery Press) the chapbook Blind Into Leaving (Analog Submission Press) as well as the forthcoming Afterlife is a Hangover (Stubborn Mule Press). His work has been published widely in print journals and online. You can listen to him read his work on Bandcamp and on lps by the bands Theremonster and The Gotobeds.

Victor Clevenger spends his days in a Madhouse and his nights writing poetry in a small town northeast of Kansas City, MO. Selected pieces of his work have appeared in print magazines and journals around the world and have been nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology and the Pushcart Prize. He is the author of several collections of poetry including Sandpaper Lovin’ (Crisis Chronicles Press, 2017), A Finger in the Hornets’ Nest (Red Flag Poetry, 2018), and Corned Beef Hash By Candlelight (Luchador Press, 2019). Together with American poet John Dorsey, they run River Dog.

John Dorsey grew up in Greensburg, Pennsylvania and lived for several years in Toledo, Ohio. He is the author of several collections of poetry, including Teaching the Dead to Sing: The Outlaw’s Prayer (Rose of Sharon Press, 2006), Sodomy is a City in New Jersey (American Mettle Books, 2010), Tombstone Factory, (Epic Rites Press, 2013), Appalachian Frankenstein (GTK Press, 2015) Being the Fire (Tangerine Press, 2016) and Shoot the Messenger (Red Flag Press, 2017) and Your Daughter’s Country (Blue Horse Press, 2019). His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and the Stanley Hanks Memorial Poetry Prize.He was the winner of the 2019 Terri Award given out at the Poetry Rendezvous. He may be reached at archerevans@yahoo.com.

Karen Lillis is a bookseller and a writer of fiction, memoir, and poetry. She is the author of four novellas, including Watch the Doors As They Close (Spuyten Duyvil). Her writing has appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, Evergreen Review, Gasconade Review, LA Cultural Weekly, Lit Hub, Local Knowledge, Occupy Wall Street Poetry Anthology, and Volume 1 Brooklyn, among others. She has been a writer in residence at Shakespeare and Company in Paris, an art reviewer at The Austin Chronicle, a regular contributor to the anti-war/poetry newspaper New York Nights after 2001, and once wrote a short story on the side of a freight train. Her books earned her a 2014 Acker Award for Avant Garde Excellence in Fiction.

12/8 7th Annual Holiday Book Sale @ Spirit

THIS SUNDAY, NOON-5…

Are you ready? Pittsburgh’s Holiday Book Sale returns, at a new venue! Spirit Hall in Lawrenceville gives us room for twice as many booksellers, a wider book selection, & one of the most popular brunches in town. Stop by to browse new books, used books, collectible books, new releases, gift-ready blank books, SALE BOOKS, fiction, poetry, scifi, memoir, graphic novels, children’s books, Pittsburgh books, & more! Books in every price range, plus cocktails & a holiday soundtrack. Join us!!

Details:
FREE admission
Free Parking
SPIRIT HALL
51st Street in Lawrenceville
Cross street–Butler Street
*Just off the Butler Street Cookie Crawl! (Joy of Cookies Tour)

This year’s Holiday Book Sale vendors include:

Karen’s Book Row
Copacetic Comics
Amazing Books
City of Asylum Bookstore
Air & Nothingness Press
Autumn House Press
Book ‘Em
Books Like Bread
Creative Nonfiction
Do Not Destroy Books
Eulalia Books
Low Ghost Press
Power City Books (new!)
Vers Libris
Very Important Books
Winter Pickle Press
and more!

Pittsburgh’s 7th Annual Holiday Book Sale features some of Pittsburgh’s most ecclectic indie bookstores and book dealers: To date, we have TEN returning booksellers and EIGHT new booksellers!

Our new location of SPIRIT HALL means
>>More booksellers
>>>>buffet brunch downstairs (11am-3pm)
>>>cocktails and cash bar (in the same room with the Book Sale)

Join us!!

10/26-27 Karen Lillis @ Easton Book Festival

Karen sez,

Eastern Pa/NJ/NYC friends: I’ll be at the Easton Book Festival (@easton_book) soon: reading, interviewing, & selling books! Come visit~~

*Sat. 10/26 1pm – Jenny Gonzalez-Blitz (@jblitz156), “Drawing Power,” in convo w/ Karen Lillis

*Sun. 10/27 1pm – Karen Lillis reads fiction

Saturday’s event is at the International Fusionism Museum, 107 North 4th St.

