May 31, 2022 (Hyer, Matcho, Nguyen, Smith & Weiner)

 

 Featured Readers

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Seated L-R: Halsey Hyer & Arlene Weiner

Standing L-R: Ellen McGrath Smith, Diana Khoi Nguyen, Kristofer Collins, Joan Bauer & Adam Matcho

 

Special thanks to Anna Claire Weber of White Whale Bookstore for hosting and recording this event.

Note that a link for the entire reading is available at the bottom of this post.

Kristofer Collins is the longtime Books Editor for Pittsburgh Magazine. He is the co-curator of The Hemingway's Summer Poetry Series. His latest book The River Is Another Kind of Prayer: New & Selected Poems was published in 2020 by Kung Fu Treachery Press. His latest project, The Pittsburgh Book Review can be found at https://pittsburghbookreview.blogspot.com/. He lives in Stanton Heights with his wife, son and daughter.

Opening Comments by Kristofer Collins - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Halsey Hyer is the author of the forthcoming chapbook, [deadname], winner of the Anhinga Press 2022 Rick Campbell Chapbook Award, and the micro-chapbook of micro-poems Everything Becomes Bananas (Rinky Dink Press, 2022). They’re currently earning their MFA in Creative Writing as the 2022-2024 Margaret L. Whitford Fellow at Chatham University. They were a Creative Writing MFA candidate at Florida International University where they taught in the Creative Writing and Writing & Rhetoric programs. They’re an Editorial Assistant for Seven Kitchens Press, collective member of The Big Idea Bookstore, and the Events Coordinator at White Whale Bookstore. Their work can be found or is forthcoming in The Boiler, North American Review, Notre Dame Review, and elsewhere. Find out more—www.halseyhyer.org. 

Halsey Hyer - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)  

 

Adam Matcho was born in North Dakota, but really came up in Johnstown, PA, in the ‘90s. He has held several miserable jobs and published one book of essays and two collections of poetry. His third collection of poems, Ask Your Undertaker, is set for publication by WPA Press. 

Adam Matcho - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)   

 

A poet and multimedia artist, Diana Khoi Nguyen is the author of Ghost Of (Omnidawn 2018) and recipient of a 2021 fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. In addition to winning the 92Y Discovery Poetry Contest, 2019 Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and Colorado Book Award, she was also a finalist for the National Book Award and L.A. Times Book Prize. A Kundiman fellow, she is core faculty in the Randolph College Low-Residency MFA and an Assistant Professor at the University of Pittsburgh. This spring 2022, she is an artist-in-residence at Brown University. 

Diana Khoi Nguyen - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)   

 

Ellen McGrath Smith’s award-winning poetry, short fiction, literary criticism, and scholarship have been published in anthologies and print and online journals nationwide. She has received the Zone 3 Rainmaker Award, the Orlando Prize from the A Room of Her Own Foundation, and other honors. A teacher at the University of Pittsburgh and Carlow University, McGrath Smith holds an MFA in poetry from the University of Pittsburgh and a PhD in English literature from Duquesne University. She lives, writes, works, and practices yoga in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where she was born and raised. https://www.ellenmcgrathsmith.com/

Ellen McGrath Smith - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)     

Arlene Weiner has been a Shakespeare scholar, a cardiology technician, a den mother, part of a group developing computer-based education, and an editor for the National Assessment of Educational Progress. She is a member of Pittsburgh Poetry Exchange and Squirrel Hill Poetry Workshop. Arlene’s poems have been published in such journals as Pleiades, Poet Lore, and Paterson Literary Review, and in anthologies; and read on Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac. Arlene held a MacDowell fellowship. She also writes plays. Arlene’s most recent book is City Bird (Ragged Sky, Princeton, NJ, 2016).

Arlene Weiner - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)  

Joan E. Bauer is the author of The Almost Sound of Drowning (Main Street Rag, 2008) and The Camera Artist (Turning Point, 2020). For some years, she was a teacher and counselor in public and independent schools. In 2007, she won the Earle Birney Poetry Prize from Prism International and in 2018, she was a finalist for the John Ciardi Poetry Prize from BkMk Press. Since 2001, more than 250 of her poems have been published and three have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Joan co-curates the Hemingway's Summer Poetry Series with Kristofer Collins. Her new book of poetry, Fig Season, is forthcoming from Turning Point in 2023.

Closing Remarks by Joan E. Bauer - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

The Entire Reading

The Whole Thing - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

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