July 26, 2011 (Grand Finale)

Hemingway’s Summer Poetry Series

July 26, 2011

Nour Abdelghani

Born in Alexandria, Egypt, Nour Abdelghani moved to Pittsburgh in 2005. She is a 2010 graduate of the University of Pittsburgh where she co-edited the Three Rivers Review literary magazine and met a group of amazing writers. Her fiction has appeared in issue 05 of Weave Magazine and the second volume of The New Fraktur. She was the recipient on the 2009 Myron Taube award in fiction and the 1^st prize, Prosody/Writer’s Café creative non-fiction award. Her non-fiction was featured on WYEP’s Prosody in 2009.

Nour Abdelghani’s Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

David Adès has recently moved to Pittsburgh from Adelaide, Australia.  He has been a member of Friendly Street Poets since 1979. His poems have appeared widely in Australia in publications including over 20 of the Friendly Street Poetry Readers and numerous literary magazines such as Island, Tirra Lirra, Wet Ink, Famous Reporter, Five Bells, Social Alternatives, Verandah and Studio, with some poems also appearing in translation in Vatra (Rumania).  He has appeared on the Australian radio poetry program Poetica, and is one of 9 poets featured on a CD titled “Adelaide 9.”  His collection, Mapping the World, was commended for the Fellowship of Australian Writers Anne Elder Award 2008. 

David Adès’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)

Jerome Crooks began writing poetry in 1993 in Buffalo New York.  After finishing high school in Chesapeake VA in 1996, he moved to Pittsburgh, his father's home city, where he completed a BA in creative writing focusing on poetry at the University of Pittsburgh.  He is the son of Jerry and Mary Anne Crooks, brother to Theresa Leonard, brother-in-law to John Leonard, and proud uncle of Aeden.  He also co-authored, with Jason Baldinger, The Whiskey Rebellion (Six Gallery Press, 2011), has edited a book for Encyclopedia Destructica, and runs a literary press, Speed and Briscoe, based in Pittsburgh.  

Jerome Crooks’ Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Edna Machesney is a past president of the Pittsburgh Poetry Society, and is a frequent reader at their events.  Her poetry is short and lyrical.  One of her haiku won an international haiku competition in Japan.

Edna Machesney’s Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Deena November graduated SUNY Binghamton in 2005 with a BA in Creative Writing, Poetry and received her MFA in Creative Writing, Poetry from Carlow University in April 2009. In 2005 she co-edited the anthology, I Just Hope It's Lethal, for Houghton Mifflin. Her poems have also appeared in Pittsburgh City Paper, Pittsburgh Post Gazette, and Warbler. Deena lives in Pittsburgh’s North Side with her husband and dog.

Deena November’s Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Fred Peterson grew up on Arkansas rice farms in the 1940s and 1950s and uses rural farmboy experiences to relive those days.  A resident of Pittsburgh for twenty-five years, he is a member of the Pittsburgh Poetry Society and has been working on a chapbook for longer than he cares to remember. 

Fred Peterson’s Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Lucille T. Seibert has lived in New York and Massachusetts. For the past 35 years, she has made her home in Pittsburgh, PA.  She studied with Pat Dobler as part of the Madwomen in the Attic program, and currently is a member of the Pittsburgh Poetry Exchange. The Unattended Kitchen Sink is her first book of poems, written over the past 54 years.

Lucille Seibert’s Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Ron Smits is Emeritus Professor of English at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.  His book of poems, Push, was published by the University of Scranton Press in 2009.  

Ron Smits’ Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Christine Telfer is a founding editor of Invisible River Publishing, and for some years was editor and publisher of The Exchange.  A returned Peace Corps volunteer from Bulgaria, she now teaches English as a Second Language in Pittsburgh.  Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including Artcrimes 20, Main Street Rag, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Pittsburgh Quarterly, Whiskey Journal and other journals and periodicals. 

Christine Telfer’s Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Don Wentworth writes poetry in the short form and has had work published in bear creek haiku, Rolling Stone, Modern Haiku, bottle rockets, The New Yinzer, Cotyledon, Encylopedia  Destructica, and the anthologies Prairie Smoke and To Life.  His first full-length volume, Past All Traps, was published by Six Gallery Press in 2011.

