July 30, 2013 (Grand Finale)

Hemingway’s Summer Poetry Series

July 30, 2013

Nikki Allen is a 31 year old writer living in Pittsburgh. She’s been getting on stages for over 11 years and scribbling poems on homework, in notebooks and all over cocktail napkins for most of her life. She is the author of numerous chapbooks, including My Darling Since, Gutter of Eden, and Quite Like Yes. She competed on national poetry slam teams in Dayton and Pittsburgh from 2001 to 2003. Her poetry has appeared in The New Yinzer, Crash, Open Thread Regional Review Vol. 2, and Encyclopedia Destructica. She’s also performed with beatboxers, bucket drums and the Incredibly Thin Collective. She uses clothes pins for hair barrettes and lives to witness others doing what they love. Her work can be found online at www.honeydunce.com

Nikki Allen's Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Marilyn Bates, author of It Could Drive You Crazy, was a "Poet in Person" with the International Poetry Forum. She was an invited reader at the Noontime Reading Series at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC and at the James Wright Poetry Festival. Her work has appeared in The MacGuffin, The Paterson Literary Review, One Trick Pony, Poet Lore, and The Potomac Review.  Her work is anthologized in Pass-Fail: 32 Stories about Teaching; My Aunties' Book: 35 Writers Talk About Their Other Mother; Voices in Italian Americana; Along These Rivers and What Rough Beast: Poems at the End of the Century. Her one-act play, Life Without Nipples, was produced by the Pittsburgh New Works Theater Festival in 2007.  Her dramatic monologues were recited by Etta Cox in Womanscene, a fund-raising event for the Lupus Foundation.

 

Marilyn Bates' Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Jason Irwin grew up in Dunkirk, NY and now lives in Pittsburgh. His first collection of poetry, Watering the Dead, won the 2006/2007 Transcontinental Poetry Award and was published in 2008 by Pavement Saw Press. In 2005, his manuscript, "Some Days It's A Love Story," won the Slipstream Press Chapbook Prize, and his one-act play, Civilization, had its staged reading debut on April 24, 2010 at The Living Theatre, NYC.  For more on Jason, go to http://jasonirwin.blogspot.com/

Jason Irwin's Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Amanda Reynolds can finally say she lives in Pittsburgh and works as an English professor. She also has her own small business working with horses as an equine massage therapist. She grew up an hour east of the city, and spent six years in Florida receiving her MFA from the University of Florida and PhD from Florida State University in Creative Writing. Pudding House Press published her chapbook in 2009 entitled Degrees of Separation. She has published reviews and poetry in journals such as Gargoyle, Schuylkill Valley Journal, The Broken City, and Mississippi Crow and served as the poet-in-residence of the Everglades. Her book of poetry, HEINZ 56, was published by Main Street Rag in 2012.

Amanda Reynolds' Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Alicia Salvadeo grew up in Staten Island, New York and later in Eastern Pennsylvania. She now lives in Pittsburgh, PA where she studied poetry and history as an undergraduate at the University of Pittsburgh. Her chapbook, Memory Milk (2012), is currently available from Diamond Wave Press. Her poetry and reviews have also appeared in Bombay Gin, The Volta, Phantom Limn, DIAGRAM, and SOFTBLOW, among others. Alicia's newest chapbook, Err to Narrow, was recently selected by poet Nick Flynn for the National Chapbook Fellowship; its publication by the Poetry Society of America is set for Spring 2014.

Alicia Salvadeo's Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Kayla Sargeson is the author of Mini Love Gun (Main Street Rag, 2013). She earned an MFA in Poetry from Columbia College Chicago, where she was the recipient of a Follett Fellowship and served as an editor for Columbia Poetry Review. Her work has been anthologized in the national anthology, Time You Let Me In: 25 Poets Under 25, selected by Naomi Shihab Nye as well as Voices from the Attic Volume XIV, and Dionne’s Story. Her poems also appear or are forthcoming in 5 AM, Columbia Poetry Review, Chiron Review, Main Street Rag, and Prosody: NPR-affiliate WESA's weekly show. She co-curates the MadFridays reading series and is the poetry editor for Pittsburgh City Paper’s online feature Chapter & Verse. Her manuscript Hellwave is being submitted for publication. 

