New year, new book: Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One Before is twelve tales of the weird, including a previously unpublished story and novelette, by the author of Lars Breaxface: Werewolf in Space.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.
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 4 features Jose Padua, Michael Simms, Matthew Ussia, and Bob Walicki.
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 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 6/15. 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:
Jose Padua’s first full length book, A Short History of Monsters, was chosen by former poet laureate Billy Collins as the winner of the 2019 Miller Williams Poetry Prize and is now out from the University of Arkansas Press . His poetry, fiction, and nonfiction have appeared in publications such as Bomb, Salon.com, Beloit Poetry Journal, Exquisite Corpse, Unbearables, Another Chicago Magazine, Crimes of the Beats, Up is Up, but So Is Down: New York’s Downtown Literary Scene, 1974-1992, and others. He has written features and reviews for Salon, The Weeklings, NYPress, Washington City Paper, the Brooklyn Rail, and the New York Times, and has read his work at Lollapalooza, CBGBs, the Knitting Factory, the Public Theater, the Living Theater, the Nuyorican Poets’ Café, the St. Mark’s Poetry Project, and many other venues. He was a featured reader at the 2012 Split This Rock poetry festival and won the New Guard Review’s 2014 Knightville Poetry Prize.
Born and raised in Texas, Michael Simms has worked as a squire to a Hungarian fencing master, a stable hand, a gardener, a forager, an estate agent, a college teacher, an editor, a publisher, a technical writer, a lexicographer, a political organizer, and a literary impresario. He identifies as being on the spectrum and as a survivor of childhood sexual abuse who didn’t speak until he was five years old. He is the author of three full-length collections of poetry, most recently American Ash, as well as four chapbooks, three novels and a textbook about poetry, and he’s been the lead editor of over 100 published books. As the founding editor of Vox Populi and the founding editor emeritus of Autumn House Press and Coal Hill Review, he was recognized in 2011 by the Pennsylvania State Legislature for his contribution to the arts. Simms and his wife Eva live in the Pittsburgh neighborhood of Mount Washington .
Matthew Ussia is a professor, editor, podcaster, thereminist, writer softcore punk, social media burnout and all-around sentient matter. He is a founding editor of the Beautiful Cadaver Project and co-edited their Social Justice Anthologies. His writings have appeared in Mister Rogers and Philosophy, Winedrunk Sidewalk, Future Humans in Fiction and Film, North of Oxford, and The Open Mic of the Air Podcast among others. He is co-editor of The Dreamers Anthology: Writing Inspired by the Lives of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Anne Frank and Recasting Masculinity. His Theremonster alter ego performs doom metal on a theremin. Matt sang back up on the Silence LP The Countdown’s Begun. He lives in Pittsburgh . More info: www.matthewussia.com.
Robert Walicki’s work has appeared in over 50 journals, including Pittsburgh City Paper, Fourth River ,Chiron 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 available from Pittsburgh’s Six Gallery Press.
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 3/26.
Think you’ve got a bad job? Take consolation that you’re not scraping mold for a living, that you don’t have any tentacles in your head, and that you’re not sewing tents from the discarded skins of the creatures who’ve taken your world over. A wonderfully odd novella with a profoundly human core.
-Brian Evenson, author of Song for the Unraveling of the World and The Warren
At its best, Rick Claypool’s work makes the disturbing and surreal feel believable. The true horror in this book isn’t the alien overlords, but the alarmingly relatable journey of a man navigating a world he will never understand, willing to stoop ever lower just to get by.
-Daniel McCloskey, author of Cloud Town and A Film About Billy
Claypool’s post-apocalyptic novella draws readers into a world that’s compellingly surreal, darkly imaginative, and just not… quite right.
-Premee Mohamed, author of A Broken Darkness and Beneath the Rising
A character struggling between the twin horrors of alien invasion and economic degradation, I found Rick Claypool’s Mold Farmer a voice that held me in its grip. Full-on body horror merges with the most human of concerns – family, and how to protect it – to produce a fascinating, frightening tale.
-Aliya Whiteley, author of The Loosening Skin and The Beauty
Rick Claypool is the author of Leech Girl Lives (Spaceboy Books, 2017) and The Mold Farmer (Six Gallery Press, 2020). His short fiction appears here and there online and has been anthologized in Not My President: The Anthology of Dissent (Thoughtcrime Press, 2018) and The Future Will Be Written by Robots (Spaceboy Books, 2020). By day he works for Public Citizen researching corporate crime. He spent most of his life in Western Pennsylvania and now lives in Rhode Island, where he goes looking in the woods for fungi as frequently as he can.