Don Wentworth’s Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Bob Ziller is an artist, poet, translator, and singer.  His translation of Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo's Translated from the Night,  the first English rendering of a complete text by the "pure African surrealist” of Madagascar--was praised by Dr. Henry Louis Gates:  "These translations read beautifully."  Ziller's artwork has been widely displayed in streets, galleries and museums around the US. As a singer and lyricist, he has recorded with the bands, Bingo Quixote and Media Circus Extravaganza!- with the MCE! Song, "Waterboarding," garnering attention as a GaraeBand.com Track of the Day. 

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.  His first full-length book of poetry, Secret Society of Dog, was published in 2010. 

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

July 19, 2011 (Waite, Beatty, Ochester)

Hemingway’s Summer Poetry Series

July 19, 2011

Stacey Waite is originally from New York and received an MFA in poetry in 2003. For several years, she has been teaching courses in Composition, Women's Studies, Literature and Creative Writing as a PHD candidate at the University of Pittsburgh.  After receiving her MFA, Stacey published two collections of poems:  Choke (winner of the 2004 Frank O'Hara Prize in Poetry) and Love Poem to Androgyny (winner of the 2006 Main Street Rag Competition).  Her poems have been published most recently in The Cream City Review, The Marlboro Review, Gulf Stream and Black Warrior Review.  A new collection of poems, The Lake has No Saint, was published by Tupelo Press in 2010.  Stacey has also been teaching for the Carlow University sponsored community, Madwomen in the Attic.  This September 2011, she will be teaching at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.

Stacey Waite’s Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Jan Beatty’s new book, Red Sugar, was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in Spring, 2008. Other books include Boneshaker (2002, University of Pittsburgh Press) and Mad River, winner of the 1994 Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize. Ravenous, her limited edition chapbook, won the 1995 State Street Prize. Beatty’s poetry has appeared in Quarterly West, Gulf Coast, Indiana Review, and Court Green, and in anthologies published by Oxford University Press, University of Illinois Press, and University of Iowa Press. Awards include the $15,000 Creative Achievement Award in Literature from the Heinz Foundation, the Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry, and two fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. For the past thirteen years, she has hosted and produced Prosody, a public radio show on NPR-affiliate WYEP-FM featuring the work of national writers. Beatty directs the creative writing program at Carlow University, where she runs the Madwomen in the Attic writing workshops and teaches in the MFA program. such as MARGIE: The American Journal of Poetry; AmeriQuests (Vanderbilt University); 580 Split (Mills College); and upstreet, among many others. 

Jan Beatty’s Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Ed Ochester

Through his writing, editing and teaching, Ed Ochester has been a major influence on contemporary letters for more than three decades.  His most recent books are Unreconstructed: Poems Selected and New (Autumn House Press, July 2007), The Republic of Lies (chapbook, Adastra Press, June 2007), The Land of Cockaigne (Story Line Press, 2001), and American Poetry Now (University of Pittsburgh Press, March 2007), an anthology of contemporary American poetry.  He edits the Pitt Poetry Series and is general editor of the Drue Heinz Literature Prize for short fiction (both University of Pittsburgh Press). From 1978 to 1998, he was director of the writing program at the University of Pittsburgh, and was twice elected president of Associated Writing Programs.  He has won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, recently won the $15,000 "Artist of the Year" award of the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, and in 2006 won AWP's George Garrett Award for service to literature. He co-edits the poetry magazine 5 AM and is a core faculty member of the Bennington College MFA program. 

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

Jimmy Cvetic reads Dog

Jimmy Cvetic - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Open Mic

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

July 12, 2011 (Edwards, Collins, Carter-Jones, Kane, Bauer)

Hemingway’s Summer Poetry Series

July 12, 2011

Ziggy Edwards grew up in Pittsburgh and earned a BA in Fiction Writing from the University of Pittsburgh.  Her poems and short stories have appeared in publications including Confluence, Paper Street, Pittsburgh City Paper, Nexus, Main Street Rag, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and Ship of Fools.  She has also been a guest on WYEP radio's Prosody.  Ziggy's first chapbook, Hope's White Shoes. was published in 2006. 

