Archive for Matt Ussia

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

Posted in Events with tags , , , , , , , , , , , on June 14, 2021 by 6GPress

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.

12/13 5th Annual Bah Humbug! Writers Wrestle the Holiday Spirit @ Brillobox

Posted in Events with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 21, 2018 by 6GPress

8PM THURSDAY, DECEMBER 13…

Tastier than a fruitcake, easier to assemble than a Fisher-Price playhouse, for the FIFTH year in a row, we are bringing some of Pittsburgh’s finest writers together to entertain you with tales of their holiday work experiences. This year, our readers will also play Secret Santa with each other, because nothing says “I’m broke” more effectively than “I WROTE you this gift.”

$5 suggested donation, proceeds benefit the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank.

Hosted by Jason Baldinger (who was once run over by a Black Friday crowd on a rampage for office supplies) and Stephanie Brea (who once lifted her skirt and flashed an entire roomful of folks during an especially spirited performance of “Jingle Bells”).

This year’s roster of writers includes

Bob Pajich
Vanessa Vesch
Deesha Philyaw
Bob Walicki
Bart Solarczyk
Adam Matcho
Lori Jakiela
Matt Ussia
Meghan Tutolo
Andrea Laurion
Melanie Dione
Nathan Kukulski
Aaliyah Thomas

and more (maybe) TBA.

2/28 The Bridge Series Season 2 Premiere @ Brillobox

Posted in Events with tags , , , , , , on February 21, 2018 by 6GPress

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 28…

Mark your calendars -The Bridge Series returns Wednesday, February 28th @ 7pm at Brillobox featuring readings by Brentin Mock (cityLAB), Charlie Deitch (Pittsburgh City Paper), and Hattie Fletcher (Creative Nonfiction) along with a Q&A discussion led by Matt Ussia (We’re All Gonna Die podcast)!!! Our guest organization for the evening will be The Coalition for Racial Justice in Media.

Cover: $5

Charlie Deitch is the editor-in-chief at Pittsburgh City Paper. He began working as a professional journalist at his hometown newspaper in 1993. Since then, he has worked in newsrooms in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Wisconsin and Louisiana. A multi-award-winning journalist, Charlie has spent much of his career covering social-justice issues ranging from immigration and police brutality to education and politics. He has worked at City Paper since 2005 before being named editor in 2014.

Hattie Fletcher has been the managing editor of Creative Nonfiction magazine since 2005 and is the editor of the monthly mini-magazine True Story. Essays she has edited have been reprinted in the Best American Essays, the Best American Travel Writing, and the Best Women’s Travel Writing and have been awarded the Pushcart Prize. She has also worked on books covering such topics as end-of-life care, personalized medicine, education, mental health, and parenting. She was a coordinating editor for the Best Creative Nonfiction series, published by W.W. Norton, and is co-editor, with Lee Gutkind, of True Stories, Well Told … from the first 20 Years of Creative Nonfiction magazine (In Fact Books, 2014).

Brentin Mock is a staff writer for Citylab who writes about the role of justice and civil rights in the laws and policies that govern our lives, particularly in the urban environment. He has a long history of reporting on environmental justice and voting rights. He previous served as justice editor for the environmental news site Grist, and as a national correspondent for Colorlines.com <http://colorlines.com/>. He has also served as a staff writer or fellow for The Nation, The American Prospect magazine, Intelligence Report magazine, Pittsburgh City Paper, and The Lens, an investigative online news nonprofit in New Orleans, Louisiana. His work has also appeared in The Washington Post, The Root, Outside Magazine, Essence, The Grio, and Next City.

Matt Ussia is sentient organic matter, an academic, soft core punk, theremin player, photo-blogger, and podcaster who lives in Pittsburgh. He is currently finishing up a book about the negative impact of neoliberalism on higher education and the lives of young people. His podcast is called We’re All Gonna Die (And Other Fun Facts).

The Coalition for Racial Justice in Media was created to improve inclusivity and accurate, substantive representation in newsrooms by holding newsrooms accountable.

CRJM believes that all voices deserve an equal opportunity for access within Western Pennsylvania’s media ecosystem, notably within its legacy newspapers, television and radio broadcasts and digital operations. Through a combination of advocacy, policy-making, education, research and reporting, CRJM works toward the creation of such an inclusive media environment.

12/17 Viva Arletty! & Arkansas Ghoulash launch @ White Whale + Bah Humbug 4 @ Brillobox

Posted in Events, Interviews, New Releases with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 7, 2017 by 6GPress

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 17…

Two new books & two readings! The Ghost of Literature Present will pay a terrifying visit today!

6PM at White Whale in Bloomfield, welcome two writers from Arkansas to Pittsburgh (& welcome their books to your noodle by buying & reading them, too). Free readings & refreshments, possibly including actual goulash.