Elwin Cotman is a storyteller from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is the author of three collections of speculative short stories: The Jack Daniels Sessions EP (Six Gallery Press, 2010), Hard Times Blues (Six Gallery Press, 2013), and Dance on Saturday (Small Beer Press, 2020), a 2021 Philip K. Dick Award finalist. His work has appeared in Grist, Weird Fiction Review, Black Gate, The Southwestern Review, and Cabinet des Fées, among others. He was a core member of the Cyberpunk Apocalypse Writers’ Cooperative in Pittsburgh, has toured across North America doing readings, and has curated many readings and reading series. Cotman holds a BA from the University of Pittsburgh and an MFA from Mills College.
Robert Isenberg is a freelance writer, playwright, photographer, stage performer, and documentary filmmaker. His books include The Archipelago: A Balkan Passage (Autumn House Press, 2010), Wander (Six Gallery Press, 2011), The Green Season (The Tico Times Publications, 2015), and three entries in the ongoing Adventures of Elizabeth Crowne series: The Mysterious Tongue of Dr. Vermillion (Backpack Media, 2015), The Woman in the Sky (2020), and Curse of the Qattara (2020). He earned his MFA in Creative Writing from Chatham University, where he served as Whitford Fellow. Originally from Vermont, he lived in Pittsburgh for 16 years. For two years he lived in Costa Rica, where he served as a staff writer for The Tico Times. He freelances widely and teaches for numerous institutions, including Arizona State University. Isenberg now lives in Rhode Island, where he is a contributing editor for Providence Monthly.
Daniel McCloskey founded the Cyberpunk Apocalypse, a writers’ project which housed 45 writers from across the US and Canada and hosted hundreds of literary events. He is the author and illustrator of the prose/graphic novel hybrid A Film About Billy (Six Gallery Press, 2012), the comics Top of the Line (soon to appear in graphic novel form as Made Monsters) and Free Money, and the graphic novel Cloud Town (Abrams ComicArts, forthcoming). His work has been anthologized in BOTTOMS UP! True Tales of Hitting Rock-Bottom (Birdcage Bottom Books, 2017) and published on The Nib.
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.
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!
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).
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 EDT on 9/8.
Rescheduled from March: We’re super excited to be helping local poet Kristofer Collins launch his latest collection, The River Is Another Kind of Prayer: New & Selected Poems! He’ll be reading alongside Daniela Buccilli, Richard Gegick, and Jamilla Rice.
Kristofer Collins is the publisher of Low Ghost Press and the books editor at Pittsburgh Magazine. He is the co-host of the Hemingway’s Summer Poetry Series. He lives in Pittsburgh, PA with his wife Dr. Anna Johnson and their son Cassidy.
Daniela Buccilli’s poetry chapbook is What it Takes to Carry (Main Street Rag). Her poems can be found in Coal River Review, Paterson Literary Review, Cimarron Review, Cider Press Review, and Italian Americana. She holds degrees in teaching and writing from Penn State, University of Pittsburgh, and Carlow University. She has co-edited an upcoming anthology Show Us Your Papers. She teaches high school.
Richard Gegick is from Trafford, PA. He is the author of the poetry collection, Greasy Handshakes, available from WPA Press. He lives in Pittsburgh where he writes and waits tables for a living.
Jamilla Rice dreams of when she can own her days and write. Until then, she squeezes out moments during her time as an athlete, educator, aunt, book nerd, baker, and British detective drama junkie. Her work has been published in previous volumes of Voices from the Attic and Pittsburgh Poetry Review, among other anthologies and periodicals. You may have heard her read at various events, on WESA’s Prosody, or at that one open mic in Toronto. Her work includes poetry, short fiction, flash nonfiction and combinations of all of the above and more. Topics generally explore the intersection of the personal and political; past as present and future; the beauty within the mundane and pain; the science, math, and absurdity of human behavior; and the undying insistence of marginalized peoples to thrive.
Join us for a reading featuring Nikki Allen, Jason Baldinger, Victor Clevenger, John Dorsey, and Karen Lillis!
Check out our curated lists and picks on our main Bookshop 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.) We also have a number of books available ready-to-ship from our store in Pittsburgh.
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 EDT on 7/18.
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 EDT on 7/18. Please email events@whitewhalebookstore.com if you miss this cut-off and need a ticket. For questions, check out our FAQ for events here.
About the authors:
Nikki Allen is a lover and a writer. She believes in strong coffee, revolution, the hard knocks and the sweetness. Find more of her writing at honeydunce.com.
Jason Baldinger is a poet from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvaninia. A former Writer in Residence at Osage Arts Community, he is co-founder of The Bridge Series. He has multiple books available including and Everyone’s Alone Tonight with James Benger (Kung Fu Treachery Press) the chapbook Blind Into Leaving (Analog Submission Press) as well as the forthcoming Afterlife is a Hangover (Stubborn Mule Press). His work has been published widely in print journals and online. You can listen to him read his work on Bandcamp and on lps by the bands Theremonster and The Gotobeds.