Sunday’s, at which she will read from Watch the Doors as They Close, is at Grand Eastonian Gold Room, 140 Northampton St.

Check out the full schedule here.

8/17 Edmund Berrigan, Lauren Russell, & Karen Lillis @ White Whale

7 PM SATURDAY, AUGUST 17

Need a mid-month lit reading pick-me-up? EDMUND BERRIGAN will be visiting Pittsburgh to read from his most recent collection of poetry, MORE GONE, alongside local writers LAUREN RUSSELL and KAREN LILLIS.

Praise for MORE GONE:

“A vulnerable and movingly confident self. He impresses with deep impressions.” –– John Godfrey

“Edmund Berrigan’s poems may be ‘more gone,’ but they are also more here. ‘Anxious, patient and sentient,’ they happen at an intimate core of self, family, community, and world, webbing out in all our neighboring shades and activities of being, where experience glitches and knits. They are rollercoastery, beautiful, knowing, revelatory, and real.” –– Eleni Sikelianos

EDMUND BERRIGAN is most recently the author of MORE GONE from City Lights in 2019. Other recent publications include WE’LL ALL GO TOGETHER (Further and Fewer, 2015) and CAN IT! (Letter Machine Editions, 2014). Berrigan was the guest blogger for the Poetry Foundation’s Harriet Blog in March of 2019, and has had essays included in the collections Lovers of my Orchard: Writers and Artists in Frank O’Hara (Presses universitaires de la Méditerranée, 2017) and Joe Brainard’s Art (Edinburgh University Press, 2019).

KAREN LILLIS is a writer and bookseller. She is the author of four novellas, including WATCH THE DOORS AS THEY CLOSE (Spuyten Duyvil). Her writing has appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, Evergreen Review, LA Cultural Weekly, Lit Hub, Local Knowledge, Occupy Wall Street Poetry Anthology, and Volume 1 Brooklyn, among others. She has been a writer in residence at Shakespeare and Company in Paris, an art reviewer at The Austin Chronicle, a regular contributor to the anti-war/poetry newspaper New York Nights after 2001, and once wrote a short story on the side of a freight train. Her books earned her a 2014 Acker Award for Avant Garde Excellence in Fiction.

LAUREN RUSSELL is the author of WHAT’S HANGING ON THE HUSH (Ahsahta, 2017), and DESCENT (forthcoming from Tarpaulin Sky in 2020). She has received fellowships from the NEA, Cave Canem, and the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, and her work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Bettering American Poetry 2015, and the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, among others. She is a research assistant professor and is assistant director of the Center for African American Poetry and Poetics at the University of Pittsburgh.

6/14 Glass City Poetry Reading @ You Are Here 406

7 PM FRIDAY…

Our spring series continues with poetry readings organized by Pittsburgh area poet Scott Silsbe. Join us each month at 7:00 pm for readings by selected local poets, a little bit of music and a lot of relaxed comradery. Acoustic music provided! Donations welcome. Featured readers: Mike Good, Stephanie Brea, Karen Lillis & Sarah Shotland. BYOB.

Please join us- this will be our last reading in our spring series. See you in the fall!

4-14 LK Reading Series: Thaddeus Rutkowski & Karen Lillis @ Parkside Lounge

2PM SUNDAY…

Local Knowledge Reading Series

April 2019 featuring:
Karen Lillis & Thaddeus Rutkowski

Karen Lillis is a writer and bookseller. She is the author of four
books of fiction, including “Watch the Doors As They Close” (Spuyten Duyvil, 2012). She has been a writer in residence at Shakespeare and Company in Paris, an art reviewer at The Austin Chronicle, and a regular contributor to the anti-war/poetry newspaper New York Nights after 2001. Her books earned her a 2014 Acker Award for Avant Garde Excellence in Fiction.

Thaddeus Rutkowski is the author of six books, most recently Border Crossings, a poetry collection. His novel Haywire won the Asian American Writers’ Workshop’s members’ choice award, and his memoir Guess and Check won the Electronic Literature bronze award for multicultural fiction. He received a fiction writing fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts.

3/3 Karen’s Book Row @ Spirit; Allen, Clevenger, Dorsey, Jakiela, & Powers @ White Whale

Busy day! Karen Lillis sez

Karen’s Book Row will be at the Pittsburgh Flea this Sunday, March 3!
11am to 4pm
SPIRIT LOUNGE
Lawrenceville
242 51st Street off Butler St
FREE admission
Downstairs: Buffet brunch & bar
Upstairs: Flea market including records, vintage clothes, and local handmade items (jewelry, art, specialty foods)
Facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/769539150086973/

Stop by for your snowstorm reads, collectibles, and literary must-haves!