Ziggy Edwards’ Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Kristofer Collins is publisher and editor-in-chief of Low Ghost Press, former co-director of the TNY Presents Performance Series, managing editor of The New Yinzer 2005-2009.  He is the book reviewer for Pittsburgh Magazine.  He is the manager of Caliban Bookshop and owner of Desolation row Records & CDs.  A book of his poems, King Everything, was published in 2007 by Six Gallery Press, The Book of Names was published by Low Ghost Press in 2008, and The Liturgy of Streets was published by Six Gallery Press in 1009.  His latest collection, Last Call, was published by Speed & Briscoe in 2010.

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

Sheila Carter-Jones has spent many years in the field of education and is currently an education consultant and a full-time poet. She is a fellow of both the Western Pennsylvania Writing Project and Cave Canem. Her work has appeared in several anthologies and journals, including Crossing Limits, Pennsylvania Review, Tri-State Anthology, River Speak and Coal. Her chapbook, Blackberry Cobbler Song, was recently released by Publish Today. Her book of poetry, Three Birds Deep, selected by Elizabeth Alexander, is forthcoming from Lotus Press.

Sheila Carter-Jones’ Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Kelli Stevens Kane's poetry is featured or forthcoming in Spider Magazine, Denvery Syntax, The Poetry Super Highway, Little Red Leaves and Maintenant.  Her poetry manuscript, Hallelujah Science, is currently making the rounds. She is the recipient of a Serpent Source Foundation grant for her second manuscript, an oral history about the Hill District of Pittsburgh. Kelli was a regular in the San Francisco poetry scene in the late nineties. She returned to the stage in December 2009, and since has read widely, including performances at the Cornelia Street Cafe and Bowery Poetry Club in New York, NY, the August Wilson Center for African American Culture in Pittsburgh, PA. 

Kelli Steven Kane’s Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Joan E. Bauer is the author of The Almost Sound of Drowning, published by Main Street Rag (2008).  Her poetry has appeared in numerous journals ranging from 5 AM, New Renaissance, Slipstream to Quarterly West, and nearly a dozen anthologies, including Come Together: Imagine Peace (Bottom Dog Press), Along These Rivers: Poetry and Photography from Pittsburgh (Quadrant), and Voices from the Attic (Carlow University Press), among others. Her poetry has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and she recently completed work on a new poetry manuscript, Dreaming of Prague. 

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

Jimmy Cvetic Reads Get Real High and They'll Name a Clinic After You

Jimmy Cvetic - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Open Mic

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

July 5, 2011 (Carson, St. John, Kitchens, Karasek)

Hemingway’s Summer Poetry Series

July 5, 2011

Jay Carson teaches creative writing, literature, and rhetoric at Robert Morris University, where he is also a faculty advisor to the student literary journal, Rune.  Active professionally, he regularly presents and participates in readings, both locally, nationally, and occasionally, internationally.  Jay has published more than 60 poems which have appeared in local and national literary and professional journals, magazines, and anthologies. He has just finished a book of his poems, entitled The Cinnamon of Desire.

Jay Carson’s Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Richard St. John's book of poems, The Pure Inconstancy of Grace, was published in 2005 by Truman State University Press, as first runner up for the 2004 T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry. His poem “Shrine” was released as a chapbook from Finishing Line Press in March 2011.  His work has also appeared in Sewanee Review, Poet Lore, and Carolina Quarterly as well as many other periodicals and anthologies. He received degrees in English from Princeton University and the University of Virginia. In 2002, he completed a mid-career Loeb Fellowship at Harvard University. He lives in Pittsburgh with his wife Kate.

Rick St. John’s Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Romella Kitchens is a graduate of the University  of Pittsburgh with three masters degrees in education. She has been published in Main Street Rag, The Pittsburgh Post Gazette, Rune Literary Magazine, Essence Magazine, The California Quarterly, 5 AM,  Mud Fish and many more. Her poetry lesson plan is included in Autumn House's The Working Poet: 75 Writing Exercises and a Poetry Anthology, edited by Scott Minor.  Her published chapbooks include: Hip Hop Warrior, The Immortals, The Heaven Of Elephants and her latest The Red Covered Bridge through Pudding House Press. Currently, she is dividing her time between writing plays, seeking publication of a book of short stories and seeking publication of a full-length book of poetry.  

