Tuesday, May 26, 2015

May 26, 2015 (Pittsburgh Poetry Exchange)

Hemingway's Poetry Series
May 26, 2015

Judith Dorian earned a doctorate in musicology from the University of Pittsburgh, and wrote the program notes for the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra for some years. She has exhibited her art and published poetry in several journals.  She is the author of a children's book of poetry, A Tiny Little Door, and  narrated a CD of the book that can be found at: www.creativekidswork.com.


Mark Goldman began writing poetry in high school and continued through college. After a brief time in Chicago with VISTA, then a 13 month tour with the US Army in Korea, he was active in the Philadelphia poetry scene before moving to Pittsburgh, where he became involved with the Pittsburgh Poetry Exchange and completed his first volume of poems. In 1982 he was accepted into the MFA Playwrights Program at CMU, and completed his first play, Cool Cucumbers, about a group of high school buddies who re-unite after serving in Vietnam.  Then for nearly 20 years given the demands of work and family, he found little time to write, but is now working on a collection of poems, Canoe Trip to Possum Lake, as well as a play.  Recent work has appeared in The Brentwood Anthology and is forthcoming in June and August 2015 editions of Uppagus.


Barry Govenor was born and raised in the steel town of Charleroi, PA, and now resides with his wife and two dogs in Brentwood. He earned his B.A. in biology at California University (PA) and split his healthcare career between Nuclear Medicine and Infection Control & Sterilization Technology. His subject material draws from his mill town roots and outdoor experiences and has appeared in The Pittsburgh Post Gazette,The Pittsburgh Quarterly, Flip Side, The Loyalhanna Review, The Pittsburgh Quarterly and Avocet.  He is a longtime member of Pittsburgh Poetry Exchange and has led poetry workshops at Brentwood Public Library, where he is currently a member of the Board of Trustees.              


Joe Kaldon lives in Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, where he has resided most of his life.  He works as a product manager for a steel company and is a graduate of Penn State.  His work has appeared in theTaproot Literary Review, Eye Contact, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and the blog 99 Poems for the 99 Percent. His chapbook, Rust Belt, is available at his website, www.joekaldon.net. 


Sheila Kelly is a retired psychotherapist, poet and playwright. She is a member of the Madwomen in the Attic poetry workshops, Pittsburgh Poetry Exchange and a regular facilitator for the Pittsburgh Writers’ Studio. Three of Sheila’s plays received staged readings at the 2009 Pittsburgh Three Rivers Arts Festival. She has worked for many years with gifted middle school writers and published the annual, St. Bede’s Quill. Most recent work appears in Brief Encounters: Ekphrases from the Spinning Plate Gallery. Other poems upcoming in Voices from the Attic: Volume XIX.


Kathy McGregor grew up in a rural Western PA town, left home for the bigger world, then settled inPittsburgh long enough ago to qualify as “almost a native” She’s worked as an English teacher, union organizer, non-profit director, social change advocate, and headed her own consulting business. She currently owns and operates a specialty native plant nursery here in the city. Several of her poems appeared in the former Mill Hunk Herald. She is a regular in the CMU OSHER Poetry class and is active with the Pittsburgh Poetry Exchange.


Edward Murray is the author of Stranger’s Pilgrimage. Stranger has been published in Dionne’s Story, two anthologies of poetry and prose for the awareness of violence against women, as well as other publications. He is a member, and past president, of the Langston Hughes Poetry Society of Pittsburgh. He is a member of the Pittsburgh Writer’s studio and the Pittsburgh Poetry Exchange. He likes avocados. He is an artist, filmmaker, photographer and poet and his work can be seen and heard at elmurray.com and around the Braddock Carnegie Library. He welcomes questions, comments, or exchanges of ideas by email: edleemu1@verizon.net.  


Stephen Pusateri lives in the South Hills and works for WYEP-FM on its soul and blues programs.  He studied English literature at the University of Pittsburgh and is actively involved in Pittsburgh's Bhutanese refugee community.

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Judith R. Robinson is the author of three poetry collections: The Blue Heart  (Finishing Line Press),Orange Fire (Main Street Rag) and Dinner Date (Finishing Line Press). She is also the author of The Beautiful Wife and Other Stories (Aegina Press).  She is the poetry editor of Signatures (Osher, Carnegie Mellon), 2001, 2003, 2006, 2012 and The Poetry of Margaret Menamin, (Main Street Rag, three volumes) as well as Living Inland (Bennington Press).  She co-edited  Along These River: Poetry and Photography from Pittsburgh (Quadrant Publishing, 2008) and Only the Sea Keeps: Poetry of the Tsunami  (Rupa, Inc. and Bayeux Arts, 2005), and most recently, co-editor of The Brentwood Anthology (Lummox Press, 2014). Her poetry awards include the Poetica Chapbook Competition (runner-up, 2011), the Poetry Ark Award (2010), Jane’s Stories Drabble Competition, (2006), and the Skipping Stones Multicultural Award (2005). She currently teaches poetry for Osher at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh.