 

Kayla Sargeson's Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Scott Silsbe was born in Detroit and now lives in Pittsburgh where he sells books, plays in bands, watches local sports and edits The New Yinzer.  His work has appeared a number of places including Third Coast, Kitchen Sink, and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

 

Scott Silsbe's Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Bob Ziller is an artist, poet, translator, and singer.  His art has appeared in over 100 exhibitions in museums and galleries throughout the US.  He is the translator of African surrealist poet Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo of Madagascar, and the author of Van Gogh Surfing.  As a singer and songwriter, he has recorded with the bands Bingo Quixote and Media Circus Extravaganza!

 

Bob Ziller's Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Jimmy Cvetic has been writing and performing poetry all his life. A retired county police officer, he is the director of the Pittsburgh Police Athletic League, and founder and director of the Summer Poetry Series at Hemingway's Cafe in Oakland.  His poems have appeared in the Pittsburgh-Post Gazette and other publications.  He appears (briefly) in the film, Warrior, which was shot in Pittsburgh, and in 2012, he read his poetry at Beyond Baroque in Venice, CA with his friend, the actor and poet, Nick Nolte.  In 2010, Jimmy's book of poetry, The Secret Society of Dog was published by Awesome Books/Lascaux Editions, and a  second volume, Dog Unleashed, was published by Awesome Books/Lascaux  in 2012.

 

Jimmy Cvetic's Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Open Mic

Open Mic Readings - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

July 23, 2013 (Adès, Alberts, Collins, Krygowski)

Hemingway’s Summer Poetry Series

July 23, 2013

David Adès moved to Pittsburgh from Adelaide, Australia in April 2011. A member of Friendly Street Poets since 1979, his collection, Mapping the World, was commended for the Fellowship of Australian Writers Anne Elder Award 2008. He was an editor of the No 26 Friendly Street Poetry Reader, and more recently, a volunteer editor of the inaugural Australian Poetry Members Anthology metabolism.
He has appeared on the Australian radio program Poetica, and is one of 9 poets featured in a CD title 'Adelaide 9 The Poetry of the City.'
He has published widely in Australian literary magazines. Since his arrival in the U.S., his poems have appeared or are forthcoming in 5AM, Atlanta Review, Bewildering Stories, Boston Literary Review, Eye Contact, Four and Twenty Poetry Journal, Ilya's Honey, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Poetica, Red River Review, Rune, Spiritus, and Fourth River.
 

David Adès’s Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Renée Alberts listens to rivers and shortwave radio to create poetry, collage, sound and photography. Her poetry collection, No Water, came out in 2009, and her work has appeared in The New Yinzer, Encyclopedia Destructica, Pittsburgh City Paper and Subtletea. She has given dozens of readings, including on WYEP’s Prosody and as a 2001 and 2004 member of the Steel City Slam Team. She organizes numerous poetry and music events, including the CLP Sunday Poetry & Reading Series, for which she edited Natural Language: Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh Sunday Poetry and Reading Series Anthology. She posts writing and art at www.animalprayer.com

Renée Alberts’ Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

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 chapbook is "Last Call" published by Speed & Briscoe in 2010.

Kristofer Collins’ Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Nancy Krygowski’s first book of poems, Velocity, received the Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize from the University of Pittsburgh Press.  A recipient of a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Individual Artist Fellowship and a Pittsburgh Foundation Grant, she works as an adult literacy instructor and teaches Madwomen poetry workshops.

Nancy Krygowski’s Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Open Mic

Open Mic - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

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July 16, 2013 (5 AM Party & Tribute)

Hemingway’s Summer Poetry Series

July 16, 2013

Ed Ochester and Judy Vollmer are stepping down as editors of 5 AM. Tuesday evening we celebrated their creation and perpetuation of this superbly well edited and highly acclaimed journal. Twelve poets whose work has appeared in 5 AM were invited to read a poem. Then Ed and Judy capped off the event with a reading from their own works.

