6/14 Pittsburgh in Poems and Pictures: Clever, Ellis, Walicki @ Coffee Buddha

7PM  THURSDAY…

Join Rebecca, Angele, & Bob for an evening of poetry that goes to the heart of the Pittsburgh experience–along with an exhibit of Rebecca’s striking photographic prints & an Open Mic for local poets! Coffee Buddha is one of the coolest venues in da Burgh. Both books & photos will be on sale during the event, & will be available afterward at Coffee Buddha.
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Over the past two decades, REBECCA CLEVER has served as a reporter, newspaper editor, columnist, promotional and technical writer, book editor/designer, and photographer. Her poetry, nonfiction, interviews and pictures have been published in various newspapers, literary journals, books and anthologies. She is a past recipient of the Laurie Mansell Reich poetry award, co-sponsored by the Academy of American Poets and Chatham University; she was the recipient of a residency fellowship at the Vermont Studio Center, and she has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and the AWP Intro Journals Project. Rebecca received her MFA in Creative Writing from Chatham in 2011, where she was a finalist for best thesis. She resides in the North Hills with her partner, Theresa, their children, and nine pets.

ANGELE ELLIS’s most recent book, Under the Kaufmann’s Clock: Fiction, Poems, and Photographs of Pittsburgh, with photos by Rebecca Clever (Six Gallery Press), is a hybrid valentine to her adopted city—where her winning haiku appeared on the Harris Theater marquee after Pittsburgh Filmmakers’ G-20 Haiku Contest. A longtime editor and community activist, she also is author of Spared (A Main Street Rag Editors’ Choice Chapbook) and Arab on Radar (Six Gallery), whose poems won her a fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Angele is a contributing editor to Al Jadid Magazine; her poetry, fiction, and reviews have appeared in 75 journals and anthologies.

ROBERT WALICKI’s work has appeared in over 50 journals, including Pittsburgh City Paper, Fourth River, Stone Highway 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 forthcoming from Six Gallery Press.

 

3/23 & 4/13 Pittsburgh Poets Rock the Apollo 2 @ Apollo Memorial Library

Two readings by Pittsburgh poets at the Apollo Memorial Library, each featuring four poets and a mid-reading OPEN MIC for local poets! FREE!!

**FRIDAY, MARCH 23**

A seventh-generation Pittsburgher, JAY CARSON taught creative writing, literature, and rhetoric at Robert Morris University, where he was a faculty advisor to the student literary journal, Rune. He has published more than 100 poems in national literary and professional journals, magazines, and anthologies. Jay published a chapbook, Irish Coffee, with Coal Hill Review and a longer book of his poems, The Cinnamon of Desire, with Main Street Rag. He considers his work Appalachian, Irish, accessible, the problem-solving spiritual survival of a raging, youth—and just what you might need.

BRI GRIFFITH studies Creative Writing at Carlow University, where she’s a proud member of the Madwomen in the Attic. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Pittsburgh Poetry Review, Alien Mouth, Rogue Agent, Maudlin House, and Pittsburgh City Paper’s online feature Chapter & Verse.

SHARON FAGAN McDERMOTT is a poet, musician, and literature teacher at Winchester Thurston School in Pittsburgh. Her poems have appeared in Poet Lore, Prairie Schooner, West Branch, and Slipstream, among other journals, and in numerous anthologies, including Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania (Penn State University Press) and A Fine Excess: Contemporary Literature at Play (Sarabande Books). She has received a PA Council on the Arts Grant, a Pittsburgh Foundation Artist Award, and a Pushcart Prize nomination. Her most recent chapbook, Bitter Acoustic, was selected by poet Betty Adcock as the winner of the 2011 Jacar Press chapbook contest.

ROBERT WALICKI’s work has appeared in over 50 journals, including Pittsburgh City Paper, Fourth River, Stone Highway 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 forthcoming from Six Gallery Press.

**FRIDAY, APRIL 13**

DANIELA BUCCILLI’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Rogue Agent, Cimarron Review, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, Paterson Literary Review, U.S. Worksheets 1, Free State Review, Quail Bell.com, and Italian Americana. She holds an MFA in fiction from Pitt, and is currently working on a poetry MFA at Carlow. She is a member of The Madwomen in the Attic workshops, and teaches public high school outside of Pittsburgh. Her poetry manuscript All She Is Willing has been short-listed in a few contests, but, alas, has not been published. Nonetheless, she persists.

