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)