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

Joseph Karasek performed as an actor and violinist with The Theater Within, an improvisational theater group in New York City.  A former violist with the National Orchestral Association, he created school orchestras on the elementary and secondary levels, and taught music composition and music theory at Long Island University.  Living in Pittsburgh, PA since 1991, he has taught philosophy at the Academy for Lifelong Learning at Carnegie Mellon University.  Several years ago, he led a study group on James Joyce's Ulysses there.  His poetry has been published in Only the Sea Keeps: Poetry of the Tsunami (Bayeux Arts) and Blue Arc West: An Anthology of California Poets.  His first two books of poetry, Beyond Waking and Love and the Ten Thousand Things, were published IN 2009 by Tebot Bach.   

Joe Karasek’s Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Jimmy Cvetic reads Rude Awakening

Jimmy Cvetic - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Open Mic

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

June 28, 2011 (Roy, Robinson, Peterson, Weiner)

Hemingway’s Summer Poetry Series

June 28, 2011

Sankar Roy, originally from India, is a poet, translator, activist and multimedia artist living near Pittsburgh, PA. He is a winner of PEN USA Emerging Voices, author of three chapbooks, Moon Country, The House My Father Could Not Build and Matra of the Bornfree (all from Pudding House). He is associate editor of Only the Sea Keeps: Poetry of the Tsunami (Rupa & Co, India and Bayeux Arts, Canada, 2005). Sankar's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in over 50 literary journals including Bitter Oleander, Crab Orchard Review, Connecticut Review, Harpur Palate, Icon, Runes, Rhino, Tampa Review, and Poetry Magazine. His full length book of poetry, Moon Country, will be published later this year by Tebot Bach.

Sankar Roy’s Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Judith Robinson is an editor, teacher, fiction writer and poet. A graduate of the University of Pittsburgh, she has been published in numerous magazines, newspapers and anthologies. She was editor of Living Inland, author of The Beautiful Wife and Other Stories; poetry editor of Signatures. She currently teaches poetry in the ALL Program at Carnegie Mellon University. She is editor of Only the Sea Keeps: Poetry of the Tsunami (Bayeux Arts), and co-editor with Michael Wurster of Along These Rivers: Poetry and Photography from Pittsburgh (Quadrant). Her chapbook, Dinner Date, was published by Finishing Line Press in July 2009.

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

Walt Peterson has had several collections of poetry published, including Rebuilding the Porch (Nightshade Press, 1990), Image/Song (Seton Hill University, 1994) and a collaboration with the sculptor James Shipman.  He was the winner of the 1998 Acorn-Rukeyser Award (Unfinished Monument Press). His book, In the Waiting Room of the Speedy Muffler King, was published in 1999. For some years he worked as a teacher for the Pittsburgh Public Schools and has taught writing in places as diverse as Arcadia, California, and Cracow, Poland. In 2009, he created a collaborative project between poets, sculptors and artists resulted in the volume, Fission of Form.  He has long been affiliated with the International Poetry Forum, the Pennsylvania Council for the Arts and currently leads writing workshops at Pine Grove State Correctional Institute.  He enjoys restoring rusty British sports cars and sailing, and has helped raise two sons, Kevin and Eric. His latest book is a collection of short fiction and the winner of the Gribble Fiction Award for 2009, Depth of Field. 

Walt Peterson’s Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Arlene Weiner, a MacDowell Colony fellow, has had poems published in a variety of journals, anthologized in Along These Rivers (Quadrant), Eating Her Wedding Dress (Ragged Sky) and Thatchwork (Delaware Valley Poets), and read by Garrison Keillor on his Writer’s Almanac.  Escape Velocity, a collection of her poems, was published by Ragged Sky in 2006. Poet Joy Katz wrote of it, “I want to keep my favorite of these beautifully alert, surprising poems with me as I grow old.”

