5/22 Lea Graham, Mark Spitzer, & friends @ White Whale Bookstore

7 PM Wednesday, May 22…

Lea Graham & Mark Spitzer return to White Whale Bookstore w/ new books, joined by locals Anna Eidolon, Shawn Maddey, John Thomas Menesini, Daniel Parme, Jess Simms, & Robert Walicki.

FREE & BYOB, per White Whale policy. Possible vegan or pescetarian snacks, crackers guaranteed.

Here’s a bit about Lea’s book, From the Hotel Vernon, from Salmon Poetry.

The poems in this book grow out and around the Hotel Vernon, built at the turn of the 20th century in Worcester, Massachusetts. Once an elegant place for local politicians to make their backdoor deals at the edge of the city, it slowly fell into decline each decade following Prohibition. Despite this, it has always been a space where artists, newspapermen and neighbors gathered at the bar or, after the late 1940s, in its Ship Room, a room purportedly modeled after the second berth of the Mayflower. In its barroom is a 1940s mural of “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” painted by the owner’s son-in-law bartender and his friends, including the cartoonist, Al Capp.

In these poems, oral histories are poised between and among flagrant sexuality, humor and abject poverty.  Patsy Cline, Babe Ruth, WWI’s “Sacrifice Division” and Roy Orbison inhabit this space alongside the local residents: the Baker, Maurie, Charlie and Stosh.  Names of neighborhood places—Rizutti’s Goodnight Café, The Nines, The Greyhound—are recited as both proof and pride in a neighborhood that was diminished through the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act, cutting off foot traffic to local businesses by 1970.

& here’s a bit about Mark’s book, In Search of Monster Fish: Angling for a More Sustainable Planet, from University of Nebraska Press.

In Search of Monster Fish is an action-packed, knee-slapping ride into and out of the belly of the beast. Join extreme angler Mark Spitzer as he encounters man-eating catfish, ruthless barracuda, lacerating conger eels, berserk tarpon, and blood-curdling sharks in locales as exotic as the Amazon, Catalonia, the Dominican Republic, Senegal, and even in our own backyards.

But this eco-odyssey isn’t just about meeting and releasing some of the most grotesque lunkers in the world. It’s about implementing solutions for problems as behemoth as global warming and issues as common as choosing what to eat for dinner. And as the ice caps melt at the rate of 1 percent annually, Spitzer battles his most epic goliath: a leviathan that dwells in the depths of us all, making us ask who the real monsters are, what our responsibilities truly are, and what we can possibly do to sustain our planet and ourselves when faced with such demonic disenlightenment. Spitzer then beats this whopper into submission by reframing his call to action and finding his own way. A new portal to the underworld has been opened in the cutting-edge literature of monster fish, and this is your entry ticket.

BIOLOGICAL DATA

Originally from Brooklyn, Anna Eidolon moved to Pittsburgh in 2015. Her poetry and prose have appeared in The Village Voice, In Our Own Words, Resister, Spinning, and Edges. Most recently, she was the recipient of the Into the Light writing prize at Chatham University. She may ask you for a cigarette.

Lea Graham is a writer, translator and professor who lives in Rosendale, New York and Mayflower, Arkansas. She was born in Memphis, Tennessee and grew up in Northwest Arkansas. She has lived in Joplin, Missouri; Perth Amboy, New Jersey; Chicago, Illinois; Worcester, Massachusetts; Santiago, Dominican Republic; San Jose, Costa Rica; Florence, Italy and Quito, Ecuador. She earned her B.A. in English from Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri and her M.A. and Ph.D. in English/Creative Writing from the University of Illinois-Chicago. She is Associate Professor of English at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York where she has been on faculty since 2007.

Graham is the author of the poetry collection, Hough & Helix & Where & Here & You, You, You (No Tell Books, 2011), along with three chapbooks, Spell to Spell (above/ground Press, 2018), This End of the World: Notes to Robert Kroetsch (Apt. 9 Press, 2016) and Calendar Girls (above/ground Press, 2006).

Her poems, reviews, essays and translations have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies that include 3Elements Review, Politics/Letters, Crab Creek Review, Bateau, Poor Yorick, Milk, The Southern Humanities Review, Reflecting Pool: Poets and the Creative Process (Codhill Press, 2018) and The Southern Poetry Anthology VI: Tennessee, Vol. 6 (Texas Review Press, 2013).

