July 31, 2012 (Grand Finale)

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 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)

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.

Madalon Amenta’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 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.

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

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.

Victoria Dym’s Reading - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

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. 

Gene Hirsch’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)

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).

Sarah Williams-Devereux’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 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.

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

Open Mic

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