Arlene Weiner’s Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Jimmy Cvetic reads Fallen Heroes

Jimmy Cvetic - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Open Mic

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

June 21, 2011 (Alberts, Simms, Wurster)

Hemingway’s Summer Poetry Series

June 21, 2011

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)

Michael Simms is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Autumn House Press, a nonprofit publisher of poetry books.  He is the author of four collections of poems – The Happiness of Animals, Migration, Notes on Continuing Light, and The Fire-eater -- as well as the co-author (with Jack Myers) of The Longman Dictionary and Handbook of Poetry. Simms presently teaches publishing in the Master of Fine Arts Program at Chatham University; he lives in Pittsburgh with his wife Eva and their two children.

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

Michael Wurster, the author of The British Detective (Main Street Rag, 2009), was born in Moline, Illinois, and has lived in Iowa, Virginia and Pennsylvania. He is a founding member of Pittsburgh Poetry Exchange and for many years taught at Pittsburgh Center for the Arts School. His two previous poetry collections are The Cruelty of the Desert (Cottage Wordsmiths, 1989) and The Snake Charmer's Daughter (ELEMENOPE, 2000). He is co-editor, with Judith R. Robinson, of the anthology Along These Rivers: Poetry & Photography from Pittsburgh (Quadrant Press, 2008). 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)

Jimmy Cvetic reads A Piece of Blue Sky

Jimmy Cvetic - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Jimmy Cvetic reads Yanko the Ditchdigger

Jimmy Cvetic - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Open Mic

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

June 14, 2011 (Hatcher, Khoury, Murabito, Schneider)

Hemingway’s Summer Poetry Series

June 14, 2011

Roberta Hatcher teaches French at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. She was a 2009 finalist for the Patricia Dobler Poetry Award, and her poetry has appeared in The Comstock Review, YAWP,  and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. She has been a guest on WYEP’s Prosody and was a featured reader in a session devoted to Border-Crossing Poetry at the 2010 Northeast Modern Language Association conference in Montreal. Her recently completed poetry manuscript is titled Boundary Waters.  

Roberta Hatcher's Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Jill Khoury's poems have appeared in numerous journals including Sentence, Harpur Palate. and a feature issue of the journal mannequin envy, that showcased poets who were also visual artists.  She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize twice by Breath and Shadow: A Journal of Disability Culture and Literature.  Her most recent publications include a contribution to Open Thread, a regional review that features writers from Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia, and  Borrowed Bodies, a chapbook that was released in 2009 from Pudding House Press. Her work is forthcoming in an anthology of prose and poetry by Carnegie Mellon University creative writing alumni. She currently teaches writing at Duquesne University.

Jill Khoury's Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Stephen Murabito teaches composition, fiction, and poetry at University of Pittsburgh Greensburg. He was the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry.  His short stories have appeared in such places as North American Review, Antietam Review, Sou’wester, Brooklyn Review, and Paper Street. His poems have appeared in such places as Beloit Poetry Journal, Mississippi Review, Italian-Americana, and 5AM.  His books of poetry are The Oswego Fugues (2005), Communion of Asiago (2006), and Lowering the Body (2008), all from Star Cloud Press.

Steve Murabito's Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Mike Schneider has written widely in Pittsburgh publications, including award-winning articles in Pittsburgh Magazine. He organized the February 2003 reading in Market Square where 27 Pittsburgh-area poets expressed their opposition to impending war in Iraq.  He received a 2003-04 Creative Artists Stipend in Arts Commentary from the Pennsylvania Council of the Arts.  His poems appear in several anthologies and many journals, including 5 AM, Atlanta Review, Atlanta Review, Shenandoah, Poet Lore and Poetry.  His chapbook, Rooster, came out in 2004.

Mike Schneider's Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Jimmy Cvetic Reads The City Held Hostage

Jimmy Cvetic - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Open Mic

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

June 7, 2011 (Bogen, Smith, Roffman)

Hemingway’s Summer Poetry Series

June 7, 2011

Deborah Bogen's Landscape with Silos won the X.J. Kennedy Poetry Prize 2005. Bogen's poems and reviews appear widely. Recent poetry can be found in Shenandoah, The Gettysburg Review, Field, Margie and Poetry International. Her chapbook, Living by the Children's Cemetery, was selected by Edward Hirsch as winner of the 2002 ByLine Press Chapbook Competition. Although her North Dakota roots provide the backdrop for some of the her poems, she now lives in Pittsburgh PA, where she runs free fiction and poetry workshops for talented overworked academics.