Over the past two decades, REBECCA CLEVER has served as a reporter, newspaper editor, columnist, promotional and technical writer, book editor/designer and photographer. Her poetry, nonfiction, interviews and pictures have been published in various newspapers, literary journals, books and anthologies. She is a past recipient of the Laurie Mansell Reich poetry award, co-sponsored by the Academy of American Poets and Chatham University; she was the recipient of a residency fellowship at the Vermont Studio Center, and she has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and the AWP Intro Journals Project. Rebecca received her MFA in Creative Writing from Chatham in 2011, where she was a finalist for best thesis. She resides in the Greater Pittsburgh area with her partner, Theresa, their children, and nine pets.

ANGELE ELLIS’s most recent book, Under the Kaufmann’s Clock: Fiction, Poems, and Photographs of Pittsburgh, with photos by Rebecca Clever (Six Gallery Press), is a hybrid valentine to her adopted city. A longtime editor and community activist, she also is the author of Spared (A Main Street Rag Editors’ Choice Chapbook) and Arab on Radar (Six Gallery), whose poems won her a fellowship from the PA Council on the Arts. Angele is a contributing editor to Al Jadid Magazine; her poetry, fiction, and reviews have appeared in 75 journals and anthologies. Her latest manuscript, Fallout Shelter, was a first-round finalist in the 2017 Two Sylvias Chapbook Contest.

LISA PANEPINTO is the author of On This Borrowed Bike (Three Rooms Press) and Poetry Editor for Cabildo Quarterly, a literary broadside and online journal.

1/25 After Happy Hour Review Belated Release Party @ Glitter Box

7PM THURSDAY…

Join After Happy Hour Review and friends as we celebrate the release of our eighth issue with writers from the newly released journal, from our writing workshop, and from the greater Pittsburgh Writing Community, and you!

Beer has been generously donated by Alpine Beer Company. We’ll also bring some potluck style snacks.The event is free, though we suggest a donation of $5–this helps us to pay for our website domain, submittable, etc.

A bit more on our readers:

William Repass:

William Repass lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and works as a projectionist and film librarian. His work has appeared in, or is forthcoming from, Bennington Review, Denver Quarterly, Hobart, Small Po[r]tions, and elsewhere.

Emily Kiernan:

Emily Kiernan is the author of a novel, Great Divide (Unsolicited Press). Her work has appeared in American Short Fiction, Pank, The Collagist, Redivider, and other journals. She is a prose editor at Noemi Press and a fiction editor at Rivet: The Journal of Writing that Risks. More information can be found at emilykiernan.com.

Angele Ellis:

Angele Ellis’s latest book, Under the Kaufmann’s Clock: Fiction, Poems, and Photographs of Pittsburgh, with photos by Rebecca Clever (Six Gallery Press), is a hybrid bloody valentine to her adopted city. She also is author of Spared (A Main Street Rag Editors’ Choice Chapbook) and Arab on Radar (Six Gallery), whose poems won her a fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. She is a contributing editor to Al Jadid Magazine.

John Menesini:

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.

Tom Sweterlitsch:

Tom Sweterlitsch was born in Iowa and grew up in Ohio. His first novel, Tomorrow and Tomorrow was published in 2014. He has co-written several short films with Director Neill Blomkamp for Oats Studios including Rakka, Firebase, and Zygote. Before becoming a writer, he worked for the Carnegie Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped for twelve years. His new novel, The Gone World, is due out in February from Putnam Books. Tom lives in Pittsburgh with his wife and daughter.

 

Books of 2017

Here they all are, albeit blurrier than IRL. Available wherever they are sold (the authors, your local bookmonger or library, an evil, horrifying corporate leviathan, etc.). The ones I edited & laid out all have “man” in the title & the ones Mark Spitzer did all have “ar” & “la”.

Here they are again, in order of release, w/ better pics:

Thanks for reading & see ya next year!

12/16 Holiday Book Sale Redux @ Irma Freeman Center for Imagination

12-5PM SATURDAY…

Join us for a SECOND CHANCE to browse great books from Pittsburgh authors, publishers, and booksellers.

