June 28, 2016 (Hatcher, Krygowski, Stupp, Wray, Wurster)

Hemingway's Poetry Series

June 21, 2016

Featured Readers

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(Nobody Snuck Out Early!)

Standing: Joan Bauer, Jimmy Cvetic, John Stupp, Roberta Hatcher & Lawrence Wray

Seated: Nancy Krygowski & Michael Wurster

Roberta Hatcher’s poetry has appeared in The Comstock Review, Main Street Rag, St. Petersburg Review, Storm Cellar, Rune, Pittsburgh’s City Paper, and the Post-Gazette, among others. She has been a finalist for the Patricia Dobler Award, was runner-up for the Arkadii Dragomoshchenko Prize for Innovative Use of Language in Poetry, and her poem French Lesson #3 was nominated for Best American Poets 2014. She holds a Ph.D. in French from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and currently tutors candidates for citizenship at the Greater Pittsburgh Literacy Council. Her chapbook French Lessons (Finishing Line Press) will be published this summer.

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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.

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John Stupp is the author of the 2007 chapbook The Blue Pacific and the 2015 full-length collection Advice from the Bed of a Friend both by Main Street Rag. His new book How Tuesday Began will be published by Finishing Line Press. Recent poetry has appeared or will be appearing in SHARKPACK Poetry Review, The White Whale Review, The Rising Phoenix Review, The Pittsburgh Poetry Review, SHARK REEF Literary Magazine, By&By Poetry and on the radio show Prosody. He lives in Sewickley, Pennsylvania.

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Lawrence Wray’s poems have appeared in Poetry Salzburg Review, Heart, Innisfree Poetry Journal, Crab Orchard Review, and Cider Press Review, among others. His poem “At the Moment of Passing, Clocks” is included in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette anthology of art and poetry called Verse Envisioned. Lawrence studied Comparative Literature at Binghamton University, English at Duquesne University, and is a member of an annual meeting of poets which grew out of the Frost Place. Conte and Weave nominated his work for a Pushcart Prize. His collection of poems, The Night People Imagine, was a finalist for the Patricia Bibby Memorial Prize at Tebot Bach Press, and for the Brighthorse Poetry Prize, as well as the Antivenom Prize at Elixir Press.

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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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Open Mic

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June 21, 2016 (Bauer, Buccilli, Ferrarelli, Mennies, Ramirez, Fasano)

Hemingway's Poetry Series

June 21, 2016

Featured Readers

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(And They're Still Smiling!)

Standing: Adriana Ramirez, Joseph Fasano, Jimmy Cvetic, Daniela Buccilli & Rina Ferrarelli

Seated: Rachel Mennies & Joan Bauer

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

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Daniela Buccilli’s poetry has appeared or is upcoming in Paterson Literary Review, Free State Review, Concho River 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 from University of Pittsburgh (2001). Her book-length manuscript Hippie Teachers was a semi-finalist for the 2015 Perugia Press Prize.

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Rina Ferrarelli's The Bread We Ate, a collection of original poetry, was published in 2012 by Guernica. She has also published two other works of original poetry, Dreamsearch (malafemmina) and Home is Foreign Country (Eadmer), and two bilingual editions of translations, I Saw the Muses (Guernica), and Winter Fragments (Chelsea). She was awarded an NEA and the Italo Calvino Prize. Two of her poems, "The Young Immigrant Writes to a Friend Back Home" and "Mayflies" were Included in WRITTEN ON WATER, Writings about the Allegheny River (Mayapple Press, 2013).

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Rachel Mennies is the author of The Glad Hand of God Points Backwards (2014), the winner of the Walt McDonald First-Book Prize in Poetry at Texas Tech University Press, and the chapbook No Silence in the Fields (2012) from Blue Hour Press. She teaches in the First-Year Writing Program at Carnegie Mellon, and has worked as the reviews editor at AGNI and as an instructor of creative writing and composition at Penn State.

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Adriana E. Ramírez is a 2015 PEN/Fusion Award-winning nonfiction writer, storyteller, digital maker, and performance poet based in Pittsburgh. She teaches in the English Department at the University of Pittsburgh, co-runs the Steel City Poetry Slam, and co-founded Aster(ix) Journal. Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Guernica, Convolution, HEArt, Apogee, and Nerve.com, as well as on hundreds of stages across the country. Ramirez is the author of two poetry chapbooks, The Swallows (Blue Sketch Press) and Trusting in Imaginary Spaces (Tired Hearts Press); she is also the nonfiction editor of DISMANTLE (Thread Makes Blanket Press).

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Joseph Fasano is the author of three collections of poems, Vincent (Cider Press Review, 2015), Inheritance (Cider Press Review, 2014), and Fugue for Other Hands (Cider Press Review, 2013), winner of the Cider Press Review Book Award. His honors include two Pushcart Prize nominations, the RATTLE Poetry Prize, and a finalist nomination for the Missouri Review Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize. He teaches at Manhattanville College and in the graduate and undergraduate writing programs at Columbia University. He lives in New York.

