July 28, 2015 (Baldinger, Brea, Ellis, Korn, Matcho, Pajich, Silsbe, Collins)

Hemingway's Poetry Series

July 28, 2015

Jason Baldinger has spent a life in odd jobs, if only poetry was the strangest of them he’d have far less to talk about. Somewhere in time, he has traveled the country, and wrote a few books, the latest of which “The Lower 48” (Six Gallery Press) and the chapbook “The Studs Terkel Blues” (Night Ballet Press) as well as the anthologiesLipsmack! (Night Ballet Press) and Good Noise (Thrasher Press).  A short litany of publishing credits include: The New Yinzer, Shatter Wig Press, Blast Furnace, B.E. Quarterly and Fuck Art, Let’s Dance. You can also hear audio of some poems on the bandcamp website by just typing in his name.

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Stephanie Brea has slung coffee, wrote about inventions and worked for a company that built museum exhibits. This means she likes her espresso doubled, is most likely responsible for some of the products pitched on late night infomercials and can spell archaeopteryx without the need for spell check. She is a part-time copy editor and facilitates creative writing workshops for local schools and organizations. Her work has been published in Pear Noir!, The Legendary, Nerve Cowboy and the Pittsburgh City Paper.

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Angele Ellis's poetry, fiction, and reviews have appeared in over forty publications and eight anthologies. She is author of Arab on Radar (Six Gallery), whose poems earned her a fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and Spared (a Main Street Rag Editors' Choice Chapbook). She lives in Friendship, both a neighborhood and a state of mind.

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John Korn lives in Pittsburgh. He is the author of a book of poetry titled Television Farm which can be purchased on amazon.com. He has worked as a mental health social worker for many years now. He was nominated for two Pushcart Prizes, one for his poem "14 young women" and another for his poem "Yellow lamp shade head."  He didn't win either of these prizes and he is not even sure what those prizes are.

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Adam Matcho is an obituary writer and contributor to The New Yinzer. He is a former technical writer, novelty shop clerk, basketball coach and gas station attendant. His chapbook, Six Dollars an Hour: Confessions of a Gemini Writer, was published by Liquid Paper Press and his essay collection, The Novelty Essays, was published by WPA Press. When not writing death notices, Adam tries to write about life. He lives in a former craft shop with his wife, two sons and too many animals. As Dave Newman has said, "Adam Matcho has more talent than most corporations have profits, and his vision of America is tragic and brilliant and hilarious.”

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Bob Pajich is a writer and musician from the Burgh. His latest book, The Trolleyman, was published by StantonHeights' Low Ghost Press. He is a Taurus.

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Scott Silsbe was born in Detroit. He now lives in Pittsburgh where he writes, sells books, and makes music with friends. His poems and prose have appeared in numerous print and web periodicals including Nerve Cowboy, The Chariton Review, Third Coast, The Volta, and the Cultural Weekly. He is the author of two poetry collections: Unattended Fire (Six Gallery Press, 2012) and The River Underneath the City (Low Ghost Press, 2013).

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Kristofer Collins is the Books Editor at Pittsburgh Magazine. He runs Low Ghost Press. He also owns Desolation Row Records and manages Caliban Bookshop in Oakland. His most recent chapbook is "Last Call" published by Speed & Briscoe in 2010.

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Open Mic

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Jimmy Cvetic Reads Winner Winner Chicken Dinner

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July 21, 2015 (Conley, Montesonti, Repp, Trale, Walicki, Whelan)

Hemingway's Poetry Series

July 21, 2015

Tameka Cage Conley, PhD , is a literary artist who writes poetry, fiction, and plays. In 2010, she received the August Wilson Center Fellowship. Her first play, Testimony, was produced at the Center in May 2011. An excerpt of the play is published in 24 Gun Control Plays and was performed in Los Angeles and  Sydney , Australia . In 2011, she received the Advancing the Black Arts Grant from The Pittsburgh Foundation. In 2012, she became a Cave Canem Poetry Fellow and was nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the Carol R. Brown Creative Achievement Award. Her poems are published inCallaloo, Fledgling Rag, African American Review, and forthcoming in Cave Canem Anthology XIV. An excerpt of her novel-in-progress, This Far, By Grace, is published in Huizache: The Magazine of Latino Literature. She is the 2013 awardee of the Demarest Trust grant. Her poem, "Losing," was chosen by the Pennsylvania Center for the Book as a featured poem in the 2015 Public Poetry Project.

