Why not? This Saturday, May 14, from 10 AM to 5 PM is this book fest in East Liberty. Six Gallery authors will be there, reading from their works, which will also be available at the book fair table we’ll most likely be sharing w/ pals from After Happy Hour.
11:45 AM at the Poetry Tent in Bakery Square (LOL), catch Angele Ellis (Arab on Radar, Under the Kaufmann’s Clock) & Don Wentworth (Past All Traps, Yield to the Willow, With a Deepening Presence).
Then, at 1:00 PM in the East Liberty Presbyterian Church, catch Paola Corso (Vertical Bridges), sharing the stage (or altar) w/ Sharon Dilworth. Register on Eventbrite to make sure you get a seat for this one.
There are all sorts of other events, readings, & whatnot throughout the day, including a puppet show at 10 AM & a jazz set by the excellent Deanna Witkowski Trio at 5 PM (also prob. a good idea to register).
So drop by if you’re not at Pittonkatonk or doing something else!
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.
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.
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.
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.
Appreciate the city steps? Then you might also appreciate Paola Corso‘s new book.
In Vertical Bridges: Poems and Photographs of City Steps, Paola Corso celebrates public stairways in her native Pittsburgh and around the world. Inspired by her Sicilian grandfather, a stonemason who built concrete steps, and her Calabrian grandfather and father, steelworkers who once climbed them to the mill, Corso is a storyteller. She shares memories of her family, the history behind Pittsburgh having more public staircases than any other city in the country, and curiosities about some of the world’s most famous steps. Vertical Bridges includes photos by the author along with archival photos from the University of Pittsburgh Library’s Pittsburgh City Photographer Collection.
Here’s what some other discerning step appreciators had to say about it:
“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
So far it’s available online at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, bookshop.org, & probably elsewhere. Booksellers can get it direct from Ingram.
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.
Here are some recent interviews Paola did with other authors about their books, over at CavanKerry Press
Park Slope Windsor Terrace Artists Collective will hold its annual OPEN STUDIO TOUR on Friday-Sunday, November 6-8, 14-15, and 21-22, 2020 at Ossam Gallery and Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Gallery in Brooklyn. Paola will display her COLOR COLLAGES of city steps.
Paola will be a featured reader for the Italian American Writers Association via Zoom on Saturday, March 27, 2021. There will be an Open Mic from 6-7 p.m. and Featured Readers 7-8 p.m. More details to come.
The Carnegie Public Library-Oakmont Branch will exhibit Paola’s PHOTOGRAPHS of city steps and color collages the month of July 2021 along with a poetry reading and book signing. More details to come.
Stay tuned for reviews & more (online, for the foreseeable future) events & updates, including a reading hosted by Pittsburgh’s White Whale Bookstore in February.
3:30 PM Friday, April 3 if you do find your voice in creative nonfiction, it won’t be because of this event. Paola says it’s rescheduled for the fall.
Finding Your Voice in Creative Nonfiction • Paola Corso
When writing personal essays, you may know the facts and the story you want to tell, yet these alone may not create compelling prose for your reader. Who tells the story and how is what gives your writing personality and style to make your work distinctly your own. In this workshop, we’ll look at examples of notable literary voices and techniques to develop a voice and style that has your name on it!
Paola Corso is the author of poetry and fiction books set in her native Pittsburgh where her Italian immigrant family found work in the steel mills. Most recent are The Laundress Catches Her Breath, winner of the Tillie Olsen Award in Creative Writing, Once I Was Told the Air Was Not Breathing, and her forthcoming collection Vertical Bridges: Poems, Essays, and Photographs of City Steps. Her nonfiction has appeared in venues such as The New York Times,Women’s Review of Books, and U.S. Catholic. Corso is co-founder and resident artist for Steppin Stanzas, a grant-awarded poetry and art project celebrating Pittsburgh city stairs.
Tuesday June 18 – Save the Planet! A reading w/ Paola Corso, Barbara Edelman, Mike Schneider, Michael Simms, Sheila Squillante & Arlene Weiner.
Paola Corso’s books are set in the Pittsburgh area where her Southern Italian immigrant family found work in the steel mill. A New York Foundation for the Arts Poetry Fellow and Sherwood Anderson Fiction Award Winner, she is the author of Catina’s Haircut: A Novel in Stories on Library Journal’s notable list of first novels in Fall 2010, Giovanna’s 86 Circles And Other Stories, a John Gardner Fiction Book Award Finalist, a book of poems, Death by Renaissance, and newly released poetry collections, The Laundress Catches Her Breath, winner of the Tillie Olsen Award for Creative Writing, and Once I Was Told the Air Was Not for Breathing about Pittsburgh steelworkers and garment workers in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. She also co-edited Politics of Water: A Confluence of Women’s Voices with Dr. Nandita Ghosh. She is currently poetry editor at The Thomas Merton Center for Peace and Social Justice and a book columnist for Group Against Smog and Pollution
Barbara Edelman’s first full length poetry collection, Dream of the Gone-From City, came out from Carnegie Mellon University Press in February, 2017. She’s the author of two poetry chapbooks, Exposure, Finishing Line Press, 2014 and A Girl in Water, Parallel Press, 2002 and has received a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant in poetry. She’s a lecturer in English at the University of Pittsburgh , where she coordinates the Writers’ Café.
Mike Schneider has published poems in many literary journals, including New Ohio Review, Notre Dame Review and Poetry. He received the 2012 Editors Award in Poetry from The Florida Review, and won the 2016 Robert Phillips Prize from Texas Review Press, which in 2017 published his chapbook, How Many Faces Do You Have?