The twelve contributing poets are:
Michael Wurster
Ellen McGrath Smith
Michael Simms
Kayla Sargeson
Wendy Scott
Judith Robinson
Nancy Krygowski
Romella Kitchens
Lori Jakiela
Timons Esaias
Jimmy Cvetic
Joan Bauer

Through his writing, editing and teaching, Ed Ochester has been a major force on contemporary letters for more than three decades. He edits the Pitt Poetry Series and is general editor of the Drue Heinz Literature Prize for short fiction, both published by the University of Pittsburgh Press. From 1978 to 1988 he was director of the Writing Program at the University of Pittsburgh, and was twice elected president of the Associated Writing Programs. He co-edits the poetry magazine 5AM, and lives in a rural county northeast of Pittsburgh. His recent books include Snow White Horses: Selected Poems 1973-1988 (Autumn House Press, 2001), American Poetry Now: Pitt Poetry Series Anthology (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007) and Unreconstructed: Poems Selected and New (Autumn House Press, 2007). Poems just published or forthcoming in: American Poetry Review, Agni, Chiron Review, Great River Review and Nerve Cowboy.

Judith Vollmer's newest volume, The Water Books, was recently published in 2012 Autumn House Press. Her previous collections have received the Brittingham, the Center for Book Arts, and the Cleveland State publication prizes. She is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Her essays and reviews are included in The Cambridge Companion to Baudelaire and elsewhere. She has poems forthcoming or recently published in Miramar, Great River Review, and the anthology, Women Write Resistance: Poems Against Violence Against Women. She teaches at the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg and in the Drew University MFA Program in Poetry and Poetry in Translation, and is a founding editor of the literary journal 5 AM.

Michael Wurster’s Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Ellen McGrath Smith’s Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Michael Simms’ Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Kayla Sargeson’s Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Wendy Scott’s Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Judith Robinson’s Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Nancy Krygowski’s Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Romella Kitchens' Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Lori Jakiela’s Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Timons Esaias' Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Jimmy Cvetic’s Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Joan Bauer’s Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Judy Vollmer & Ed Ochester’s Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

July 9, 2013 (Corso, Ferrarelli, St. Germain, Terman)

Hemingway’s Summer Poetry Series

July 9, 2013

Paola Corso was born in the Pittsburgh area where her Italian immigrant family found work in the steel mill. A New York Foundation for the Arts Poetry Fellow and Sherwood Anderson Fiction Award winner, she is the author of six books of poetry and fiction, most recently, The Laundress Catches Her Breath and Once I Was Told the Air Was Not for Breathing. She’s moved back to the Burgh after living in Brooklyn for many years. Currently, she is a lecturer in Chatham University's Low Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing.

Paola Corso’s Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Rina Ferrarelli came from Italy at the age of fifteen. She taught English and translation studies at the University of Pittsburgh for many years. She has published a book and a chapbook of original poetry, Home Is a Foreign Country (1996), and Dreamsearch (1992); and three books of translation, Light Without Motion (1989), I Saw the Muses (Guernica, 1997), and Winter Fragments: Selected Poems of Bartolo Cattafi, (2006). The Bread We Ate, another book of poems, was published by Guernica in Spring 2012.

Rina Ferrarelli’s Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

A native of New Orleans, Sheryl St. Germain has taught creative writing at The University of Texas at Dallas, The University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Knox College and Iowa State University. She currently directs the MFA program in Creative Writing at Chatham University where she also teaches poetry and creative nonfiction. Her work has received several awards, including two NEA Fellowships, an NEH Fellowship, the Dobie-Paisano Fellowship, the Ki Davis Award from the Aspen Writers Foundation, and most recently the William Faulkner Award for the personal essay. Her books include Going Home, The Mask of Medusa, Making Bread at Midnight, How Heavy the Breath of God, and The Journals of Scheherazade. She has also published a book of translations of the Cajun poet Jean Arceneaux, Je Suis Cadien. A book of lyric essays, Swamp Songs: the Making of an Unruly Woman, was published in 2003 by The University of Utah Press. Her most recent book is Let it Be a Dark Roux: New and Selected Poems, published by Autumn House Press in 2007.

