1/14 Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One Before cyberlaunch w/ Getz, Grieshober, Claypool, & Isenberg

New year, new book: Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One Before is twelve tales of the weird, including a previously unpublished story and novelette, by the author of Lars Breaxface: Werewolf in Space.

It’s currently available on Amazon & Barnes & Noble but should be up on Bookshop.org & elsewhere shortly (ebook version too, if you’re into that). Booksellers & librarians can get it straight from Ingram.

Along w/ the book, there’s a reading Friday, January 14th hosted by White Whale Bookstore in Bloomfield. Yes, it’s a Zoom thing, which is not my preference (& I greatly look forward to doing some live events again this year!), but given that half the readers are in Rhode Island, it makes sense for this one. RSVP at Eventbrite & tune in at 7 PM ET on the 14th to hear Brandon & co. tell you stories you likely haven’t heard before.

Happy New Year & happy reading!

6/26 The Bridge Series @ Ace Hotel + POP Presents @ Black Cat Market

7 PM WEDNESDAY

For our June installment of The Bridge Series our guest organization will be Bethlehem Haven and our readers will include Jen Ashburn, Jill Khoury and Toi Derricotte.

$5 suggested donation

thanks to our board members Joan Bauer and Jenny Ashburn for putting this event together.

Bio details below:

Jen Ashburn is the author of The Light on the Wall (Main Street Rag, 2016) and has work published in numerous venues, including The MacGufffin, Whiskey Island and 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, and lives in Pittsburgh.

Jill Khoury writes on gender, disability, and embodied identity. She holds an MFA from The Ohio State University and edits Rogue Agent, a journal that features poetry and art of the body. She has written two chapbooks—Borrowed Bodies (Pudding House, 2009) and Chance Operations (Paper Nautilus, 2016). Her debut full-length collection, Suites for the Modern Dancer, was released in 2016 from Sundress Publications. Find her at jillkhoury.com.

Toi Derricotte is the author of five previous collections of poetry, most recently, The Undertaker’s Daughter (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011), described by Natasha Trethewey as “a courageous act of healing and redemption.” An earlier collection of poems, Tender, won the 1998 Paterson Poetry Prize; and her literary memoir, The Black Notebooks (W.W. Norton), received the 1998 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Non-Fiction and was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. She is the recipient of two Pushcart Prizes and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, among other honors. With Cornelius Eady, she co-founded Cave Canem Foundation, the nation’s premier “home for Black poetry.” Professor Emerita at the University of Pittsburgh, she serves on the Academy of American Poets’ Board of Chancellors. Her sixth collection, ‘I’: New and Selected Poems, is forthcoming from University of Pittsburgh Press in 2019.

ABOUT OUR GUEST ORGANIZATION:
Bethlehem Haven provides shelter and supportive services to thousands of homeless women. A continuum of care consists of a range of housing and supportive services designed to enable each woman to identify her needs, develop a plan of action, and achieve a successful outcome.
Bethlehem Haven believes that a secure home is an essential foundation for women to achieve stable mental and physical health, as well as personal empowerment. Every woman who lives at Bethlehem Haven is linked to supportive services, specially designed for their individual needs. Bethlehem Haven helps clients identify an action plan to achieve self-sufficiency and permanent housing.
Housing Programs and Supportive Services
EMERGENCY SHELTER provides temporary housing for homeless women.
SAFE AT HOME offers monetary and basic assistance to women who are homeless, or at immediate risk of homelessness, for the first time in their lives. Priority is given to women over 50 years old.
HAVEN HOMES provides supportive permanent housing for women who are mentally ill.
RAPID RE-HOUSING provides housing identification, move in assistance, short-term rental assistance that is gradually reduced as the tenant assumes a larger share of the payment, case management and aftercare support.
MEDICAL RESPITE CARE is acute and post-acute medical care for patients experiencing homelessness or patients who are unstably housed who are too ill or frail from a physical illness or injury while living in a shelter or on the street, but are not sic enough to be in a hospital.
MENTAL HEALTH AND WELLNESS CLINIC provides medical, mental health, podiatry, and dental care for homeless women and men without health insurance
UPTOWN LEGAL CLINIC provides free legal counseling for civil cases in such areas as family law, landlord-tenant, public benefits, consumer protection, wills, power of attorney and bankruptcy.
For the last 36 years, Bethlehem Haven has provided nearly 13,000 nights of shelter, every night, and the need continues to grow. Each year, the Haven provides nearly 60,000 meals; sees around 600 men and women in the health and wellness clinic; fills countless physical and emotional needs for our residents and day program attendees; and provides employment training for more than 100 men and women in the community.