Re: this 4PM White Whale reading Jason Baldinger, who will host it, sez

John Dorsey and Nikki Allen are back in town and Missouri poets Jeanette Powers and Victor Clevenger will be joining them and that seemed like a good enough reason have a reading! Rounding out the bill will be Lori Jakiela. This is an early show and we will be passing the hat for gas money for out of towners.

Nikki Allen is a lover & a writer—with hair an animal & heart clumsy tiger. Scribbling because she must with nearly 20 years of stages in her gut. She has read in cities across the US at music festivals, war protests, backyards and art openings. Her work has appeared in Nailed, Crash, The New Yinzer, out of nothing, Profane Journal(Pushcart Prize nominee ‘14/’15) and Encyclopedia Destructica among others. Allen has also contributed vocals to tracks by recording artists Poogie Bell (Question Song) and Jack Wilson (NYC). She believes in revolution, strong coffee, the hard knocks & the sweetness.

When not traveling the highways across America, Victor Clevenger spends his days in a Madhouse and his nights writing poetry. He lives with his second ex-wife, and together they raise six children in a small town northeast of Kansas City, MO. Selected pieces of his work have appeared in print magazines and journals around the world, as well as at a variety of places online. His work has been nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology, as well as the Pushcart Prize. Victor’s most recent published collections of poetry include a split book with Tom Farris titled Ginger Roots Are Best Taken Orally (EMP, 2018), A Finger in the Hornets’ Nest (Red Flag Poetry, 2018), and On The Tip Of Our Tongues (Analog Submission Press, 2018). He can be reached at: facebook.com/thepoetvictorclevenger

John Dorsey has been writing poetry since the late 1980’s and has been involved in the publishing community for more than two decades. He is the author of around 50 books and chapbooks, a few of the most recent being Being the Fire (Tangerine Press, 2016) and Shoot the Messenger (Red Flag Press, 2017), the latter was funded by Indiana University of Pennsylvania’s English Department. An 11-time Pushcart Prize nominee, his work has appeared more than 2,000 magazines and anthologies from around the world. He has read or spoken at colleges and universities such as the University of Toledo, Assumption College, Cleveland State University, Seton Hill University, University of the Arts, Erie Community College, Southeast Missouri State University, Indiana University of Pennsylvania and the University of Missouri-St. Louis, as well as other assorted venues covering 49 states. For several years Dorsey served as a judge for the Arts Commission of Greater Toledo’s Art in Tarta Project, which chose poems to be presented on city transit buses. In 2006, he won the Toledo City Paper’s annual poetry and fiction competition, and would go on to serve as a judge the following year, before being named the city’s Best Literary Artist in their 2014 reader poll. In 2010, he also served as a judge for Grievous Jones Press’ Grievous Prize issued in Cardiff, Wales, and in 2013 for the Standing Rock Cultural Arts Open Chapbook Competition in Kent, Ohio. From 2003-2012, he served as an Artist-in-Residence at the Collingwood Arts Center in Toledo, Ohio and In 2015, Dorsey was awarded a Visiting Artist Residency by the Osage Arts Community in Belle, MO, where he currently resides. In 2017 he received a two appointment to serve as Belle’s first city Poet Laureate from Mayor Steve Vogt and has gone on to found the city’s first literary publication the Gasconade Review, which he edits with Jason Ryberg. He is a graduate of the University of Arts’ Writing for Film and Television program, completing his education there in 2002, and 2017 he served as the subject for a poetry documentary by NYC filmmaker Carson Parish. He may be reached at archerevans@yahoo.com

Jeanette Powers is a poet-artist working on the banks of the Gasconade River in the Northern Ozarks. They are a founding member of FountainVerse: KC small press poetry fest and Stubborn Mule Press, as well as having seven full-length books of poetry and some chapbooks too released over the last decade. Follow them at jeanettepowers.com or @novel_cliche