SATURDAY, December 16th
12-5pm
Irma Freeman Center for the Imagination
5006 Penn Avenue
Penn Avenue Arts District
Free admission
Street parking

Confirmed vendors so far:

Air & Nothingness Press
Hyacinth Girl Press
Lilliput Review
Karen’s Book Row–with many books from Pittsburgh publishers!
Six Gallery Press
Very Important Books–fiction & zines
Authors signing books!

I’ll be sharing a table w/ Don Wentworth at this, so visit us for all your Six Gallery Press & Lilliput Review needs. Pictured are Manual for Wayward Angels by Jessica Fenlon, the Low Ghost love poem anthology Unconditional Surrender, & Muskrat Friday Dinner by Scott Silsbe, three great books from 2017 (I’ve at least skimmed the other ones & strongly suspect they’re also pretty good). The latest Six Gallery titles Viva Arletty! by Mark Spitzer & Arkansas Ghoulash by Scotty Lewis, Manchild by Alan Olifson, & Under the Kaufmann’s Clock by Angele Ellis w/ photos by Rebecca Clever, will be available too, along w/ selections from the back catalog by Ally Malinenko, Chuck Kinder, Elwin Cotman, Jason Baldinger, John Grochalski, Victor Navarro, book sale organizer Karen Lillis, & more.

2/16 Manual for Wayward Angels launch @ Nine Stories

7PM THIS THURSDAY…

Poetry reading to launch Manual for Wayward Angels, Jessica Fenlon’s second book of poetry on Pittsburgh’s Six Gallery Press.

[ 2/15 heartbreak ] Hello lovelies! I am too sick to travel but I do believe the rest of the show will happen without me! And with Nathan, the editor extraordinaire helming 6 Gallery Press, reading as well. ♥ I miss you terribly, was so looking forward to this trip. But – the show goes on!!! In my stead! ~ Jessica Fenlon

New media artist JESSICA FENLON calls Milwaukee, Wisconsin home. In her digital art, Ms. Fenlon often glitches or breaks images in her ongoing exploration of public memory, semiotic reference, and epistemology. In her poetry, she constructs narratives from distilled memory and everyday life in our spectacular, our panopticon.

JEN ASHBURN is the author of the full-length poetry collection The Light on the Wall (Main Street Rag, 2016). She has work published in Chiron Review, Grey Sparrow, The MacGuffin, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Whiskey Island and other journals. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Chatham University, where she taught creative writing to inmates in the Allegheny County Jail through Chatham’s Words Without Walls program. Originally from southern Indiana, she spent four years in Japan and greater Asia, and now lives in Pittsburgh.

ANGELE ELLIS is author of UNDER THE KAUFMANN’s CLOCK (Six Gallery Press), a hybrid collection of poetry and flash fiction with photographs by Rebecca Clever, SPARED (A Main Street Rag Editors’ Choice Chapbook), and ARAB ON RADAR (Six Gallery), whose poems won an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. She lives in Friendship, where she sometimes sees the wings of former neighbors like Jessica Fenlon flashing in the skies.

KRISTOFER COLLINS is the books editor for Pittsburgh Magazine. He is the publisher of Low Ghost Press and co-director of The Bridge Series. He lives in Stanton Heights with his wife Dr. Anna Johnson and their two cats.

HANK MORRIS is a bum from way back. His poetry collection Anything Helps is forthcoming from Six Gallery Press.

Meet Angele Ellis Under the Kaufmann’s Clock…

…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 Breath and Catina’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!

—Jessica Fenlon, Spiritual Side Effects

Fenlon, I should fully disclose, also has a book coming out in 2017—a glitched-out poetry collection called Manual for Wayward Angels.

Happy New Year & stay tuned for launch details!

11/17 Eckleburg Reading Series feat. Angele Ellis @ Sky Stage + Expressing the New Pittsburgh feat. Karen Lillis @ William Pitt Union

THIS THURSDAY…

Join us for the Eckleburg Reading Series at Sky Stage in Frederick, MD where we will share and enjoy poetry, fiction, essays, music, writer & editor networking and more. Have a narrative? Show us. We showcase both featured writers and open mic participants, Hosted by Frederick, Maryland native and author, editor and Johns Hopkins University faculty, Rae Bryant.

*FEATURED READERS: Please read our Travel and Accommodations Information before planning your travel and participation—http://thedoctortjeckleburgreview.com/sky-stage-travel-accommodations/.