ALSO 7 PM WEDNESDAY

Join Pretty Owl Poetry at The Black Cat Market for a night of poetry + fiction + cats! Wheeler Light will be promoting their book Hometown Onomastics! Local readers Laura Brun, Malcolm Friend, and Taylor Grieshober will be reading things, too!

Laura Brun is a poet from small-town Kentucky who lives and writes in Pittsburgh. She currently works at the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh and reads submissions for IDK Magazine. Her work is most recently forthcoming in Cosmonauts Avenue and the Pittsburgh Poetry Review. You can find more of her work at lauranbrun.blogspot.com and can follow her on insta @laurarrrrun

Malcolm Friend is a poet originally from the Rainier Beach neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. He received his BA from Vanderbilt University, and his MFA from the University of Pittsburgh. He is the author of the chapbook mxd kd mixtape (Glass Poetry, 2017) and the full length collection Our Bruises Kept Singing Purple (Inlandia Books, 2018), selected by Cynthia Arrieu-King as winner of the 2017 Hillary Gravendyk Prize. Together with JR Mahung, he is a member of Black Plantains, an Afrocarribean poetry collective.

Taylor Grieshober earned her MFA in Fiction from Oregon State University in 2018. She has recently been shortlisted for the Master’s Review Emerging Writer’s Prize, guest judged by Aimee Bender and her work has appeared in Hobart and Vol. 1 Brooklyn, among others. Her debut story collection, “Off Days,” is forthcoming from Low Ghost Press on June 8th.

Wheeler Light lives in Washington, DC. He received his BA in creative writing from Naropa University in Boulder, CO, where he co-founded What Are Birds? Journal. He is the 2018 Denver Mercury Cafe Poetry Slam champion and a recipient of the IthacaLit Difficult Fruit Poetry Prize. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in December Magazine, Gravel Mag, Hobart, and New Delta Review, among others. He is the author of Blue Means Snow (Bottlecap Press 2018) and Hometown Onomastics (Pitymilk Press 2019).

6/8 Off Days by Taylor Grieshober launch party @ The Printing Press

7:30 PM SATURDAY, JUNE 8, Taylor sez,

You’re invited to the PARTY OF THE YEAR (or at least the party of the summer)!

https://www.facebook.com/events/412806979563721/

I’m launching my debut fiction collection, OFF DAYS (Low Ghost Press), out into the world, in the company of my favorite writers and people in Pittsburgh, and I couldn’t be more excited! Please join me in a night of celebration and revelry! If you know me and my friends, you know we throw one hell of a house party. You do not want to miss this.

Readings by:

Kelly Lorraine ANDREWS
Scott SILSBE
Ben GWIN
Sam MITCHELL
and yours truly.

Delicious eats by MADALYN HOCHENDONER and CAITLIN CRAWFORD!
Specialty craft cocktails by CELINE MARIE until they’re gone, so be sure to BYOB.

DJ after party with DJ ERIN OH of YASS Queen!

Presented by Belleville Arts Collective, hosted by Ashley Wellman of The Printing Press.

*Free and open to the public.*

5/10 Glass City Reading Series @ You Are Here 406

7PM FRIDAY…

Our spring series continues with poetry readings organized by Pittsburgh area poet Scott Silsbe. Join us each month at 7:00 pm for readings by selected local poets, a little bit of music and a lot of relaxed comradery.. Featured readers: Taylor Grieshober, Ben Gwin & Sam Mitchell. Acoustic music provided! Donations welcome. BYOB.

9/27 Grieshober, Barnett, Solarczyk, & Silsbe @ White Whale

7PM THURSDAY…

4 locals reading poems & prose.

Taylor has a collection of great short stories called Off Days coming soon from Low Ghost Press & one up at Hobart called “Wrong and Dangerous” you can read right now. Cameron, Bart, & Scott will bring only the finest poems & also beer, if history is any guide. Please listen to the poems & prose responsibly.

 

12/10 Grieshober, Andrews, Silsbe, & Gwin @ Nine Stories

SUNDAY…

Welcome a visiting Taylor Grieshober back to town as she reads some short fiction alongside her literary pals Kelly, Scott, & Ben. FREE! Note: 4pm matinee reading!

