Hemingway’s Summer Poetry Series
July 31, 2012
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 1st
prize, Prosody/Writer’s Café creative non-fiction award. Her non-fiction was
featured on WYEP’s Prosody in 2009.
Madalon
Amenta acted in
productions of the Provincetown Playhouse and Circle in the Square in New York City, and Poets’ Theater in Cambridge, MA.
As a nurse she published over 80 clinical and academic papers, manuals,
newsletters, research reports and books, one of which won an American Journal
of Nursing Book of the Year Award. She is a member of Madwomen in the
Attic and the Pittsburgh Poetry Exchange, and her poetry has appeared in
Salon.com, Pittsburgh City Paper, Pittsburgh
Post Gazette, Signatures, Natural Language and Stories about Time.
Her chapbook, Kandinsky and the Stars, (Finishing Line Press, 2010)
was a finalist in both the Negative Capability Press International and the Blue
Light Press Chapbook Competitions.
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.
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 co-author, with Jason Baldinger of 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.
Victoria Dym is a graduate of Ringling Brother’s
Barnum and Bailey Clown College
and has earned a BA in Philosophy, from the University
of Pittsburgh as well as her MFA in
Creative Writing-Poetry at Carlow
University. Victoria has appeared in
movies, on stage, television, radio and has had a stand-up comedy career. Her
poetry has been published in various anthologies, The Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette, City Paper, and Pearl
Magazine. She is certified as a Laughter Yoga Leader, an active Madwoman, and a
frequent improviser at Steel City Improv. Victoria
has taught poetry at the winter and summer Young Writer’s Institutes, has
guest-lectured at Seton Hill University
and Mellon Middle School, and founded Writers in
the Woods in 2011.
Gene Hirsch
As a youngster, Gene Hirsch studied “New” music with
Stefan Wolpe. He received an MD degree with an academic career in Cardiology,
Geriatrics, and Humanities in Medicine. He has written poetry since
medical school with poems appearing in medical journals, anthologies, Crossing
Limits, Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette, and others. In 1992, Gene initiated a writing program
at the John C.
Campbell Folk
School, Brasstown, NC,
in which he teaches and has produced five anthologies featuring students and an
active poetry community. He has been resident poet at the folk school,
Consortium Ethics Program (Univ. Pitt.), and Forbes Hospice. He attends
the Pittsburgh Poetry Exchange.
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.
Sarah
Williams-Devereux is a
transformative language artist, and teaches poetry for the Madwomen in the
Attic workshops. Her work has been published in Sampsonia Way Magazine, Pittsburgh City
Paper, The New Yinzer’s Pittsburgh
Love Stories anthology, and Voices from the Attic. She has read her
work locally at various venues, including Prosody, the Choice Cuts Reading
Series, The New Yinzer Reading Series, She Said, and The Hungry Sphinx Reading
Series. She is the co-author of the research monograph Our Stories, Our
Selves: A3P: The African American Arts Project: A Study of African American
Young Adult Arts Participation (PITT ARTS, University of Pittsburgh,
2006).
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 movie, Warrior, filmed in Pittsburgh, and recently gave a featured
reading of his poetry at Beyond Baroque in Venice, CA with his friend, the
actor Nick Nolte. In 2010, Jimmy's book of poetry, The Secret
Society of Dog, was published by Awesome Books/Lascaux Editions.
Open Mic