Michael Simms, the founder and editor of Vox Populi, has been active in politics and poetry for over 40 years as a writer, teacher, editor, and community activist. He is the founder of Autumn House Press, a nonprofit publisher of books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. He’s also the author of four collections of poetry and a college textbook about poetry — and the lead editor of over 100 published books. Simms has an MFA from the University of Iowa and a Certificate in Plant-based Nutrition from Cornell University . He lives with his wife, Eva, and their two children in the historic Mount Washington neighborhood overlooking the city of Pittsburgh .
Sheila Squillante is the author of the poetry collection, Beautiful Nerve (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2016), and three chapbooks of poetry: In This Dream of My Father (Seven Kitchens, 2014), Women Who Pawn Their Jewelry (Finishing Line, 2012) and A Woman Traces the Shoreline (Dancing Girl, 2011). She is also co-author, along with Sandra L. Faulkner, of the writing craft book, Writing the Personal: Getting Your Stories Onto the Page (Sense Publishers, 2015). Recent work has appeared or will appear in places like Copper Nickel, North Dakota Quarterly, Indiana Review, Waxwing, Menacing Hedge andRiver Teeth. She teaches in the MFA program in creative writing at Chatham University , where she edits The Fourth River, a journal of nature and place-based writing. From her dining room table, she edits the blog at Barrelhouse. She lives in Pittsburgh , PA , with her husband, Paul Bilger, a philosopher and experimental photographer, and their children.
Friendship poet ANGELE ELLIS and Pittsburgh-born poet PAOLA CORSO will perform in an afternoon reading in a private home to benefit Friendship Community Group. This event will feature a raffle, refreshments, and sale items (books, bookmarks, poem magnets).
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).
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:
Paola Corso is the author of poetry and fiction books set in her native Pittsburgh where her Italian immigrant family worked in the steel mills. Corso’s latest are The Laundress Catches Her Breath, winner of the Tillie Olsen Award in Creative Writing and Once I Was Told the Air Was Not for Breathing featuring steel and garment workers. Writing honors include a New York Foundation for the Arts poetry fellowship, Sherwood Anderson Fiction Award, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant, and inclusion on Pennsylvania Center for the Book’s Literary Map. She is co-founder and resident artist for Steppin Stanzas, a performing arts project celebrating Pittsburgh city steps. paolacorso.com.
As a Navy brat, Robert Yune moved 11 times by the time he turned 18. In 2012, he was a finalist for the Flannery O’Connor Award and was one of five finalists for the Prairie Schooner Book Prize. His fiction has appeared in the Green Mountains Review, the Kenyon Review, and Los Angeles Review, among others.
In the summer of 2012, he worked as a stand-in for George Takei and has worked as an extra in movies such as The Dark Knight Rises, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, and Father and Daughters.
Currently, he teaches at DePauw University, located in beautiful Greencastle, Indiana. His novel Eighty Days of Sunlight was nominated for the 2017 International DUBLIN Literary Award; other nominees included Viet Thanh Nguyen, Margaret Atwood, and Salman Rushdie.
Nancy Krygowski’s first book of poems, Velocity, won the Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize from the University of Pittsburgh Press. She is a recipient of a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Individual Artist Fellowship, a Pittsburgh Foundation Grant, and several residencies. Krygowski teaches poetry workshops in Carlow University’s Madwomen in the Attic program in addition to her work as an adult ESL instructor at Greater Pittsburgh Literacy Council.
Our guest organization for the evening is the Greater Pittsburgh Literacy Council.
Greater Pittsburgh Literacy Council’s mission is better lives through learning. Our primary focus is helping adults acquire the language and literacy skills needed to be successful neighbors, parents and workers. We provide both classroom instruction and one-on-one tutoring in reading, English, math, English as a second language, workplace skills and computers. We also help students to prepare for the high school equivalency exams. Volunteer tutors and the generosity of local businesses and individuals ensure that instruction is available free of charge to people in need. GPLC students go on to get jobs, move off the welfare rolls, attend college, complete job training and earn promotions. They give back to our community and instill the importance of education in their children. For more information, call 412-393-7600 or visit www.gplc.org.
…and she will show you everything Pittsburgh—from Schenley Park Golf Course at midnight and an artists’ colony in Oakland to sunflowers growing in sandy Garfield dirt, the neon sign of a Carrick tanning salon, and Grandma Berta’s Polish Natrona—city landmarks and personal landscapes where love is lost and lives implode like Three Rivers Stadium. In Ellis’s book of poetry and prose, with evocative photographs by Rebecca Clever, is a beloved timepiece and a poet’s sure hand that strikes memory.
—Paola Corso, The Laundress Catches Her BreathandCatina’s Haircut: A Novel in Stories
This nifty new collab is coming in early 2017. Here’s the cover
& this poem from the Winter section
Polder I wake with snow in my mouth and a word: polder. All this time, I’ve been holding back the dike with one finger. And still the sea keeps sending seeded storm clouds to flood my land. In my dream, I was under the covers with you. We were living in an artists’ colony in Oakland summer. I was fitting the pieces together, a collage— Audubon’s bird portfolio—but you kept putting your hands under my shirt and saying, Come to bed.
It seemed as real as anything—the train whistle hooting through stone-cold pillows, the mantle of white fur I sweep from my sill, the sheeted illusion of love.
& another blurb.
Angele’s writing pulls me back to Pittsburgh and its nesting boxes of past-in-present. Organized by seasons, her poems and flash fiction hold the paradoxes of stillness against the constant evaporation of the present moment. Intimate texts are laced with the kind of detail that make fiction ring true. Ellis knows too how omission makes powerful poems of suicide, of violence and its consequences, of sex in the ‘ordinary life’. Side doors of dream unexpectedly slip open in Under the Kaufmann’s Clock. Let this work haunt you!
Six Gallery Press 