7/15 The Trouble With Poets @ Filmmakers; 7/16 With a Deepening Presence Launch Party @ Irma Freeman Center + BE Quarterly Zine Release & Artist Round-Up @ Percolate

THIS WEEKEND…

you have plenty of poetry options, including two chances to catch the great Don Wentworth & grab a copy of his new book With a Deepening Presence. On Friday,

Tom Weber’s film “The Trouble With Poets” comes to Pittsburgh Documentary Salon. Tom is an Erie-based filmmaker and former faculty member at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh. Featuring live performances by poets Bigg Wash, Kim Noyes, Don Wentworth and Bob Ziller. Program starts at 7 pm sharp and admission is FREE (please bring a snack or bottle of wine to share).

Then,

This Saturday, July 16th, at the Irma Freeman Center for Imagination, from 7:30 to 9:30, is the launch of With a Deepening Presence. Books will be available for purchase and signing. Presence will be sold at the special reading price of $8.

Reading will be Kristofer Collins, Christine Starkey, Che Elias, Scott Pyle, Rosaly Roffman, Bart Solarczyk, Bob Ziller and myself [the great Don Wentworth]. Food and drinks (water, beer) will be provided. 

Don says,

The Filmmakers reading will be a general overview of my work. The launch reading will focus on the new book and a raft of all new poems never performed before. So, two nights, two very different readings.

UPDATE: Short List rectangle!

Saturday afternoon, more troublesome poets, including master of mischief Scott Silsbe, will perform at this BE Quarterly event. Via Joan Bauer & Kelly Andrews…

BE Quarterly Zine Release and Artist Round-Up

featuring Gopalakrishnan, Grieshober, McDermott, Silsbe, Tutolo & Williams!

Percolate Art Gallery

317 S. Trenton, Pittsburgh, PA 15221

Dream City Art Walk

Saturday, July 16, 2016

1:30-4:00PM

In celebration of BE Quarterly’s recent release of “Issue 3… Finally!”, we’ll be rounding up Wilkinsburg-local contributors from the zine’s first three issues to perform at Percolate Art Gallery from 1:30 to 4pm as part of Wilkinsburg’s annual Dream City Art Walk on Saturday, July 16th! Bobbi Williams’ Dream Theater will perform at 1:30, and the readers’ performances will start a bit after 2:00.

Kamala Gopalakrishnan is a queer poet who has called this city her home since 2013. In April of this year, she received her MFA in Poetry from the University of Pittsburgh, where for three years she studied under acclaimed poets Yona Harvey, Terrance Hayes, and Dawn Lundy Martin, among others. She is among the poetry finalists for Best of the Net 2015. This reading will feature poems from her first collection, Public Fruit, in which she explores themes of vulnerability, assimilation, and hindu mythology.

Taylor Grieshober writes from her lovely home in Wilkinsburg. Her latest story can be found in Burrow Press Review.

Sharon Fagan McDermott is a poet and musician who teaches literature at a private high school in Pittsburgh. She has published three chapbooks, including Alley Scatting (Parallel Press, University of Wisconsin) and Bitter Acoustic, winner of the 2011 Jacar Press chapbook competition, chosen by poet Betty Adcock. Fagan McDermott was a 2001 recipient of a Pittsburgh artist award and a 2002 love” published by Jacar Press (NC).recipient of a PA Council on the Arts award. In 2005, she was awarded the Bellet Excellence in Teaching in the Arts and Science award from the University of Pittsburgh. Her work has been published in many anthologies and literary journals including Prairie Schooner, Poet Lore, and Eclectica Magazine (online.)

Scott Silsbe was born in Detroit and now lives in Pittsburgh. His poems and prose have appeared in numerous periodicals including Nerve Cowboy, Chiron Review and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. He is the author of two poetry collections: Unattended Fire and The River Underneath the City. He was also a finalist for the Cultural Weekly’s 2014 Jack Grapes Poetry Prize.

Meghan Tutolo is an artist with some writing degrees and two cats with smooshy faces. She romances olives and pasta for a living. Otherwise, she can be found sleepless, painting, writing, doodling, grading, playing music (horribly), and coffee drinking. Meghan’s publications include everything from product labels to ads to poems. Her first chapbook Little As Living (2014) was published by Dancing Girl Press.