Victor Clevenger spends his days in a Madhouse and his nights writing poetry in a small town northeast of Kansas City, MO. Selected pieces of his work have appeared in print magazines and journals around the world and have been nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology and the Pushcart Prize. He is the author of several collections of poetry including Sandpaper Lovin’ (Crisis Chronicles Press, 2017), A Finger in the Hornets’ Nest (Red Flag Poetry, 2018), and Corned Beef Hash By Candlelight (Luchador Press, 2019). Together with American poet John Dorsey, they run River Dog.
John Dorsey grew up in Greensburg, Pennsylvania and lived for several years in Toledo, Ohio. He is the author of several collections of poetry, including Teaching the Dead to Sing: The Outlaw’s Prayer (Rose of Sharon Press, 2006), Sodomy is a City in New Jersey (American Mettle Books, 2010), Tombstone Factory, (Epic Rites Press, 2013), Appalachian Frankenstein (GTK Press, 2015) Being the Fire (Tangerine Press, 2016) and Shoot the Messenger (Red Flag Press, 2017) and Your Daughter’s Country (Blue Horse Press, 2019). His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and the Stanley Hanks Memorial Poetry Prize.He was the winner of the 2019 Terri Award given out at the Poetry Rendezvous. He may be reached at archerevans@yahoo.com.
Karen Lillis is a bookseller and a writer of fiction, memoir, and poetry. She is the author of four novellas, including Watch the Doors As They Close (Spuyten Duyvil). Her writing has appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, Evergreen Review, Gasconade Review, LA Cultural Weekly, Lit Hub, Local Knowledge, Occupy Wall Street Poetry Anthology, and Volume 1 Brooklyn, among others. She has been a writer in residence at Shakespeare and Company in Paris, an art reviewer at The Austin Chronicle, a regular contributor to the anti-war/poetry newspaper New York Nights after 2001, and once wrote a short story on the side of a freight train. Her books earned her a 2014 Acker Award for Avant Garde Excellence in Fiction.
Excited to host Michael McGriff and to welcome back Robert Walicki (“back”in the figurative sense, of course, as this event’s online) for an evening of poetry. Head to our Bookshop site’s list titled “Recent and Upcoming Events (Pre-order!)” to order one of Bob’s books and several of Michael’s. You can also check out other curated lists and picks on our main site page, or use the search bar in the upper center-right to look for any book. (Using the book’s ISBN usually works best.)
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 EDT on 5/8. Please email events@whitewhalebookstore.com if you miss this cut-off and need a ticket.
Robert Walicki’s work has appeared in and is forthcoming in a number of publications including Chiron Review, The City Paper, Fourth River, Signal Mountain Review, Red River Review, and others. A Pushcart and a Best of The Net nominee, Robert 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, is currently available from Six Gallery Press, and his most recent collection, Fountain, is now available at Main Street Rag Press.
Michael McGriff is the author of several books, most recently the poetry collection Home Burial (Copper Canyon Press, 2017) and the short story collection Our Secret Life in the Movies (A Strange Object, 2014), which was an NPR Best Book of 2014. His works has appeared in The New York Times, Poetry London, American Poetry Review, and on PBS NewsHour and NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday. He lives in northern Idaho.
We’re super excited to be helping local poet KRISTOFER COLLINS launch his latest collection, THE RIVER IS ANOTHER KIND OF PRAYER: NEW & SELECTED POEMS! He’ll be reading alongside DANIELA BUCCILLI, RICHARD GEGICK, and JAMILLA RICE.
KRISTOFER COLLINS is the publisher of Low Ghost Press and the books editor at Pittsburgh Magazine. He is the co-host of the Hemingway’s Summer Poetry Series. He lives in Pittsburgh, PA with his wife Dr. Anna Johnson and their son Cassidy.
DANIELA BUCCILLI’S poetry chapbook is What it Takes to Carry (Main Street Rag). Her poems can be found in Coal River Review, Paterson Literary Review, Cimarron Review, Cider Press Review, and Italian Americana. She holds degrees in teaching and writing from Penn State, University of Pittsburgh, and Carlow University. She has co-edited an upcoming anthology Show Us Your Papers. She teaches high school.
RICHARD GEGICK is from Trafford, PA. He is the author of the poetry collection, GREASY HANDSHAKES, available from WPA Press. He lives in Pittsburgh where he writes and waits tables for a living
JAMILLA RICE dreams of when she can own her days and write. Until then, she squeezes out moments during her time as an athlete, educator, aunt, book nerd, baker, and British detective drama junkie. Her work has been published in previous volumes of Voices from the Attic and Pittsburgh Poetry Review, among other anthologies and periodicals. You may have heard her read at various events, on WESA’s Prosody, or at that one open mic in Toronto. Her work includes poetry, short fiction, flash nonfiction and combinations of all of the above and more. Topics generally explore the intersection of the personal and political; past as present and future; the beauty within the mundane and pain; the science, math, and absurdity of human behavior; and the undying insistence of marginalized peoples to thrive.