Lori Jakiela is the author of the memoir Belief Is Its Own Kind of Truth, Maybe (Atticus Books), which received the 2016 Saroyan Prize for International Literature from Stanford University, was a finalist for the Council of Literary Magazine and Small Presses Firecracker Award and the Housatonic Literary Award, and named one of 20 Not-to-Miss Books of Nonfiction of 2015 by The Huffington Post. Jakiela is the author of an essay collection, Portrait of the Artist as a Bingo Worker (Bottom Dog Press), as well as two other memoirs — Miss New York Has Everything (Hatchette) and The Bridge to Take When Things Get Serious (C&R Press). She is also the author of the poetry collection Spot the Terrorist (Turning Point) and several limited-edition poetry chapbooks. Her latest poetry chapbook, Big Fish, was published by Stranded Oak Press in 2016. Her work has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Rumpus, Brevity and more. Her essays have been nominated for The Pushcart Prize many times, and she received the 2015 City of Asylum Pittsburgh Prize, which sent her to Brussels, Belgium on a month-long writing residency. She has also received a Golden Quill Award from the Press Club of Western Pennsylvania, was a working-scholar at The Bread Loaf Writers Conference, and was the winner of the first-ever Pittsburgh Literary Death Match. She lives in Pittsburgh with her husband, the writer Dave Newman, and their children. A former flight attendant and journalist, she now directs the undergraduate writing program at The University of Pittsburgh-Greensburg, where she is Professor of English and Creative/Professional Writing. She is a co-director of Chautauqua Institution’s Summer Writers Festival, teaches community writing workshops at a yoga studio in her hometown of Trafford, Pa., and curates the Saturday Poem feature at The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. She is at work on her first novel.

12/2 6th Annual Holiday Book Sale @ Stephen Foster Community Center

Karen Lillis says,

It’s almost here! I’m madly preparing for Pittsburgh’s SIXTH Annual Holiday Book Sale, featuring Steel City’s favorite INDIE book vendors. This is a great way for readers and holiday shoppers to browse a wide variety of books from Pittsburgh’s knowledgeable literary curators and bookish creators. Both new and gently used, bestsellers and one of a kind finds, titles by local authors and books on spectacular sale. Fiction, poetry, memoirs, art books, graphic novels, collectible books, children’s books, gift-ready blank books, and much more. Amid the buzz about Amazon’s questionable ethics in their search for HQ2, this event is also a great way to showcase and celebrate the best of Pittsburgh’s own hard-working literary indies: Indie booksellers, indie publishers, indie book creators, and indie press authors.

Confirmed vendors thus far:

Air & Nothingness Press (gorgeously designed science fiction, poetry, & lit in translation!)

Amazing Books (a wide array of gently used literature!)

City Books (used and rare books, featuring CityBox book subscriptions!)

Copacetic Comics (special selection of new books with an emphasis on SALES!)

Karen Antonelli (artist and maker of beautiful blank books and cards!)

Karen’s Book Row (Hosting bookseller–featuring feminist fiction, LGBT lit, African American authors, and counterculture reads!)

Vers Libris (fine bookbinder and creator of journals and notebooks!)

Very Important Books (paperback editions of the best reads of the last several decades!)

First editions TBA–There will be at least one dealer specializing in first editions of modern literature

Sunday, December 2nd

12-5pm

Stephen Foster Community Center

286 Main Street in Lawrenceville–between Butler St and Penn Ave

Free admission

Free parking lot

Facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/2253373391560155/

Craigslist event page: https://pittsburgh.craigslist.org/bkd/d/holiday-book-sale-dec-2/6745565980.html

I hope to see you there!
Karen

10/23 Radical Writers Rise Up: A PGH DSA Poetry & Fiction Reading

7PM TUESDAY, OCTOBER 23…

Join Pittsburgh DSA for “Radical Writers Rise Up” a poetry & fiction reading on October 23rd at Glitterbox Theater!

Featuring poets: Corey Carrington, Robin Clarke, and L U C; novelists Selene Depackh, Jamie Lackey, and Rick Claypool; and bookseller Karen Lillis

10/14 Pittsburgh Zine Fair @ Union Project

THIS SUNDAY…

The Eighth Annual Pittsburgh Zine Fair (PZF) returns to the Union Project (801 N Negley Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15206) on Sunday, October 14, from 2 – 8pm. This event is free and open to the public!

https://www.facebook.com/events/276940936401927/

Since its debut at AIR: Artists Image Resource in 2011, the PZF has attracted a diverse group of artists, writers and activists from across the region whose content may vary but the format remains the same- the zine. An icon of DIY ethos and radical info sharing, the zine decentralizes media and vaults individual expression while remaining inexpensive.

___________________________

Special thanks to Union Project and Bunker Projects for their support!

As usual, Karen Lillis will be there with “a selection of small press books, recommended reads, feminist fiction, LGBT lit, African American authors, fiction in translation, counterculture reads, blank books, & more!”