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Frank Montesonti is the author of two full-length collections of poetry, Blight, Winner of the 2011 Barrow Street Book Prize chosen by D.A. Powell, and the book of erasure, Hope Tree (How To Prune Fruit Trees) by Black Lawrence Press. His poems have appeared in journals such as Tin House, AQR, Black Warrior Review, Poet Lore, and Poems and Plays, among many others. He holds a BA in English from Indiana University, an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Arizona, a longtime resident of Indiana, he now lives in Los Angeles and teaches at National University. 

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Between January, 1984 and May, 1985, John Repp coordinated the Hemingway’s Reading Series, bringing to the Back Room such luminaries and soon-to-be luminaries as Lynn Emanuel, Michael Chabon, Ed Ochester, Etheridge Knight, Timothy Russell, Maggie Anderson, Lawrence Joseph, Chuck Kinder, and Buddy Nordan. A 1985 graduate of the M.F.A. program at the University ofPittsburgh , his most recent collections of poetry are Music Over the Water (Alice Greene & Col, 2013) and Fat Jersey Blues, winner of the 2013 Akron Poetry Prize from the University of Akron Press . 

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Marianne Trale is a tenured professor of English at CCAC Boyce Campus who earned an MFA in Writing from the University of Pittsburgh . Her poetry has appeared in  Green Mountain Review, Thirteen, The Pennsylvania Review, After Image  and other journals.  She is a longtime free lance writer and columnist for The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, and has been awarded several National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships.  At CCAC, she was three times honored with the Student Choice Award for Extraordinary Faculty. In the early 1980's her poetry was twice awarded Second Prize and also Finalist honors from the  Academy of American Poetry Competition . From 1986 through 2000, she was a frequent reader in the Hemingway's Summer Poetry Series, and most recently featured in the Galway Kinnell Memorial Reading in January 2015. 

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Robert Walicki's poetry has appeared in Stone Highway Review, Pittsburgh City Paper, ThePittsburgh Post-Gazette, Grasslimb, and on the radio show, Prosody. His first chapbook, A Room Full of Trees, was published by Redbird Press. His next chapbook, The Almost Sound of Snow Falling, is forthcoming this winter from Night Ballet Press. He hosts and curates the monthly reading series,

VERSIFY.

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Carolyne Whelan received her MFA in poetry and nonfiction at Chatham University in 2009 where she was a finalist for Best Thesis.  She is the recipient of the 2013 Jan-ai Fellowship, the 2014 Ralph Waldo Emerson Fellowship to the Vermont Studio, and the 2015 Lucille Clifton scholarship to Squaw Valley Writer's Workshop.  Her first chapbook, The Glossary of Tania Aebi, was published by Finishing Line Press. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in a number of journals, most recently, Sugar House and Majestic Disorder. She lives in Pittsburgh, PA where she works as a freelance writer and bicycle mechanic

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Open Mic

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Jimmy Cvetic Reads Two Poems

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July 14, 2015 (Khoury, Hirsch, Adès, Karasek, Carter-Jones, Bauer)

Hemingway's Poetry Series

July 14, 2015

Jill Khoury is interested in the intersection of poetry, visual art, representations of gender, and disability. She holds an MFA from The Ohio State University. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in numerous journals, including Arsenic Lobster, Copper Nickel, Inter|rupture, and Portland Review. She edits Rogue Agent, a journal of embodied poetry and art. Her chapbook Borrowed Bodies was released from Pudding House Press in 2009. Her first full-length collection, Suites for the Modern Dancer, is forthcoming from Sundress Publications in 2016. You can find her at jillkhoury.com.

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Gene Hirsch  is a retired academic and activist who has taught human values and the emotional care of sick and dying people, to doctors and medical students for many years, and conducted poetry workshops widely for health professionals.  He volunteered (20 years) at Cleveland Medical Free Clinic and founded the Cleveland chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility.  He initiated a writing program at the John C. Campbell Folk School ,Brasstown , NC where he has taught for 22 years. His poetry has appeared in medical and non-medical journals such as Pharos (Medical Honor Society), Hiram Poetry Review, Pittsburgh Post Gazette, Journal of the American Medical Association . Numerous anthologies include the Kenyon Review Workshop Anthology (2 vols), Tyranny of the Normal and Crossing Limits (African Americans and American Jews). He produced Freeing Jonah, poets of western North Carolina (5 volumes) and has written two books.  His third and fourth books will appear later this year: Listening with the Third Ear and With Courage, With Care.

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David Adès  is an Australian poet living in Pittsburgh since 2011.  He has been a member of Friendly Street Poets since 1979.  His collection Mapping the World was commended for the Anne Elder Award 2008. His poetry is widely published and has recently been anthologized in Australian Love Poems, The Stars Like Sand: Australian Speculative Poetry,  Australian Poetry Members’ Anthology Volumes 2 (2013) and 3 (2014) and Moonstone Poetry Series 2014 Anthology of Featured Poets.  David was awarded the inauguralUniversity of Canberra Vice-Chancellor ’s International Poetry Prize 2014 for his poem ‘Dazzled’ and was also shortlisted for the Newcastle Poetry Prize 2014.

