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!!

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.

12/7 December at CNF – Holiday Book Market

FRIDAY…

Join Creative Nonfiction for our holiday open house and book market featuring Karen’s Book Row. During the December art crawl, our space will be your one-stop-shop for picking up Pittsburgh writers’ books, enjoying holiday libations, and mingling with local authors. Invite the gang and come hang with ours!

Karen’s Book Row specializes in feminist fiction, LGBT lit, African American authors, international lit, and counterculture reads. During the CNF Holiday Book Market, the bookstand will have a spotlight on memoir and other nonfiction.

PLUS: DIY gift wrapping, a photo booth, & free booze and food.

Friday, December 7 // 6 pm – 10 pm
Creative Nonfiction Foundation // 5119 Coral Street
Free

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

10/14 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!”

7/15 Polish Hill Arts Fest

Karen sez…

I’m gearing up to return as a bookseller to the (11th annual) Polish Hill Arts Fest this Sunday July 15th! Karen’s Book Row will be on the streets from Noon-8pm, featuring novels, memoirs, & poetry, along with priced-to-move children’s books, travel books, & blank books. The Polish Hill Arts Fest is a recommended fair, with some great food, fun music, amazing arts vendors, and two reading events. I’m excited to share a booth with native Pittsburgher Paola Corso: She’s a terrific poet & fiction writer who will be tabling for Steppin Stanzas, featuring art & poetry about Pittsburgh’s historic public steps. She’ll be leading a poetry reading on the steps next to the Immaculate Heart of Mary church (it’s the huge one–you can’t miss it) at 2:30pm on Sunday. At 3:30pm, we’ll hear poetry from Rachel (formerly known as Billie Nardozzi).

5/27 Karen’s Book Row @ Pittsburgh Flea-for-All @ Spirit

Karen Lillis sez,

Dear friends & comrades,

This Sunday, Karen’s Book Row will pop up at a new venue. I’m excited to try the Flea For All Market at Spirit Lounge in Lawrenceville (51st Street off Butler). What could be better than Books & Brunch? Spirit’s delicious buffet brunch is served from 11-3 and the Flea for All is upstairs one hour longer, from 11am-4pm. Stop by and browse books as well as the other vendors’ wares: records, clothing, household items, pop culture goodies, and other vintage delights!

12/16 Holiday Book Sale Redux @ Irma Freeman Center for Imagination

12-5PM SATURDAY…

Join us for a SECOND CHANCE to browse great books from Pittsburgh authors, publishers, and booksellers.

SATURDAY, December 16th
12-5pm
Irma Freeman Center for the Imagination
5006 Penn Avenue
Penn Avenue Arts District
Free admission
Street parking

Confirmed vendors so far:

Air & Nothingness Press
Hyacinth Girl Press
Lilliput Review
Karen’s Book Row–with many books from Pittsburgh publishers!
Six Gallery Press
Very Important Books–fiction & zines
Authors signing books!

I’ll be sharing a table w/ Don Wentworth at this, so visit us for all your Six Gallery Press & Lilliput Review needs. Pictured are Manual for Wayward Angels by Jessica Fenlon, the Low Ghost love poem anthology Unconditional Surrender, & Muskrat Friday Dinner by Scott Silsbe, three great books from 2017 (I’ve at least skimmed the other ones & strongly suspect they’re also pretty good). The latest Six Gallery titles Viva Arletty! by Mark Spitzer & Arkansas Ghoulash by Scotty Lewis, Manchild by Alan Olifson, & Under the Kaufmann’s Clock by Angele Ellis w/ photos by Rebecca Clever, will be available too, along w/ selections from the back catalog by Ally Malinenko, Chuck Kinder, Elwin Cotman, Jason Baldinger, John Grochalski, Victor Navarro, book sale organizer Karen Lillis, & more.

12/3 Pittsburgh’s 5th Annual Holiday Book Sale @ Stephen Foster Community Center

THIS SUNDAY…

Join us for Pittsburgh’s FIFTH Annual Holiday Book Sale, featuring Pittsburgh’s favorite indie book vendors. Come browse a wide variety of books from Pittsburgh’s knowledgeable literary curators. Both new and gently used, indie bestsellers and one of a kind finds, local authors and spectacular sales. Fiction, poetry, mysteries, creative nonfiction, art books, children’s books, graphic novels, and much more.

