6/29 White Whale Bookstore Presents Hemingway’s Summer Poetry Series feat. Paola Corso & Jason Irwin

TONIGHT, ON THE INTERNET…

Week 5 of Pittsburgh’s 2021 Hemingway’s Summer Poetry Series! Co-hosted and curated by Joan E. Bauer & Kristofer Collins.

About this event

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 5 features Daniela Buccilli, Paola Corso, Jason Irwin, Rachel Mennies, and Fred Shaw.

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 sitethrough 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 6/29. 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:

Daniela Buccilli’s poetry can be found in South Dakota Review, Pennsylvania English, Coal River Review, Paterson Literary Review, and Cimarron Review. She has been anthologized a few times, including in the latest edition of Voices from the Attic. She co-edited the poetry anthology Show Us Your Papers. Her chapbook, What it Takes to Carry, was published by Main Street Rag. She reads for Pittsburgh Poetry Journal. She mentors for the Madwomen. She teaches high school.

Paola Corso’s books are set in her native Pittsburgh, where her Italian immigrant family members were steel workers, most recently Vertical Bridges: Poems and Photographs of City Steps, 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. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Christian Science Monitors, Women’s Review of Books, U.S Catholic, The Progressive and other journals. For more, go to : http://www.paolacorso.com

Jason Irwin is the author of the three collections of poetry: The History of Our Vagrancies (Main Street Rag), A Blister of Stars (Low Ghost, 2016), Watering the Dead (Pavement Saw Press, 2008), & the chapbook Some Days It’s A Love Story (Slipstream Press, 2005). He has also had nonfiction published in IO Literary Journal, Cleaver Magazine, & The Crux. He grew up in Dunkirk, NY, and now lives in Pittsburgh. www.jasonirwin.blogspot.com

Rachel Mennies is the author of the poetry collections The Naomi Letters (BOA Editions, 2021), and The Glad Hand of God Points Backwards, the 2014 winner of the Walt McDonald First-Book Prize in Poety at Texas Tech University Press and finalist for a National Jewish Book Award.

Fred Shaw was named Emerging Poet Laureate Finalist for Allegheny County in 2020. He is a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh, and Carlow University, where he received his MFA. He teaches writing and literature at Point Park University and Carlow University. His first collection, Scraping Away, was recently published by CavanKerry Press. He is a book reviewer and Poetry Editor for Pittsburgh Quarterly, and his poem, “Argot,” is featured in the 2018 full-length documentary, Eating & Working & Eating & Working. The film focuses on the lives of local service-industry workers. His poem “Scraping Away” was selected for the PA Public Poetry Project in 2017. He lives in Pittsburgh with his wife and rescued hound dog.

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.

9/8 Virtual Poetry Book Launch: “The River Is Another Kind of Prayer” by Kristofer Collins

7 PM Tuesday, Sept. 8, on your rectangle…

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 9/8.

Rescheduled from March: We’re super excited to be helping local poet Kristofer Collins launch his latest collection, The River Is Another Kind of Prayer: New & Selected Poems! He’ll be reading alongside Daniela Buccilli, Richard Gegick, and Jamilla Rice.

Check out our Bookshop site’s list titled “Recent and Upcoming Events (Pre-order!)” to order Kristofer’s book. And you can check out other 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’ve also got a number of books available ready-to-ship from our store in Pittsburgh.

About the authors:

Kristofer Collins is the publisher of Low Ghost Press and the books editor at Pittsburgh Magazine. He is the co-host of the Hemingway’s Summer Poetry Series. He lives in Pittsburgh, PA with his wife Dr. Anna Johnson and their son Cassidy.

Daniela Buccilli’s poetry chapbook is What it Takes to Carry (Main Street Rag). Her poems can be found in Coal River Review, Paterson Literary Review, Cimarron Review, Cider Press Review, and Italian Americana. She holds degrees in teaching and writing from Penn State, University of Pittsburgh, and Carlow University. She has co-edited an upcoming anthology Show Us Your Papers. She teaches high school.

Richard Gegick is from Trafford, PA. He is the author of the poetry collection, Greasy Handshakes, available from WPA Press. He lives in Pittsburgh where he writes and waits tables for a living.

Jamilla Rice dreams of when she can own her days and write. Until then, she squeezes out moments during her time as an athlete, educator, aunt, book nerd, baker, and British detective drama junkie. Her work has been published in previous volumes of Voices from the Attic and Pittsburgh Poetry Review, among other anthologies and periodicals. You may have heard her read at various events, on WESA’s Prosody, or at that one open mic in Toronto. Her work includes poetry, short fiction, flash nonfiction and combinations of all of the above and more. Topics generally explore the intersection of the personal and political; past as present and future; the beauty within the mundane and pain; the science, math, and absurdity of human behavior; and the undying insistence of marginalized peoples to thrive.

3/24 The River Is Another Kind of Prayer by Kristofer Collins launch @ White Whale

TUESDAY, MARCH 24…

We’re super excited to be helping local poet KRISTOFER COLLINS launch his latest collection, THE RIVER IS ANOTHER KIND OF PRAYER: NEW & SELECTED POEMS! He’ll be reading alongside DANIELA BUCCILLI, RICHARD GEGICK, and JAMILLA RICE.