In 2018 she won the Literal Latte’ Poetry Contest.

Shawn Maddey doesn’t have a bio anymore. No one needs to know anything about him.

John Thomas Menesini is fluffing his bio or cranking out new poems, hopefully. He is the author of The Last Great Glass Meat Million, e pit ap h, endo: Poems & Sketches 2007-2011, & Gloom Hearts & Opioids. You know Johnny.

Daniel Parme is the author of Hungry, a novel about cannibals in Pittsburgh, and Confluence, a novel about noncannibals in Pittsburgh. Post, a novella about noncannibals not in Pittsburgh, is forthcoming from Running Wild Press. For years, he slung the suds at various local sudseries; currently, he oversees the suds-slinging at a proper drinking and dining establishment.

Jess Simms is a freelance ghostwriter and fiction writer. She’s an editor with the After Happy Hour Review and has had a handful of stories published in literary journals, with recent publications including the Oakland Review, Bardic Tales and Sage Advice, and Rind Literary Magazine.

Mark Spitzer is an associate professor of writing at the University of Central Arkansas. He is the author of more than twenty-five books, including Season of the Gar: Adventures in Pursuit of America’s Most Misunderstood Fish and Beautifully Grotesque Fish of the American West (Nebraska, 2017). Spitzer has consulted for Nat Geo’s Monster Fish and appeared on Animal Planet’s River Monsters.

Robert Walicki’s work has appeared in over 50 journals, including Pittsburgh City Paper, Fourth River, Stone Highway 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 now available from Pittsburgh’s Six Gallery Press.

7/7 Inflammatosis! by Mark Spitzer & Spell to Spell by Lea Graham launch party @ Nine Stories Books + Alien Buddha Invades Erie @ Ember+Forge

7PM Saturday, July 7 at Nine Stories Books, three scribblers from Arkansas join three from the 412 to celebrate the launch of Mark Spitzer’s latest book Inflammatosis, “a big, punk-ass Fuck You to all the petty, pretentious haters out there dicking around with 1) his life, 2) your life, 3) all our lives, and 4) fish.”

Mark Spitzer, novelist, poet, essayist and literary translator, grew up in Minneapolis where he earned his Bachelor’s degree at the University of Minnesota in 1990. He then moved to the Rockies, where he earned his Master’s in Creative Writing from the University of Colorado. After living on the road for some time, he found himself in Paris, as Writer in Residence for three years at the bohemian bookstore Shakespeare and Company, where he translated French criminals and misanthropes. In 1997 he moved to Louisiana, became Assistant Editor of the legendary lit journal Exquisite Corpse, and earned an MFA from Louisiana State University. He taught creative writing and lit for five years at Truman State University and is now an associate professor of creative writing at the University of Central Arkansas.

Traveling with Mark from the home state of Johnny Cash & C. D. Wright will be Lea Graham & Scotty Lewis. We’ll also be celebrating the launch of Lea’s new chapbook.

Spell to Spell
by Lea Graham
$5

Gristle, (n.) cartilage; tough cartilaginous, tendinous, or fibrous matter

For Georganna Ulary

Grit’s spell. / A bone of sound / between hustle, just whistle. / Grist to the mill of welter, / close to grisly but more wattle / less huddle. / Tattooed thistle, / apple of my ire, / a subtle gris-gris / around the wrist of tussle. / The gist of it: / A muscle that fasts is lost. / We must wrestle that lustful, fustling angel of self, / bedazzle that recluse; / bust and move the offal, / dis refusal. / Wrest our names, / our castling  furies, / cast and fuss to surge, / gird and guzzle that shit; / grease the wheels against hair-shirts of hurt, / storm the bastille of cry, the cradle of grow; / jazz and cussle this tigress, /  this mottled grindle of rage, / muddle the sonic barb.  /  Steal away   steal away   steal away home

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
July 2018
celebrating twenty-five years of above/ground press
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Lea Graham is the author of the forthcoming book, From the Hotel Vernon (Salmon Press, 2019), the chapbook, This End of the World: Notes to Robert Kroetsch (Apt. 9 Press, 2016) and the poetry book, Hough & Helix & Where & Here & You, You, You (No Tell Books, 2011). She is an associate professor at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, NY and a native of Northwest Arkansas.

This is Graham’s third above/ground press chapbook, after Calendar Girls (2006) and metric : a collaboration (with rob mclennan, 2011).