Bobbi Williams is an interdisciplinary artist, educator, activist and visionary. Williams holds a Master’s degree in Fine Arts in Playwriting and Acting from Carnegie Mellon University and Moscow Art Theater School. Williams has received a BFA in directing from Point Park College and has attended the National Theater Institute and the Academy of Natural Healing NYC. Ms. Williams is an international artist, healer, shaman and performer. Some of her directing work has taken her to the United Nations, the Apollo Theater and the Joseph Papp Public Theater, to name a few. On July 16, she will be leading “Improvisation Lab Presents: Dream Theater,” a fun session of astral travel as she and her talented students build solidarity and connection by exploring dreams through improv.

BE Quarterly is a hand-bound, multi-genre periodical arts and literature zine that gathers the work of talented Pittsburgh artists and is run out of Biddle’s Escape Coffee Shop in Wilkinsburg, PA.

If you still like poetry after all that, you may be eligible to apply for an unpaid internship here at Six Gallery. Beef up your resume &/or criminal record! The exciting world of small press publishing awaits…

1/30 Staghorn Poetry Series feat. Taylor Grieshober & Angele Ellis + Pittsburgh Poetry Roadshow feat. Scott Silsbe, Kris Collins, Jason Baldinger, Meghan Tutolo, Jason Irwin, & Dan Shapiro @ EEBX

THIS SATURDAY…

Let’s start this year off with a bang! Staghorn Poetry Series presents a dynamite reading with Taylor Grieshober and Angele Ellis at 4pm on Saturday, January 30th at the cozy Staghorn Garden Cafe (517 Greenfield ave. 15207).

Bios:
Taylor Grieshober is co-director of the New Yinzer Presents as well as a founding member of Belleville, a Wilkinsburg art collective. Her fiction has most recently appeared in Vol. 1 Brooklyn and her book reviews can be found at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Taye Diggs began following her on Twitter last summer and it made her year, until she discovered that Taye Diggs is indiscriminate and follows a million other regular people just like her. Nevertheless, she still really wants to see Hedwig and the Angry Inch on Broadway.

Angele Ellis believes that the Staghorn Poetry Series is a bridge of words with many connections to Greenfield. Author of Arab on Radar (Six Gallery Press)—whose poems won her a fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts—and Spared (A Main Street Rag Editors’ Choice Chapbook), her poems, fiction, and reviews have appeared in over fifty publications and ten anthologies. She also is a contributing editor to Al Jadid Magazine.

& THEN AT 7…

Come on out all ye yinzers and friends to hear 6 fine local poets hold forth: Scott Silsbe, Kris Collins, Jason Baldinger, Meghan Tutolo, Jason Irwin and Dan Shapiro will be reading their work from PPR as well as from their own books.

Copies of PPR Issue One and 2016 subscriptions will be available, as well as books by the individual readers. Beer, wine, and light snacks will be available.

SCOTT SILSBE was born in Detroit. He now lives in Pittsburgh where he sells books, writes, and makes music. His poems have appeared in numerous print and web periodicals including
Chiron Review, Nerve Cowboy, The Chariton Review, Third Coast, and the Cultural Weekly. He is the author of two poetry collections: Unattended Fire (Six Gallery Press, 2012) and The River Underneath the City (Low Ghost Press, 2013).

KRISTOFER COLLINS is the Books Editor at Pittsburgh Magazine. He runs Low Ghost Press. He also owns Desolation Row Records and manages Caliban Bookshop in Oakland. His most recent poetry collection is Local Conditions (CSB 2015).

JASON BALDINGER has spent a life in odd jobs, if only poetry was the strangest of them he’d have far less to talk about. Somewhere in time he has traveled the country and wrote a few books, the latest of which The Lower 48 (Six Gallery Press) and the chapbook The Studs Terkel Blues (Night Ballet Press), as well as the anthologies Lipsmack! (Night Ballet Press) and Good Noise (Thrasher Press) and Free Monster Poems About Monsters (Hyacinth Girl Press), are all available now. A short litany of publishing credits include: The New Yinzer, Shatter Wig Press, Blast Furnace, B.E. Quarterly and Fuck Art, Let’s Dance, WISH Publications, Green Panda Press and Lilliput Review. You can also hear audio of some poems on the bandcamp website by just typing in his name.

When MEGHAN TUTOLO isn’t writing romance about Italian foods or grading essays, she can be found doodling galaxies, playing her ukulele (horribly) or spilling her guts into Moleskines. Meghan earned her M.F.A. in Poetry from Chatham University, her B.A. in English Writing from the University of Pittsburgh and OCD, ADHD, etc. from genetics, probably. Her work has appeared in journals such as Nerve Cowboy, Chiron Review, The Pittsburgh Post Gazette, Arsenic Lobster and Main Street Rag. Her first chapbook of poems, Little As Living, was published in September 2014.