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Open Mic

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June 14, 2016 (Norman, Bryner, Smith, Daniels, Cvetic)

Hemingway's Poetry Series

June 14, 2016

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 new book of poetry, Way Station, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.

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Jeanne Bryner was born in Appalachia and grew up in Newton Falls, Ohio. She's a practicing registered nurse and graduate of Trumbull Memorial Hospital's School of Nursing and Kent State University's Honors College. Her books include Breathless, Blind Horse: Poems, Eclipse: Stories, Tenderly Lift Me: Nurses Honored, Celebrated and Remembered, The Wedding Of Miss Meredith Mouse, No Matter How Many Windows, which won the 2011 Tillie Olsen Award for Creative Writing from the Working Class Studies Association, Smoke: Poems, which won a 2012 American Journal of Nursing Book of the Year Award and Early Farming Woman. Her poetry has been adapted for the stage and performed in Ohio, New York, Texas, Kentucky, West Virginia, California and Edinburgh, Scotland. She teaches writing workshops in schools, universities, community centers, cancer support groups and assisted living facilities. She lives with her husband in Newton Falls, Ohio near a dairy farm.

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Larry Smith is a native of Mingo Junction, Ohio, in Appalachia's Panhandle region of the Ohio River Valley. Smith has worked as a steel mill laborer, a high school teacher, a college professor, and a writer and editor. A graduate of Mingo Central High School, Muskingum College, and Kent State University, he is the author of eight books of poetry, a book of memoirs, five books of fiction, two biographies of authors Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Kenneth Patchen, and two books of translations from the Chinese. Now a professor emeritus of Bowling Green State University's Firelands College, he is the director of the Firelands Writing Center and of Bottom Dog Press. He has received an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Ohio Arts Council and a Fulbright Lectureship in American Literature to Italy. His latest book, Lake Winds: Poems, deals with life along the shores of Lake Erie where he lives with wife Ann.

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Jim Daniels is the Thomas Stockman Baker University Professor at Carnegie Mellon University and has been teaching creative writing at CMU since 1981. Recent books include Apology to the Moon (2015), Birth Marks (2013) and Having a Little Talk with Capital P Poetry (2011), poetry; Eight Mile High (2014), and Trigger Man, short fiction (2011). He has written four produced screenplays, including, most recently, "The End of Blessings.” Street, a book of his poems accompanying the photographs of Charlee Brodsky, won the Tillie Olsen Prize from the Working-Class Studies Association. In addition, he has edited or co-edited four anthologies, including Letters to America: Contemporary American Poetry on Race, and American Poetry: The Next Generation. His poems have been featured on Garrison Keillor's "Writer's Almanac," in Billy Collins' Poetry 180 anthologies, and Ted Kooser's "American Life in Poetry" series. His poem "Factory Love" is displayed on the roof of a race car. He has received the Brittingham Prize for Poetry, two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and two from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. His poems have appeared in the Pushcart Prize and Best American Poetry anthologies.

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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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June 7, 2016 (St. John, Wesley, Terman, Derricotte)

Hemingway's Poetry Series

June 7, 2016

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 Review, Poet 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's web site where you can check out future projects and events: www.richardstjohnpoet.com 

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Patricia Jabbeh Wesley is a Liberian civil war survivor who immigrated to the United States with her family in 1991 during the fourteen year Liberian civil war. She is the author of four books of poetry: Where the Road Turns (Autumn House Press), The River is Rising Autumn House Press), Becoming Ebony, (Southern Illinois University Press) and Before the Palm Could Bloom: Poems of Africa (New Issues Press) and a 5^th collection,When the Wanderers Come Home, (University of Nebraska Press, fall 2016). Her poem, “One Day: Love Song for Divorced Women” was selected by US Poet Laureate, Ted Kooser, as an American Life in Poetry June 13, 2011 featured poem. Patricia has won several awards and grants, including the 2011 President Barack Obama Award from the Blair County NAACP, the 2010 Liberian Award for her poetry and her mentorship of young Liberians in the Diaspora, a Penn State University AESEDA Collaborative Grant for her research on Liberian Women's Trauma stories from the Civil War, a 2002 Crab Orchard Award for her second book of poems, a World Bank Fellowship, among others. She is an Associate Professor of English and creative writing at Penn State University's Altoona campus.

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Philip Terman’s books include The House of Sages, Book of the Unbroken Days 

and Rabbis of the Air and most recently, Our Portion: New and Selected Poems

(Autumn House, 2015). 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 Clarion University 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.

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Toi Derricotte is the author of The Undertaker’s Daughter (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011) and four earlier collections of poetry, including Tender, winner of the 1998 Paterson Poetry Prize. Her literary memoir,The Black Notebooks (W.W. Norton), received the 1998 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Non-Fiction and was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Her honors include, among many others, the 2012 Paterson Poetry Prize for Sustained Literary Achievement, the 2012 PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry, the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, two Pushcart Prizes and the Distinguished Pioneering of the Arts Award from the United Black Artists. Derricotte is the co-founder of Cave Canem Foundation (with Cornelius Eady), Professor Emerita at the University of Pittsburgh and a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.

Open Mic

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Jimmy Cvetic Reads From Scales of Just-Us

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