Here’s another poem from Spell to Spell at Crab Creek Review.

Scotty Lewis is a 2015 graduate of the Arkansas Writers MFA Program. His first book of poetry, Arkansas Ghoulash, came out last December on Six Gallery. Here’s an interview with Scotty talking about the book, & here’s another one.

The Pittsburgh lineup is pretty outstanding too:

Karen Lillis is a writer and bookseller. She is the author of four poetic novels, including The Second Elizabeth (Six Gallery Press, 2009), 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).

Ben Gwin is the Fiction Editor at Burrow Press Review. His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in The Normal School, Bridge Eight, Word Riot, Mary: A Journal of New Writing, and others. His novel manuscript, Clean Time: The True Story of Ronald Reagan Middleton, was shortlisted for the 2014 Pressgang Prize, and named a semifinalist for the 2015 Horatio Nelson Fiction Prize. He lives in Pittsburgh with his daughter.

I’d add that Clean Time is out now & by all accounts hilarious. You can read a bit of it at Literary Hub.

Barbara Edelman is the author of the poetry collection Dream of the Gone-From City from Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2017. Her poems have appeared in journals nationally, including Prairie Schooner, Cimarron Review, and Poet Lore; in translation in the Italian journal Nuovi Argomenti, and in several anthologies. Her short prose has appeared in Rattle and Arts & Letters. She’s the author of two poetry chapbooks: Exposure, Finishing Line Press, 2014 and A Girl in Water, Parallel Press, 2002. Her work has been recognized with a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts individual artist’s grant in poetry and the Turow-Kinder Prize in short fiction.

Edelman teaches in the writing, composition, and literature programs at Pitt and coordinates the Writers’ Café. She won the 2012 CGS Student Choice Award for teaching. She holds a B.A. in English from Colgate University, an M.A. in English from California State University Northridge, and an M.F.A. in Poetry from the University of Pittsburgh.

***

Meanwhile, in Erie, it’s

Open mic and featured writers series

feat. Jason Baldinger, Heath Brougher, Scott Thomas Outlar, Jay Miner, Jeremy Stolz, Luke Kuzmish, Matt Borczon, Thasia Anne, & Veronica Hopkins at Ember+Forge.

9/27 Arkansas Ghoulash Launch @ Faulkner County Library + Bridge Series @ Brillobox

7PM WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 27…

CONWAY, AR— UCA Visiting Lecturer, Scotty Lewis, the first graduate of the MFA program in creative writing to defend his thesis at UCA, will read from his debut book at 7:00 p.m. on September 27^th at the Conway Public Library. Arkansas Ghoulash, recently published by Six Gallery Press in Pittsburgh, evolved from his thesis, a highly complex and lyrical epic poem written in the form of investigative verse.

Described by Drew Cook as “at once oppressively intimate and as wide as the American South,” Arkansas Ghoulash examines the poet’s violent domestic past. Marck Beggs, author of Blind Verse, says that Lewis “displays a dazzling ability to shove poetic style and grace to the outer edges,” in a book that Lea Graham, author of Hough & Helix & Where & Here & You, You, You,” describes as “a stew of ghosts” in a “mercurial slipstream.”

The event is free and open to the public. Books will be available for purchase with a signing to follow. The Faulkner County Library is located at 1900 Tyler St. in Conway. For more information please contact Nancy Allen at nancy@fcl.org or call (501) 327-7482.

8PM 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).

$5 cover.

Tonight will feature readings from:

Lisa Alexander’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in various journals including Tupelo Quarterly, 2 Bridges Review, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, The Burnside Review, BLOOM, and 5 AM among others. She holds an MFA in poetry from Drew University, and is a member of the Madwomen in the Attic writing workshops. Alexander has led poetry workshops at the University of Pittsburgh-Greensburg, California University of Pennsylvania, Drew University in Madison, NJ and the Isles YouthBuild Community Program in Trenton, NJ. She has been a sound engineer for Prosody, NPR-affiliate WESA’s weekly show featuring the work of national writers for eight years and counting.