Confirmed vendors thus far:
Air & Nothingness Press (gorgeous letterpress poetry, science fiction, fantasy books, & literature in translation!)
Amazing Books (going strong with three locations!)
Autumn House Press (publishing poetry & literary fiction for almost 20 years!)
Book ‘Em (selling books to raise money for Pittsburgh’s own Books to Prisoners program!)
Copacetic Comics (they’ll have a special selection of new books with an emphasis on SALES!)
Karen Antonelli (artist and maker of beautiful blank books!)
Karen’s Book Row (aka Small Press Pittsburgh) (Featuring the local, the beloved, and the unique in indie lit!)
Mystery Lovers Bookshop (celebrating 27 years in business!)
White Whale Bookstore (celebrating their 2nd year in Bloomfield!)

Sunday, December 3th
12-5pm
Stephen Foster Community Center
Main Street in Lawrenceville–between Butler St and Penn Ave
Free admission
Free parking lot

9/24 Pittsburgh Zine Fair @ Union Project

2-8PM TODAY…

The Seventh Annual Pittsburgh Zine Fair (PZF) returns to the Union Project (801 N Negley Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15206) on Sunday, September 24, from 2 – 8pm. This event is free and open to the public!

Exhibitors:
The Big Idea Bookstore, Inc, Toi Scott, Christina Lee, Lumpo Art, Em DeMarco & Banyan Ouldage, Evey in Orbit, Laura PallMall, Anna Strain, Nikita Zook, Yung Mulatto, Nate McDonough, Lizzy Nolin Designs, Jenna Houston, Braddock Hills High School Creative Writing Class, Graciela Sarabia, Sophia Pappas, Cecilia Ebitz, Manchester Bidwell Corporation, Assemble Girl’s Maker Night, Tess Wilson, Bill Wehmann, Lizzee Solomon Studios, Haunted Meat, Kyla Kemmerer, Evelyn Pandos, Aaron Regal, MARK, Alecia Ott, Teach the Free Man How to Praise, Laura Salgarolo, Cynthia Lee, Laughing Redhead Studio, Jimmy Riordan, Paul Peng, Jordan gg Chu, Hyacinth Girl Press, Vanessa Adams, Nsai Temko, Maggie Negrete, Joshua Rievel, Martel Edwell, Anna Shepperson, Jerome Charles & Max Gonzales, Adam & Fred, Tall Flower Studios (Aaron Hayes, Ua Hayes, Yona Harvey), Sienna Cittadino, Lily Fulop, Katie Krulock, Stephanie Tsong, Jayla Patton, Vagabond Comics, Ryan Elizabeth, DBQ (Alex Lukas & Leah Mackin), Theora Kvitka, Nginyu Ndimbie, negi.space (Asia Bey & Mont Tucker), Terese & Ana Jungle, Mihalkotron, David Watt, Frenemy Press, Seth LeDonne, Annesley Williams, Melissa Rogers, Jennifer Lisa, S & J Comics (Jamie Straw & Sara Cole), City Slicker Press, Hell Yeah Design, AIR: Artists Image Resource, Karen’s Book Row, Marina Fec, Lauren Bailey, Girls Rock! Pittsburgh, The Copacetic Comics Company, Nils Balls, Pittsburgh Comics Salon, Feminist Zine Fest Pittsburgh, Black Unicorn: Library and Archives Project, Steely Gayze, Cowboy House
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As part of RADical Days, Union Project’s Hands-on Ceramics Workshop runs from 2-5 pm during the Pittsburgh Zine Fair.

Explore words and language while creating with clay in a free, all-ages, drop-in workshop in the ceramics studio before or after you check out locally-created zines, comics, and chapbooks at the 7th Annual Pittsburgh Zine Fair.

___________________________

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.

Karen Lillis says,

It’s that time of year again, the Seventh Annual Pittsburgh Zine Fair is tomorrow, Sunday afternoon, September 24th. Over sixty (60+) vendors will pop up at the Union Project in Highland Park/Pittsburgh, and I’ll be there with zines, micro press, and small press literature selections. I’m also recreating last year’s success, the Memoir Table. Please come browse! There are so many cool artists, writers, librarians, & booksellers to take in. This vibrant event is free and includes FOOD TRUCKS.

12/17 3rd Annual Babyland Holiday Sale & Party @ 460 Melwood

THIS SATURDAY…

Karen Lillis will be slinging books at this.