7 PM FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 20…
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 ET on 11/20.
Tune in for a poetry reading with local (or formerly local but still local in our hearts) poets Lauren Russell, Emily Mohn-Slate, Sharon Fagan McDermott, and Bob Walicki!
Copies of Emily’s book The Falls are available on our main website! Check out our ready-to-ship website, which 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.
Other books by these authors are available on our Bookshop.org list for recent and upcoming events. You can also 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.)
Lauren Russell’s first full-length book, What’s Hanging on the Hush, came out from Ahsahta Press in 2017. Her second book, Descent, is a winner of the 2019 Tarpaulin Sky Book Awards and came out from Tarpaulin Sky Press in June, 2020.
Emily Mohn-Slate is the author of The Falls, winner of the 2019 New American Poetry Prize (New American Press, 2020) and Feed, winner of the 2018 Keystone Chapbook Prize (Seven Kitchens Press).
Sharon Fagan McDermott is a poet, musician, and a teacher of literature at a private school in Pittsburgh, PA. Her most recent poetry collection, Life Without Furniture, was published by Jacar Press in 2018.
Robert Walicki 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. His first full length collection of poems, Black Angels, (Six Gallery Press, 2019).
Sharon Fagan McDermott is a poet, musician, and a teacher of literature at a private high school in Pittsburgh. She has published three chapbook collections, most recently, Bitter Acoustic, winner of the 2011 Jacar Press Chapbook competition. McDermott has been a recipient of both a Pittsburgh Foundation Award and a PA Council on the Arts grant. Her poems have been published in a wide range of journals and anthologies, including Prairie Schooner, Poet Lore, Seneca Review, and the anthology Common Wealth: Poets on Pennsylvania. Her book Life Without Furniture (Jacar Press NC) is forthcoming in May 2018.
Lori Jakiela is the author of five books, most recently the memoir BELIEF IS ITS OWN KIND OF TRUTH, MAYBE (Atticus Books), which received the William Saroyan Prize for International Writing from Stanford University, and PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A BINGO WORKER (Bottom Dog Press), a collection of essays about work and the writing life. Her work has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, The Rumpus, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, and more. She received the City of Asylum/Pittsburgh Prize, a Golden Quill Award from the Press Club of Western Pennsylvania, fellowships to the Breadloaf and Bennington writers conferences, and more. She directs the undergraduate Creative and Professional Writing Program at Pitt-Greensburg, where she is a professor of English. She teaches community workshops at The Yoga Deck in her hometown, Trafford, PA, and founded and co-directs Veterans Write, a program that offers free writing workshops to veterans and those who love them. Her sixth book — HOW DO YOU LIKE IT NOW, GENTLEMEN? — is a poetry collection forthcoming from Low Ghost Press in 2019. She lives in Trafford, PA with her husband/author Dave Newman and their children. Her author website is http://lorijakiela.net. Chuck Kinder taught her to box and be kind, not necessarily in that order. She is forever grateful to him.
Scott Silsbe was born in Detroit and now lives in Pittsburgh. His poems and prose have appeared in a number of fine periodicals including Kitchen Sink, Third Coast, The Chariton Review, Nerve Cowboy, Words Dance, and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Six Gallery Press published his first full-length collection of poems Unattended Fire in 2012 and Low Ghost Press published The River Underneath the City in 2013.
Michael Simms has been active in politics and poetry for over 40 years as a writer, teacher, editor, and community activist. He’s the founder and editor of Vox Populi, an online “gazette of the left” and he’s 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 in the historic Mount Washington neighborhood overlooking Pittsburgh.
Micki Myers is the author of two books of poetry, Trigger Finger, and It’s Probably Nothing…, and her work has appeared widely in print and online. She is the author of the blog Yuckylicious and is currently co-writing and editing a series of children’s books that incorporate virtual reality. Micki teaches English and lives in Squirrel Hill.
Toi Derricotte has published five books of poetry, the most recent of which is The Undertaker’s Daughter. Her literary memoir, The Black Notebooks, received the Anisfield-Wolf Award and was one of The New York Times Notable Books of the Year. She is a recipient of the Paterson Poetry Prize for Sustained Literary Achievement and the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry and two Pushcart Prizes, as well as fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Guggenheim Foundation. With Cornelius Eady, she co-founded Cave Canem in 1996. She has served on the Academy of American Poets’ Board of Chancellors.
Six Gallery Press 