A lifelong writer, Justin Vicari is a widely published poet, critic and translator. His first collection, The Professional Weepers (Pavement Saw, 2011), won the Transcontinental Award. His work has appeared in Barrow Street, Spoon River Poetry Review, 32 Poems, Hotel Amerika, The Ledge, Oranges & Sardines, American Poetry Review, Southern Poetry Review, Third Coast, and other journals. He is also the author of six books of film and literary theory, including Male Bisexuality in Current Cinema: Images of Growth, Rebellion and Survival (McFarland, 2011) and Mad Muses and the Early Surrealists (McFarland, 2001). He lives in the South Hills of Pittsburgh.

Jeff Oaks is the author of four poetry chapbooks, including Mistakes with Strangers (Seven Kitchens Press, 2014), Shift (Seven Kitchens Press, 2010), The Moon of Books (Ultima Obscura Press, 2000), and The Unknown Country (State Street Press, 1992). The recipient of three Pennsylvania Council of the Arts fellowships, he has published poems most recently in Field, Nimrod, Mid-American Review, Superstition Review, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and Tupelo Quarterly. His essays have appeared in At Length, Creative Nonfiction, Kenyon Review Online, and in the anthologies My Diva: 65 Gay Men on the Women Who Inspire Them, and Brief Encounters: A Collection of Contemporary Nonfiction. He teaches writing at the University of Pittsburgh.

Our guest organization for the evening is Persad Center.

PERSAD CENTER is a human service organization whose mission is to improve the well-being of the LGBTQ (lesbian, gay bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning) communities, and the HIV/AIDS communities. We serve our target populations and their loved ones, cradle to grave, across western Pennsylvania, with service centers in Pittsburgh and Washington, PA.

PERSAD fulfills its missions through outreach, prevention counseling, training and advocacy services.

OUTREACH. In collaboration with allies and friends, PERSAD works to build stronger, safer, healthier communities and steer the public dialogue about LGBTQ people and issues. Our target populations have experienced stigma and discrimination and because of that they do not enjoy the same access to quality care. PERSAD reaches out to our target populations and welcomes them to receive services they need.

PREVENTION. Recognizing that LGBTQ people are at higher risk for suicide, depression, substance abuse, HIV and other STDs, homelessness, and for being the victims of violence, PERSAD has special programs to help the community be aware of their risks and to develop protective behaviors to reduce their risks.

ADVOCACY. PERSAD offers an array of Training & Advocacy consultation services that are designed to help organizations work successfully with LGBTQ consumers and employees. We are dedicated to ending discrimination and creating welcoming environments for LGBTQ people. Our Training & Advocacy services are available to health and human service professionals, schools, corporations, HR professionals, law enforcement and public safety officials.

COUNSELING. Founded in 1972, PERSAD is the nation’s second oldest licensed counseling center serving the LGBTQ community and people living with HIV. PERSAD was created as an affirming counseling center to help LGBTQ people cope with the social discrimination they experienced and to receive professional counseling services without prejudice about their identity.

In the early 1980’s PERSAD added serving the HIV/AIDS communities to our mission because of the devastating impact that HIV had on the gay population of that time. PERSAD continues to serve the HIV+ individual regardless of their sexual or gender orientation.

For more on PERSAD, go to: www.persadcenter.org

Here’s a Littsburgh interview w/ Joan Bauer, who put this one together.

7/28 A Hellbender Reading w/ Mark Spitzer, Lea Graham, & Co. @ EEBX

THURSDAY, JULY 28th…

Mark Spitzer has a new book out from Anaphora Literary Press about the wonderful hellbender, North America’s largest salamander!

Hear Mark read from his epic poem along with poet Lea Graham & local Six Gallery stalwarts Che Elias, Karen Lillis, John Thomas Menesini, & Don Wentworth… or risk the wrath of the hellbender!

UPDATE:

As animal names go, “hellbender” is a pretty good one. So if Mark Spitzer’s book-length poem about North America’s largest salamander (which can grow to more than 2 feet long) is titled Glurk! (Anaphora Literary Press) instead, it’s for reasons you’ll have to learn for yourself when the Arkansas-based author reads at East End Book Exchange. Tonight’s reading, backed by music made on the custom-made stringed instrument called The Electric Hellbender, also includes words from New York-based poet Lea Graham and local luminaries Che Elias, Karen Lillis, John Thomas Menesini and Don Wentworth. Bill O’Driscoll 7 p.m. 4754 Liberty Ave., Bloomfield. Free. 412-224-2847

Pittsburgh City Paper

5/26 To My Divine Spark/Gloom Hearts & Opioids launch @ Classic Lines

TOMORROW…