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Joseph Karasek performed as an actor and violinist with The Theater Within, an improvisational theater group inNew York City .  A former violist with the National Orchestral Association, he created school orchestras on the elementary and secondary levels., and taught music composition and music theory at Long Island University .  Living in Pittsburgh , Pa since, 1991, he has taught philosophy at the Academy for Lifelong Learning at Carnegie Mellon University .  He also led a study group on James Joyce's Ulysses there.  His poetry has been published inOnly the Sea Keeps:  Poetry of the Tsunami (Bayeux Arts), and Blue Arc West: An Anthology of California Poets(Tebot Bach), and Signatures (Osher, Carnegie Mellon).  His two books of poetry, Beyond Waking and Love and the Ten Thousand Things, were published by Tebot Bach in 2009.

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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. 

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Joan E. Bauer is the author of The Almost Sound of Drowning (Main Street Rag, 2008). Recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Chiron Review, Cider Press Review, Confrontation, The Paterson Literary Review, Slipstream, Uppagus , US 1 Worksheets, The Brentwood Anthology (Lummox Press) and Voices from the Attic ( Carlow University ). In 2007, her poem, "Sleepers," won the Earle Birney Poetry Prize from Prism International.  Joan worked for some years as an English teacher and educational counselor and now divides her time between Venice, CA, and Pittsburgh, PA where she co-hosts and curates the Hemingway Summer Poetry Series with Jimmy Cvetic.

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Open Mic

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July 7, 2015 (Wurster, Vollmer, Hayes, Ochester, Cvetic)

Hemingway's Poetry Series

July 7, 2015

Michael Wurster  has lived in Pittsburgh since 1964 and is a founding member of Pittsburgh Poetry Exchange. For 17 years, 1993-2010, he taught at Pittsburgh Center for the Arts School . In 2009, his book, The British Detective, was published by Main Street Rag. 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), and The Brentwood Anthology (Lummox Press, 2014). 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.  

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Judith Vollmer 's newest volume, Water Books, was published in 2012 Autumn House Press. Her previous collections have received the Brittingham, the Center for Book Arts, and the ClevelandState publication prizes. She is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Her essays and reviews are included in The Cambridge Companion to Baudelaire and elsewhere. She teaches at the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburgand in the Drew University MFA Program in Poetry and Poetry in Translation, and is a founding editor of the literary journal 5 AM.

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Terrance Hayes is the author of Lighthead (Penguin, 2010), which won the National  Book Award for Poetry; Wind in a Box (2006); Hip Hop Logic (2002) which won the National Poetry Series and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award; and Muscular Music (1999), winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. He has received a Whiting Writers Award, a Pushcart Prize, three Best American Poetry selections, as well as fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and the Guggenheim Foundation. He joined the faculty at the University of Pittsburgh as a full professor in 2013, and was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2014. He was the editor of The Best American Poetry 2014 published by Scribner. His new collection of poetry, How to Be Drawn, was published by Penguin in 2015.  

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Through his writing, editing and teaching, Ed Ochester has been a major force on contemporary letters for more than three decades. He edits the Pitt Poetry Series and is general editor of the Drue Heinz Literature Prize for short fiction, both published by the University of Pittsburgh Press . From 1978 to 1998 he was director of the Writing Program at the University of Pittsburgh , and was twice elected president of the Associated Writing Programs. He co-edited the poetry magazine 5AM, and lives in a rural county northeast of Pittsburgh . His recent books include Snow White Horses: Selected Poems 1973-1988 (Autumn House Press, 2001), American Poetry Now: Pitt Poetry Series Anthology ( University of Pittsburgh Press , 2007),Unreconstructed: Poems Selected and New(Autumn House Press, 2007) and Sugar Run Road (Autumn House Press, 2015). Poems just published or forthcoming in: American Poetry Review, Agni, Chiron Review, Great River Review andNerve Cowboy.

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Jimmy Cvetic has been writing and performing poetry all his life. A retired county police officer, he is 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, City Paper and other publications.  He appears in the film, Warrior, and in 2012, he read his poetry at Beyond Baroque in Venice , CA with his actor-friend and poet, Nick Nolte.  In 2010, Jimmy's book of poetry, The Secret Society of Dog was published by Awesome Books/Lascaux Editions, and a second volume, Dog Unleashed, was also published by Awesome Books in 2012.  Jimmy, his boxing gym and trainers were recently featured in the Esquire cable TV show, “White Collar Brawlers.”

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Open Mic

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