JASON IRWIN is the author of Watering the Dead (Pavement Saw Press, 2008), winner of the Transcontinental Poetry Award, and the chapbooks Where You Are (Night Ballet Press, 2014), & Some Days It’s A Love Story (Slipstream Press, 2005). He has also had work published in Poetry East, Sycamore Review, Confrontation, and Poetry Ireland Review, among others. His poem “Main Street” was nominated for a Pushcart. He grew up in Dunkirk, NY, and now lives in Pittsburgh. www.jasonirwin.blogspot.com

DANIEL M. SHAPIRO is a special education teacher who lives in Pittsburgh. His poems have appeared in Gargoyle, Chiron Review, RHINO, Menacing Hedge, Word Riot, and elsewhere. His book of celebrity-oriented poems, How the Potato Chip Was Invented, was published by sunnyoutside press on the last day of 2013.

7/10 Girls Get Lit @ Bayardstown Social Club

THIS MONDAY…

Bands aren’t the only folks who enjoy a good stage and this ain’t no sausage party. Join us at Bayardstown Social Club, where a few of Pittsburgh’s finest female literati will read poems and short fiction outdoors by the glow of patio lights and a campfire. We will have beer from Rock Bottom – Pittsburgh and we will end the night with a s’mores party, but we are encouraging additional potluck contributions. This will be a feast – both gastronomic and auditory.

Rain or shine. 7 pm. Free + open to the public

(if you ever wanted to check out Bayardstown without a membership, this is your chance)

Bringing together women from some of the various factions of the Pittsburgh lit scene, we have the following readers:

Angele Ellis watched Buddhist monks dance under a theatre marquee featuring her haiku, after winning Pittsburgh Filmmakers’ G-20 Haiku Contest. Her poetry, fiction (including excerpts of novels in progress), and reviews have appeared in fifty publications and ten anthologies. She is author of Arab on Radar (Six Gallery Press), whose poems won her an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and Spared (A Main Street Rag Editors’ Choice Chapbook). She lives in Friendship, both a Pittsburgh neighborhood and a state of mind.

Taylor Grieshober lives in Wilkinsburg, where she writes, bakes tarts, and speaks softly to her cats. She also directs the low-rent, high-caliber reading series The New Yinzer Presents. Recently, Taye Diggs began following her on Twitter and it’s probably one of the best things that will ever happen to her. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and the 2015 Best of the Net anthology. Follow her @harshcharms.

Deena November received her MFA in Creative Writing, Poetry from Carlow University. In 2005, she co-edited the anthology I JUST HOPE IT’S LETHAL: Poems of Sadness, Madness, and Joy for Houghton Mifflin. Her poems have also appeared in Nerve Cowboy, Chiron Review, Voices in the Attic, and Keyhole Magazine among other publications. In 2012, Hyacinth Girl Press published her first chapbook titled, Dick Wad. She has taught Poetry and Creative Writing at Seton Hill University and Women’s Studies and Literature at Carlow University. Currently she teaches at Robert Morris University. She recently created Staghorn Poetry Series readings and workshops. Deena lives in Pittsburgh and can often be spotted smelling the flowers with her babies at Phipps Conservatory.

Jess Simms earned her MFA from Chatham University. Her fiction has been published in Weave Magazine, and Ampersand Review, among others, and she is a founding member of the Haven.

Christine Stroud was raised in North Carolina, but currently lives in Pittsburgh, PA. In March 2014 her chapbook The Buried Return was released by Finishing Line Press. She works as the Senior Editor of Autumn House Press.

Hosted by Stephanie Brea, whose poems have been published in some places (just like everyone else). Thanks to her day job, she knows which of the -cores (hardcore, math core, grindcore et al.) have a hyphen. She is bad at math, but just calculated that she has been hosting or co-hosting literary events for 10+ years. She prefers the teepee method of building a fire to the log cabin.

4/23 Bukowski Night @ Brillobox

TOMORROW…

10/10 Imagination Motel & All That Yellow by Chuck Kinder launch party @ Modern Formations

FRIDAY, October 10th…

In the unlikely event the poems aren’t your bag, you will at least get some good popcorn & a condom. What other poetry reading can you say that about?