This event is first-come, first seated. Please email us (events@whitewhalebookstore.com) if you have any accessibility needs and require that a seat be reserved for you in advance. We will have a limited number of these seats available. Thanks!
Join us and Red Flag Poetry for local poet JOHN STUPP’s chapbook launch! He’ll be reading from WHEN BILLY CONN FOUGHT FRITZIE ZIVIC, and ROBERT WALICKI will be joining him. We’ll be selling both their most recent books.
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JOHN STUPP is the author of the 2015 poetry collection Advice from the Bed of a Friend (by Main Street Rag) and the 2017 collection Pawleys Island (by Finishing Line Press). His manuscript, Summer Job, won the 2017 Cathy Smith Bowers Poetry Prize and was published in August 2018. John holds academic degrees from Notre Dame University, The University of British Columbia, and Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. He has lived and worked in various states as a university instructor, taxi driver, radio news writer, waiter, and paralegal. From 1975-1985 he worked professionally as a mediocre jazz guitarist. John lives near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and spends his spare time playing with his dog Buster and fishing in South Carolina.
ROBERT WALICKI’S work has appeared in and is forthcoming in a number of publications including, Chiron Review, The City Paper, Fourth River, Signal Mountain Review, Red River Review, and others. A Pushcart and a Best of The Net nominee, Robert 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” is currently available from Six Gallery Press, and his most recent collection. “Fountain” is now available at Main Street Rag Press.
We’re looking forward to this early November reading with a ton of great local poets as well as SHAWN PAVEY, who’ll be visiting us from Kansas!
JASON BALDINGER is a poet from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He was recently a Writer in Residence at Osage Arts Community, and is founder and co-director of The Bridge Series. He has multiple books available including the soon to be released The Better Angels of our Nature (Kung Fu Treachery) and the split books The Ugly Side of the Lake with John Dorsey (Night Ballet Press) as well as Everyone’s Alone Tonight with James Benger (Kung Fu Treachery Press). His work has been published widely in print journals and online. You can listen to him read his work on Bandcamp on lps by the bands Theremonster and The Gotobeds.
KARA KNICKERBOCKER is the author of the chapbooks The Shedding Before the Swell (Dancing Girl Press, 2018) and Next to Everything that is Breakable (Finishing Line Press, 2017). Knickerbocker is from Saegertown, Pennsylvania and currently lives in Pittsburgh, where she works at Carnegie Mellon University and is earning her MFA at Carlow University. She is a proud member of the Madwomen in the Attic and also co-curates the MadFridays Reading Series. You can find more of her at www.karaknickerbocker.com.
KARLA LAMB is a multidisciplinary Chicana poet. Her work has appeared in A Women’s Thing Magazine, The Shallow Ends, Coal Hill Review, Vox Populi, Word Riot, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, Voices from the Attic, & is forthcoming in Always Crashing. Her work has also been recently nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology. Lamb is the program manager at City of Asylum, an organization that provides sanctuary to endangered writers. She has edited for After Happy Hour Review, & can usually be found collaborating with various artists & writers in Pittsburgh. Visit karlalamb.com for more info.
SHAWN PAVEY has delivered newspapers, mowed lawns, bagged groceries, cut meat, laid sewer pipe, bussed tables, washed dishes, roofed houses, crunched numbers, rented cars, worked in hotels, worn an apron at Kinko’s, and been paid to write everything from résumés to music reviews. Currently, he earns a living as an Executive Recruiter in Mission, KS where he lives with his wife and two worthless but adorable cats. He’s hosted poetry readings in bars, coffee shops, haunted houses, bookstores, libraries, front porches, seedy motel rooms, and abandoned warehouses. He is the author of Talking to Shadows (2008, Main Street Rag Press),Nobody Steals the Towels from a Motel 6 (2015, Spartan Press), and Survival Tips for the Pending Apocalypse(Spartan Press, 2019). He is a Co-founder and former Associate Editor of The Main Street Rag Literary Journal, and a former board member and officer of The Writers Place, a Kansas City-based literary non-profit. His poems, essays, and journalism appear in a variety of national and regional publications. A graduate of the University of North Carolina’s Undergraduate Honors Creative Writing Program, he likes his Tom Waits loud, his bourbon single-barrel, and his basketball Carolina Blue.
SCOTT SILSBE was born in Detroit. He now lives in Pittsburgh. His poems have been collected in three books—Unattended Fire, The River Underneath the City, and Muskrat Friday Dinner. He is also an assistant editor at Low Ghost Press.
Six Gallery Press 