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Lucile Seibert (Awaiting Bio Notes)


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Squirrel Hill native Stuart Sheppard hit the road immediately after graduating from Kenyon College, working as a literary editor for a west coast publisher, an account supervisor on Madison Avenue, a marketing director on Wall Street, and finally, a technology executive for several start-ups in Cambridge, before returning home last year.  During this time he wrote for a variety of national publications and, in 2003, his first novel, Spindrift, was published, which garnered positive reviews. Sheppard has traveled widely on expeditions to places like Nepal and Patagonia, which continue to inspire his writing.  He has also studied with many writers and editors, and is happy to have survived one of Gordon Lish’s infamous workshops held in New York City in the 1990s.  He is currently working on a poetry manuscript and writes reviews for The City Paper.


Open Mic

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Tuesday, May 19, 2015

May 19, 2015 (Kane, Krygowski, St. John and Terman)

Hemingway's Poetry Series
May 19, 2015

Kelli Stevens Kane is a poet, playwright, and oral historian. She's a Cave Canem Fellow, an August Wilson Center Fellow, a Flight School Fellow, and has twice received Advancing Black Arts in Pittsburgh grants from The Pittsburgh Foundation. Kane's poetry manuscript, Hallelujah Science, was a Finalist for the Four Way Books Levis Poetry Prize, and a Semifinalist for the Persea Books Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize in Poetry. As a Cave Canem Fellow, she developed and taught a community-based workshop, "Being Ourselves in Our Poetry." Kane performs nationally, including appearances at the Cornelia Street Cafe, Bowery Poetry Club, and La Mama in New York City. Kane's opened both the National Poetry Slam in Cambridge MA, and TedXWomen Pittsburgh. She's performed her one woman show, Big George, as the premier artist in the New Hazlett Theater's groundbreaking CSA (Community Supported Art) Performance Series, and at Westfield State University in Westfield,MA.


Nancy Krygowski‘s book of poems, Velocity, won the 2006 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize from the University of Pittsburgh Press.  She’s received grants from the PA Council on the Arts and from the Pittsburgh Foundation, plus residencies at the Jentel Foundation and The Kimmel Nelson Harding Center for the Arts.  She works as an adult literacy instructor.


Richard St. John is a nationally published poet whose books include Each Perfected Name (Truman State University Press, 2015), The Pure Inconstancy of Grace (published in 2005 by Truman State University Press, as first runner-up for the T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry), and Shrine (a long poem released as a chapbook in 2011). His work has also appeared in Sewanee ReviewPoet Lore, and Chautauqua, as well as many other periodicals and anthologies.  He has read widely across the country, connecting not only with literary audiences but with listeners new to poetry. Rick now has a web site where you can check out future projects and events.


Philip Terman’s books include The House of SagesBook of the Unbroken Days and Rabbis of the Air. His poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies, including The Georgia Review, Poetry, The Kenyon Review, The Gettysburg Review, Tikkun, and Blood to Remember: American Poets Respond to the Holocaust. He is the recipient of the Sow’s Ear Chapbook Award, The Kenneth Patchen Prize, and the Anna Davidson Rosenberg Award for Poems on the Jewish Experience. He teaches creative writing and literature at ClarionUniversity and co-directs the Chautauqua Writers’ Festival at the Chautauqua Institute. With his wife Christine and their daughters Mimi and  Bella, he resides in a red-brick schoolhouse outside of Grove City, Pennsylvania.


Open Mic


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Tuesday, May 12, 2015

May 12, 2015 (Pittsburgh Poetry Society)

Hemingway's Poetry Series
May 12, 2015

Nancy Esther James has had her poems published in various journals and literary magazines includingChristianity and Literature, Time of Singing, and Poet Lore, as well as in publications such as Friends Journal and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Her poem, “To a Friend,” originally published in Christianity and Literature, was reprinted in the 2003 Poet’s Market.  Her collection of poems, No Time to Hurry, was published by Dawn Valley Press (Westminster College) in 1979. She has taught poetry workshops at the St. Davids Christian Writers Conference and The Writing Academy Seminar and has judged poetry contests for St. Davids and for the Pittsburgh Poetry Society. Her chapbook, Resilient Spirit: Poems for Lorraine, was published in March 2013 by Finishing Line Press.