Scotty Lewis, a 2015 graduate of the Arkansas Writers MFA Program, is debuting his first book of poetry, Arkansas Ghoulash.

Here’s an interview w/ Scotty talking about the book, & here’s another one.

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.

Alan Olifson is an award-winning humor columnist, public radio commentator, comedian and regular host of Pittsburgh’s monthly Moth StorySLAMs. He created the acclaimed storytelling series WordPlay in his hometown of Los Angeles which he now produces in Pittsburgh along with Bricolage Production Company as part of their regular season. He’s hosted storytelling events for conferences, schools and, believe it or not, bridal showers. His book, Manchild: My Life Without Adult Supervision, is now out on Six Gallery Press. Alan relocated to Pittsburgh with his wife and two children years ago but never tires of hearing people complain about “traffic.”

Angele Ellis is the author of Arab on Radar (Six Gallery), Spared (A Main Street Rag Editors’ Choice Chapbook), Under the Kaufmann’s Clock: Fiction, Poems, and Photographs of Pittsburgh with photos by Rebecca Clever (Six Gallery), and co-author of the diversity workbook Dealing With Differences (Corwin). A 2008 recipient of an Individual Creative Artist fellowship in poetry from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, she was a prizewinner in the 2007 RAWI Competition for Creative Prose and first runner-up in the 2012 Grey Sparrow Flash Fiction Contest. Angele’s reviews, poetry, and fiction have appeared in nearly sixty publications and fourteen anthologies. She is a contributing editor to Al Jadid Magazine.

John Thomas Menesini is the author of The Last Great Glass Meat Million (Six Gallery Press, 2003), e pit ap h (Convergence, 2007), endo: Poems & Sketches 2007 – 2011 (Six Gallery Press, 2011), and Gloom Hearts & Opioids (Six Gallery Press, 2015). His poems have appeared in numerous publications in Ireland, Scotland, England, and the US, thus garnering dozens of fans across the globe.

Rick Claypool grew up in a small town in western Pennsylvania called Leechburg, but he currently lives in Pittsburgh. By day he works for Public Citizen, a nonprofit organization that fights corporate power. Leech Girl Lives (Spaceboy Books, 2017) is his first novel.

At 8PM, head over to Brillobox for Bah Humbug 4: Writers (Still) Wrestle the Holiday Spirit…

Tastier than a fruitcake, easier to assemble than a Fisher Price playhouse, for the FOURTH year in a row, we are bringing some of Pittsburgh’s finest writers together to entertain you with tales of their holiday work experiences.

$5 suggested donation, proceeds benefit the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank.

The readers will channel their inner-Sedaris, and offer up tales from their time as food service employees, retail workers, and other assorted time-card punchers during the bleak months of November and December. They will attempt to locate their hoilday spirit. Or THE holiday spirits (aka, Jim, Jack and maybe even Johnny).

Just like signing the group birthday card or buying overpriced crap from your co-worker’s kid’s school fundraiser, UGLY HOLIDAY SWEATERS STRONGLY ENCOURAGED.

Hosted by Jason Baldinger (who was once run over by a Black Friday crowd on a rampage for office supplies), and Stephanie Brea (who probably stole that art book she gave you for Christmas in 2001).

The Lineup:

Becky Corrigan
Angele Ellis
Rich Gegick
Lori Jakiela
Andrea Laurion
Deesha Philyaw
Meghan Tutolo
Matt Ussia
Bob Walicki

12/11 Bah Humbug: Writers (Still) Wrestle the Holiday Spirit @ Brillobox

Posted in Events with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 9, 2016 by 6GPress

8PM THIS SUNDAY…

Tastier than a fruitcake, easier to assemble than a Fisher Price playhouse, we are bringing some of Pittsburgh’s finest writers together to entertain you with tales of their holiday work experiences.

*** Suggested $5 donation, with all proceeds going to the ACLU.

These folks will channel their inner-Sedaris, offering up tales from their time as food service employees, retail workers, and other assorted time-card punchers during the bleak months of November and December. They will attempt to locate their hoilday spirit. Or THE holiday spirits (aka, Jim, Jack and maybe even Johnny).

Just like signing the group birthday card or buying overpriced crap from your co-worker’s kid’s school fundraiser, UGLY HOLIDAY SWEATERS STRONGLY ENCOURAGED.

We are now in our THIRD year, which means we have lasted longer than those cheap discount outlet socks your mom puts in your Xmas stocking.

Hosted by Jason Baldinger (who was once run over by a Black Friday stampede on a rampage for office supplies), and Stephanie Brea (who probably stole that art book she gave you for Christmas in 2001)

The Lineup:

Ben Gwin
Lori Jakiela
Meghan Tutolo
Bob Walicki
Andrea Laurion
Angele Ellis
Rich Gegick
Bob Pajich
Matt Ussia