KRISTOFER COLLINS is the publisher of Low Ghost Press and the books editor at Pittsburgh Magazine. He is the co-host of the Hemingway’s Summer Poetry Series. He lives in Pittsburgh, PA with his wife Dr. Anna Johnson and their son Cassidy.

DANIELA BUCCILLI’S poetry chapbook is What it Takes to Carry (Main Street Rag). Her poems can be found in Coal River Review, Paterson Literary Review, Cimarron Review, Cider Press Review, and Italian Americana. She holds degrees in teaching and writing from Penn State, University of Pittsburgh, and Carlow University. She has co-edited an upcoming anthology Show Us Your Papers. She teaches high school.

RICHARD GEGICK is from Trafford, PA. He is the author of the poetry collection, GREASY HANDSHAKES, available from WPA Press. He lives in Pittsburgh where he writes and waits tables for a living

JAMILLA RICE dreams of when she can own her days and write. Until then, she squeezes out moments during her time as an athlete, educator, aunt, book nerd, baker, and British detective drama junkie. Her work has been published in previous volumes of Voices from the Attic and Pittsburgh Poetry Review, among other anthologies and periodicals. You may have heard her read at various events, on WESA’s Prosody, or at that one open mic in Toronto. Her work includes poetry, short fiction, flash nonfiction and combinations of all of the above and more. Topics generally explore the intersection of the personal and political; past as present and future; the beauty within the mundane and pain; the science, math, and absurdity of human behavior; and the undying insistence of marginalized peoples to thrive.

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/

6/4 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.

5/2 Rewind Reading Series @ Brillobox

8PM THURSDAY…

The REWIND Reading Series is back at it again.

WHAT IS REWIND?
REWIND is what happens when people share their angsty adolescent selves on a stage to a room full of adults. These are real people sharing their real, unedited journals, poems, songs, etc. for laughter, tears and unabashed nostalgia. In other words, it takes guts, yo.

Brave presenters this round:

Kris Collins
Deena November
Janette Schafer
Sarah Shotland
Meghan Tutolo (host)

Do you have an idea for REWIND? Message Meghan Tutolo a brief bit about what you want to share and why you want to share it.

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6/23 Reading: Gwin, Silsbe, Collins, Garrison @ White Whale Books

FRIDAY…

my strong suspicion is it’s these guys reading: Ben Gwin, Scott Silsbe, Kris Collins, & Kurt Garrison. Bring beer & find out!

2/22 The Bridge Series: Tony Norman, Adriana Ramirez, & Jan Beatty @ Brillobox

8PM THIS WEDNESDAY…

The Bridge Series unites the Pittsburgh literary and activist communities to raise awareness and funds for local organizations fighting the good fight in these troubling times.

The series convenes the last Wednesday of each month at The Brillobox. Each installment will feature Pittsburgh’s finest writers and a special guest organization (with proceeds from the evening going directly to that organization).

Plus every evening will end with a short Open Mic segment!

Tonight will feature readings from:

Tony Norman – Associate Editor / Columnist / Book Review Editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Adriana Ramirez – a Mexican-Colombian nonfiction writer, storyteller, digital maker, and performance poet. her nonfiction novella, Dead Boys, was published by Little A (November 2016), and her debut full-length nonfiction book, The Violence, is forthcoming from Scribner (Fall 2017).

Jan Beatty – worked as a waitress for fifteen years, and as a welfare caseworker, an abortion counselor, and a social worker and teacher in maximum-security prisons. She is the managing editor of MadBooks, a small press that has published a series of books and chapbooks by women writers. For twenty years, Beatty has hosted and produced Prosody, a public radio show on NPR-affiliate WESA-FM featuring national writers. Jan Beatty directs the Madwomen in the Attic writing workshops at Carlow University, where she is also director of creative writing and teaches in the low-residency MFA program. Her latest book is Jackknife: New and Selected Poems (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2017).

Our guest organization tonight is Be Well! Pittsburgh and Jude Vachon will be onhand to discuss its mission.

Be Well Pittsburgh! collaborates with health care consumers, health care providers, social service providers and community organizations to improve uninsured Pittsburghers’ awareness of and access to health care resources.

Be Well! was founded in 2005 and was originally funded by a Seed Award from the Sprout Fund. The Seed Award supported the printing of 6,000 copies of a resource booklet entitled Be Well! Healthcare Options for the Uninsured. The booklet was distributed in public venues and through social service organizations in Pittsburgh. Its release was launched at a community health fair at the Quiet Storm Coffeehouse during the summer of 2006.

Be Well! continues to revise, update, print and distribute the booklets as funds allow. We also continually revise and update the website. We act as a reference source to individuals and service providers, participate in community events, and hold community information sessions on health care resources for uninsured people. www.bewellpgh.org

Thanks to Krisofer Collins & Jason Baldinger for organizing this great new series!