Sheryl St. Germain’s Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Philip Terman’s most recent book of poetry is In the Torah Garden, published by Autumn House Press in 2011.  His earlier books include The House of Sages, Book of the Unbroken Days and Rabbis of the Air. His poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies, including The Georgia Review, Poetry, The Kenyon Review, The Gettysburg Review, Tikkun, and Blood to Remember: American Poets Respond to the Holocaust. He is the recipient of the Sow’s Ear Chapbook Award, The Kenneth Patchen Prize, and the Anna Davidson Rosenberg Award for Poems on the Jewish Experience. He teaches creative writing and literature at Clarion University and co-directs the Chautauqua Writers’ Festival at the Chautauqua Institute. With his wife Christine and their daughters Mimi and Bella, he resides in a red-brick schoolhouse outside of Grove City, Pennsylvania.

Philip Terman’s Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Open Mic

Open Mic - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

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July 2, 2013 (Robinson, Oaks, Derricotte)

Hemingway’s Summer Poetry Series

July 2, 2013

Judith R. Robinson is the author of three poetry collections: The Blue Heart (Finishing Line Press, 2013), Orange Fire (Main Street Rag, 2012) and Dinner Date (Finishing Line Press, 2009). She is also the author of the fiction collection, The Beautiful Wife and Other Stories (Aegina Press, 1996). She is the poetry editor of Signatures (Osher, Carnegie Mellon University, 2001, 2003, 2006, 2012) and The Poetry of Margaret Menamin, (Main Street Rag, three volumes, 2010, 2011, 2012) as well as Living Inland (Bennington Press, 1989). She co-edited Along These River: Poetry and Photography from Pittsburgh (Quadrant Publishing, 2008) and Only the Sea Keeps: Poetry of the Tsunami (Rupa, Inc. and Bayeux Arts, 2005). Her poetry awards include the Poetica Chapbook Competition (runner-up, 2011), the Poetry Ark Award (2010), Jane’s Stories Drabble Competition, (first place, 2006), and the Skipping Stones Multicultural Award (2005). She blogs at www.thejewishchronicle.net and teaches poetry for Osher at Carnegie Mellon University.

Judith Robinson’s Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Jeff Oaks' newest chapbook, Mistakes with Strangers, will be published by Seven Kitchens Press in 2013.  His poem "Saint Wrench" was selected for Best New Poets 2012 by Matthew Dickman.  A recipient of three Pennsylvania Council of the Arts fellowships, Jeff Oaks has published poems in a number of literary magazines, most recently in Prairie Schooner, Rhino, Field, and Mead. His essays have appeared in At Length, My Diva: 65 Gay Men on the Women Who Inspire Them, and in Creative Nonfiction.  He teaches writing at the University of Pittsburgh.

Jeff Oaks’ Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Toi Derricotte has published five collections of poetry, most recently, The Undertaker’s Daughter (2011). An earlier collection of poems, Tender, won the 1998 Paterson Poetry Prize. Her honors include the 2012 Paterson Poetry Prize for Sustained Literary Achievement; the 2012 Pen/Voelker Award for Poetry for a poet whose distinguished and growing body of work represents a notable presence in American literature; the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America; two Pushcart Prizes; the Distinguished Pioneering of the Arts Award from the United Black Artists; the Alumni/Alumnae Award from New York University; the Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award from Poets & Writers, Inc.; the Elizabeth Kray Award for service to the field of poetry from Poets House; and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation and the Maryland State Arts Council. With Cornelius Eady, she co-founded Cave Canem Foundation. She is a Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh and serves on the Academy of American Poets' Board of Chancellors.

Toi Derricotte’s Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Open Mic

Open Mic - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

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June 25, 2013 (Kelly, Linder, Deahl, Wurster)

Hemingway’s Summer Poetry Series

June 25, 2013

Sheila Kelly is a retired psychotherapist, poet and playwright. She is a member of the Madwomen in the Attic poetry workshops, Pittsburgh Poetry Exchange and a regular facilitator for the Pittsburgh Writers’ Studio. Three of Sheila’s plays received staged readings at the 2009 Pittsburgh Three Rivers Arts Festival. She has worked for many years with gifted middle school writers and published the annual, St. Bede’s Quill. Most recent work appears in Brief Encounters: Ekphrases from the Spinning Plate Gallery. Other poems upcoming in Voices from the Attic: Volume XIX.