FEATURED READERS

Karen Heuler’s stories have appeared in over 70 literary and speculative magazines and anthologies. She has published four novels and two story collections with university and small presses, and her last collection was chosen for Publishers Weekly’s Best Books of 2013 list. She has received an O. Henry award, been shortlisted for a Pushcart prize, for the Iowa short fiction award, the Bellwether award and the Shirley Jackson award for short fiction.

Cynthia Atkins was born and raised in Chicago, Il, receiving a BFA and an MA from the University of Illinois and an MFA from Columbia University’s School of the Arts. She is the author of Psyche’s Weathers and In The Event of Full Disclosure. (Wordtech, 2013), with themes of mental illness/wellness and family life. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals, including, Alaska Quarterly Review, American Letters & Commentary, BOMB, Del Sol Review, Florida Review, Green Mountains Review, Harpur Palate, The Journal, North American Review, Seneca Review, Sou’wester, Tampa Review, Valparaiso Review and Verse Daily, among others. Atkins’ poems were nominated for a 2011 Pushcart Prize. Her awards and honors include The New Voice Award from the Writer’s Voice, as well as residencies from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference.

Sandy Hiortdahl lives in East Tennessee, where she teaches at Northeast State Community College. She is a recipient of the Sophie Kerr Prize and has an M.F.A. from George Mason University and a Ph.D. from The Catholic University of America. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming this year in Third Wednesday, Bewildering Stories, Punchnel’s, Barely South Review, and others. More may be found on her website: www.sandyhiortdahl.com.

Justin Chen is a recent graduate of Oberlin College where he studied creative writing and biology. He is currently a first year graduate student in the Department of Biology at MIT. He hopes to be a science writer one day.

J.T. Robertson earned his creative writing degree at Missouri State University and works in nonprofit development. His work previously appeared in Moon City Review, The MacGuffin, TheNewerYork, Paddle Shots: A River Pretty Anthology, and is forthcoming in Revolver. He lives in Creve Coeur, Missouri with his wife Pamela.

Angela Ellis [sic; correct spelling here] is the author of Arab on Radar (Six Gallery)–poems from which earned her a 2008 Individual Artist Fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts–Spared (A Main Street Rag Editors’ Choice Chapbook), and with Marilyn Llewellyn, Dealing With Differences: Taking Action on Class, Race, Gender, and Disability (Corwin Press). She has published widely, including chapters from her novel in progress, “Desert Storms,” and poems from her new chapbook manuscript, “Departing Chameleon.” She lives in Pittsburgh.

ABOUT THE FOUNDING HOST
Rae Bryant is the author of the short story collection, The Indefinite State of Imaginary Morals (Patasola Press). Her stories, essays, and poetry have appeared in print and online at The Paris Review, The Missouri Review, McSweeney’s, DIAGRAM, StoryQuarterly, Huffington Post, New World Writing, Gargoyle Magazine, and Redivider, among other publications. Her intermedia has exhibited in New York, DC, Baltimore and Florence, Italy. She has won prizes and fellowships from Johns Hopkins, Aspen Writers Foundation, VCCA and Whidbey Writers and has been nominated for the Pen/Hemingway, Pen Emerging Writers, The &NOW Award, Lorian Hemingway, and multiple times for the Pushcart award. Rae earned a Masters in Writing from Hopkins where she continues to teach creative writing and is founding editor of The Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review. She also teaches and lectures in the International Writing Program at The University of Iowa and The Eckleburg Workshops. She is represented by Jennifer Carlson with Dunow, Carlson & Lerner Literary Agency.

ABOUT THE ARTIST
Heather Clark’s Sky Stage, framed by historic stone walls, will include an open-air theater that will seat an audience of 140 people among trees. The centerpiece of Sky Stage is a digitally-designed sculpture with ribbons of drought-resistant plants that will twist and wind through a wooden lattice structure. State of the art green roof technology will be modified to support the spiraling plants. Rainwater will be collected from the adjacent roof and stored in a bright-colored cistern. Stored rainwater will irrigate the plants and trees. Sky Stage is a public sculpture and outdoor amphitheatre for local events: music, literature readings, performances and more. You can donate to the Sky Stage project at Go Fund Me.

Here’s the cover of Angele’s new book, a collab w/ photographer Rebecca Clever.

ALSO, at 5PM…