Liane Ellison Norman's recent book of poems, Breathing the West: Great Basin Poems, was published by Bottom Dog Press in 2012, and her chapbook, Driving Near the Old Federal Arsenal, by Finishing Line Press in 2012 as well. Her poetry has appeared in North American Review, Kestrel, The Fourth River, 5 AM, Grasslimb,Rune, Hot Metal Press and the Voices From the Attic and Come Together: Imagine Peace anthologies. She won the Wisteria Prize for poetry in 2006 from Paper Journey Press and has published two earlier books of poetry,The Duration of Grief and Keep, a book about nonviolent protest against nuclear bomb parts makers, Mere Citizens: United, Civil and Disobedient, a biography, Hammer of Justice: Molly Rush and the Plowshares Eight, a novel, Stitches in Air: A Novel About Mozart's Mother, and many articles, essays and reviews.


A career educator, Christine Pasinski taught secondary English in the West Mifflin Area School District for over 36 years. Following her career in public education, she supervised student teachers for Penn State University. A lifelong devotee of poetry, she took her high school and her university students to the International Poetry Forum, where she served on the Advisory Council for 36 years. Currently, she enjoys membership in the Pittsburgh Poetry Society. Her poems have been published in numerous literary journals, and she has read them at various venues in the city. In 2011 she published a book of her poetry, Rustlings of Regret.


Fred Peterson grew up on rice farms throughout Southeast Arkansas in the 1940's and 1950's, the son of a sharecropper and the seventh of eight children.  His poetry takes one on a journey with a family rich in love.  Ateacher early in his career, his life-path took him from Arkansas to St. Louis and to Pittsburgh with his life-partner where they have lived for 30 years.  He is past president of Pittsburgh Poetry Society. His book of poetry, Writing by Flashlight, was published  by Awesome Books in 2012.


Christine Aikens Wolfe is a reading specialist with the Pittsburgh Public Schools. Christine has published poems in Sonnetto Poesia, a bi-lingual quarterly out of Ottawa since fall 2006.  Her poetry, fiction, and articles have appeared in the publications of the Western Pennsylvania Writing Project, including Parachute, the WPWP Bulletin, Riverspeak, and Threads, and in the Pittsburgh Poetry Society's  bi-annual magazine, The Potter's Wheel.  Her poetry has also been published in Woman Becoming and Poetry Magazine, and the multi-media book, Fission and Form. She is the co-editor of The Poetic Classroom (Autumn House Press) and currently serves as president of the Pittsburgh Poetry Society. 


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Tuesday, May 5, 2015

May 5, 2015 (Madwomen In the Attic)

Hemingway's Poetry Series
May 5, 2015

Brianna Altieri received a BA from Franklin and Marshall College in Religious Studies and English. She taught high school English as a Teach for America Corp member in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Her poetry has appeared in Plume and Aurelia. 


Daniela Buccilli’s poetry has appeared or is upcoming in Paterson Literary Review, Free State Review, ConchoRiver Review, uppagus, Italian Americana: Cultural and Historical Review, Rune, Voices from the Attic, Main Street Rag, and The Fourth River. She has studied with the Madwomen for nearly ten years. Her MFA is fromUniversity of Pittsburgh (2001). Her book-length manuscript Hippie Teachers was a semi-finalist for the 2015 Perugia Press Prize.


Julie Cecchini is a member of Monroeville Poets, Pittsburgh Writer’s Studio, and Madwomen in the Attic.  Her poems have appeared in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, Loyalhanna Review, Innisfree, Tattoo Highway and others. 


Cj Coleman is a resident of Edgewood and has resided in the Pittsburgh area since 1988.  She is a member of the Madwomen in the Attic and a Western Pennsylvania Writing Project (WPWP) 2000 Fellow. She is a Pittsburgh Public School teacher currently teaching 5th and 6th grader Creative Writing at the Pittsburgh Gifted Center, and has co-directed the WPWP Summer Institute for Teachers since 2003. During her free moments, she writes. Her work has been published in the Pittsburgh City Paper's Chapter and Verse, and numerous WPWP and Madwomen in the Attic anthologies.  


Callie DiSabato is a new poet who started writing this past summer after she participated in the Western Pennsylvania Writing Project’s Summer Institute for Teachers. She enjoys writing poetry with her students and has begun testing the waters of more serious writing by joining the Madwomen for this Spring’s series of workshops. This will be her first poetry reading.


Katie L. Filicky lives and works as a full-time writer in Pittsburgh. She has participated in several Madwomen workshops, the University of Iowa Summery Writing Festival, GPWS Amherst Writers & Artists™ Method, and many other writing programs around the states. She served as a reader for Creative Nonfiction's 50th Anniversary Issue and helped pick the final pieces. She is currently working on a collection of poems that grapple with wayfinding.


Michelle Maher's poems have appeared in several journals, including The
Georgetown Review, Atlanta Review, Chautauqua Literary Journal, and U.S.1 Worksheets. In 2012, she won the Patricia Dobler Poetry Award given by Carlow University, with Toi Derricotte acting as judge. She is an English professor at La Roche College.


Open Mic


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