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).
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 