Sheila Kelly’s Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Norma West Linder was born in Toronto during 1928, but spent her childhood on Manitoulin Island and her teenage years in Muskoka. She is a member of The Writers’ Union of Canada, International PEN, and The Ontario Poetry Society. She was a founding member of Writers in Transition and served as President of the Sarnia Branch of the Canadian Authors Association. Linder is the author of five novels, fourteen collections of poetry, a memoir of Manitoulin Island, a children’s book, and a biography of Pauline McGibbon. For twenty-four years she was on the faculty of Lambton College, teaching English and Creative Writing. Her short stories have been published internationally, are widely anthologized, and have been broadcast on CBC radio.  Her books of poetry include: On the Side of the Angels, Ring Around the Sun, Pyramid, The Rooming House, River of Lethe: A Journey Through Alzheimer’s and When Angels Weep, among others.

Norma West Linder’s Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

James Deahl was born in Pittsburgh in 1945, and grew up in that city as well as in and around the Laurel Highlands region of the Appalachian Mountains. He moved to Canada in 1970. He is the author (or, in the case of Tu Fu, translator) of twenty-two literary titles, including No Star Is Lost and If Ever Two Were One. A cycle of his poems is the focus of a one-hour TV special, Under the Watchful Eye (Silver Falls Video Productions, 1993). The audiotape of Under the Watchful Eye was released by Broken Jaw Press in September, 1995. These have been reissued on CD and DVD by Silver Falls. In addition to his writing, he has taught creative writing and Canadian literature at the high school, college, and university levels. He no longer teaches, and for the past dozen years has mostly been a full-time writer/editor/translator. As a critic and literary historian, Deahl is the leading Acornic scholar. James Deahl lives in Sarnia, Canada.

James Deahl’s Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Michael Wurster has lived in Pittsburgh since 1962 and is a founding member of the Pittsburgh Poetry Exchanged.  For 17 years, 1993-2010, he taught at Pittsburgh Center for the Arts School.  He is author or co-editor of four published books, including The Snake Charmer’s Daughter (ELEMENOPE, 2000) and The British Detective (Main Street Rag Publishing, 2009).  Newer work is recent or forthcoming in 5 AM, California Quarterly, and Descant. In 1996, Wurster was an inaugural recipient of a Pittsburgh Magazine Harry Schwalb Excellence in the Arts Award for his contributions to poetry and the community.

Michael Wurster’s Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Open Mic

Open Mic - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

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June 18, 2013 (Edelman, Flick, McIlroy)

Hemingway’s Summer Poetry Series

June 18, 2013

Barbara Edelman is the author of a poetry chapbook, A Girl in Water, from Parallel Press. Her poems and prose have appeared in various journals, among them, Prairie Schooner, Rattle, 5 AM, and Arts & Letters, and in several anthologies. She has received a PA Council on the Arts grant in poetry and residency fellowships from Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Vermont Studio Center. She teaches writing and literature at the University of Pittsburgh.

Barbara Edelman’s Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Sherrie Flick is author of the novel Reconsidering Happiness (Bison Books) and the flash fiction chapbook I Call This Flirting (Flume). Her flash fiction appears in many journals and anthologies including Norton’s Flash Fiction Forward and New Sudden Fiction. She teaches Food Writing, a variety of fiction workshops, and Readings in Fiction in Chatham University’s MFA program and writes a regular food column for Pittsburgh Quarterly magazine. Co-founder of Into the Furnace, a writer-in-residence program in Braddock, Pa., she also serves as series editor for At Table, the food writing book list at University of Nebraska Press.

Sherrie Flick’s Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Leslie Anne McIlroy won the 2001 Word Press Poetry Prize for her full-length collection Rare Space and the 1997 Slipstream Poetry Chapbook Prize for her chapbook Gravel. She also took first place in the 1997 Chicago Literary Awards Competition judged by Gerald Stern. Her second full-length book, Liquid Like This, was published by Word Press in 2008. Leslie’s poetry appears in numerous publications including Dogwood, The Mississippi Review, New Ohio Review, Nimrod International Journal of Prose & Poetry, Pearl and forthcoming in Barely South Review. Leslie works as a copywriter in Pittsburgh, PA, where she lives with her daughter Silas.

Leslie Anne McIlroy’s Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Open Mic

Open Mic - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

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