Deborah Bogen's Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Ellen McGrath Smith teaches at the University of Pittsburgh and in the Carlow University Madwomen in the Attic program.  Poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Cerise, The Same, Kestrel, Oranges & Sardines, Diner, 5 a.m., Oxford Magazine, The Prose Poem, Southern Poetry Review, Descant (Canada), and others.  Her critical work has been published in Sagetrieb, The Denver Quarterly, The American Book Review and other journals. Her poetry has been recognized with an Academy of American Poets award, a Rainmaker Award from Zone 3 magazine, and, more recently, a 2007 Individual Artist grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. 

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

Rosaly DeMaios Roffman taught creative writing, myth and literature and founded a Myth/Folklore Studies Center at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. She co-edited the prize-winning anthology Life on the Line and is the author of Going to Bed Whole, Tottering Palaces, The Approximate Message, and In the Fall of a Sparrow.  She has read her poems in Ireland, Greece, Mexico, Israel, Spain and the Czech Republic and was a featured writer on the BBC's "Writer from Abroad" series.  The recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Witter Bynner Foundation, Roffman was also was honored with a Distinguished Faculty Award from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Her poems have been translated into Slovak, Spanish, Japanese and Chinese, and she has completed eighteen collaborative pieces with composers and dance companies. Her work reflects an abiding interest in “the ordinary and the sacred.”  Her book of poetry, I Want to Thank My Eyes, will be published this fall by Tebot Bach.

Rosaly DeMaios Roffman’s Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Jimmy Cvetic Reads The Evidence Room

Jimmy Cvetic - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Open Mic

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

May 31, 2011 (Allen, Ellis, Esaias, Hopper)

Hemingway’s Summer Poetry Series

May 31, 2011

Nikki Allen is a 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 honeydunce.com

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

Angele Ellis
Angele Ellis's poetry has appeared on a theatre marquee (after winning Pittsburgh Filmmakers' G-20 Haiku Contest in 2009), and in journals, periodicals, and anthologies. The author of a previous book of poems, Arab on Radar (Six Gallery Press), she was a 2008 recipient of an Individual Creative Artist Fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and a prizewinner in the 2007 RAWI Competition for Creative Prose. Her longtime peace and community activism has included civil disobedience, and led to co-authorship of the diversity workbook Dealing With Differences (Corwin Press). Born in Syracuse, NY to a first-generation Lebanese American father and Italian American mother, she makes her home in the Friendship neighborhood of Pittsburgh.  Her new chapbook, Spared, was recently published by Main Street Rag.

Angele Ellis's Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)
 

Timons Esaias lives in Pittsburgh, in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood, with his wife who is a physician. He writes satire, speculative fiction, poetry, and the occasional essay. His work has appeared in over a dozen different countries, and fifteen languages. He has been a finalist for the British Science Fiction Award (1998) and the Rhysling Award (5 nominations, Third Place 1997), and he won the Asimov's Readers' Award for Poetry (2005). He is a member of the Pittsburgh Poetry Exchange;  Demeritus of the  Worldwrights; a certified Rogue in Lair #1 of the Rascals, Rogues & Rapscallions. He is Adjunct Faculty at Seton Hill University, primarily in the Masters Program for Writing Popular Fiction.

Tim Esaias's Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Justin Hopper lives as a writer and artist in Pittsburgh. His arts criticism and journalism has appeared in publications worldwide for more than a decade. Public Record, an artist's book of documentary poetry based on 19th-century Pittsburgh crime reports, was published by Encyclopedia Destructica in 2010. These Golden Legends, A book of poetry written in response to Maxo Vanka’s Millvale murals is forthcoming in fall of 2011.

Justin Hopper - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Jimmy Cvetic Reads Phone Call to Officer Spagarelli

Jimmy Cvetic - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

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