Tuesday, June 11, 2013

June 11, 2013 (McDermott, St. John, Carson, Carter-Jones)



Hemingway’s Summer Poetry Series
June 11, 2013

Sharon McDermott is a poet, who teaches in the upper school of Winchester Thurston School. She is the author of three small collections of poetry: Voluptuous (Ultima Obscura Press), Alley Scatting (Parallel Press, U. of Wisconsin) and most recently, Bitter Acoustic (2012, Jacar Press.) McDermott is a past recipient of both an artist grant from The Pittsburgh Foundation and a PA Council on the Arts grant. She is also a musician, who likes to mix music into her poetry readings whenever possible.


Rick St. John studied English at Princeton University (B.A.) and the University of Virginia (M.A.). Following 20 years of work in community development, Rick completed a mid-career Loeb Fellowship at Harvard University, and then founded and directed "Conversations for Common Wealth,” which used poetry and other materials to help small groups of citizens connect across difference and reflect on their own contributions to the common good. His poems have appeared in Carolina Quarterly, 5 a.m., Poet Lore, Sewanee Review and many other periodicals.  His book, The Pure Inconstancy of Grace was published in 2005 by Truman State University Press. For some years, Rick was Executive Director of Autumn House Press, a non-profit literary publishing house based in Pittsburgh.  He lives in Pittsburgh with his wife Kate. 


A seventh generation Pittsburgher, Jay Carson teaches creative writing, literature, and rhetoric at Robert Morris University, where he is a University Professor and a faculty advisor to the student literary journal, Rune. Active professionally, Jay regularly presents, reads, and publishes in local and national venues. More than 60 of his poems have appeared in national literary journals, magazines, and anthologies. He has also co-edited with Judith Robinson a collection of Margaret Menamin's poetry entitled, The Snow Falls Up. His first full-length book of poetry, Cinnamon of Desire, was published in 2013 by Main Street Rag. Jay has also published a chapbook, Irish Coffee, with Coal Hill Review. Jay considers his poetry Appalachian, Irish, accessible, and the problem-solving spiritual survival of a raging, youth -- and just what you might need.


Sheila Carter-Jones has been described by Herbert Woodward Martin as one who writes with "immediacy of tone, voice and language." Much of her work to date charts in images and music the lived experiences of a small-town girl brought up in a house across from the boney dump of Republic Steel Coal Mines outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She has been published in Pennsylvania Review, Pittsburgh Quarterly, Tri-State Anthology, Blair Mountain Press and Flights. Grace Cavalieri, producer and host of "The Poet and the Poem from the Library of Congress" says that Sheila's recent book Blackberry Cobbler Song premiers a narrative poet in the greatest tradition of American storytellers.


Open Mic


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