May 30, 2023 (Dressick, DiPerna, McCafferty & Shotland)

Featured Readers

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Seated L-R: Sarah Shotland, Joan Bauer & Kristofer Collins

Standing L-R: Damian Dressick, Jane McCafferty & Jody DiPerna

 

Special thanks to Jill Yeomans of White Whale Bookstore for hosting and recording this event.

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)

Damian Dressick is the author of the novel 40 Patchtown and the flash collection Fables of the Deconstruction. His writing has appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies, including W.W. Norton’s New Micro, Electric Literature, Post Road, New Orleans Review, CutBank, Smokelong Quarterly, and New World Writing. A Blue Mountain Residency Fellow, Dressick is the winner of the Harriette Arnow Award and the Jesse Stuart Prize. He co-hosts WANA: LIVE!, a (largely) virtual reading series that brings some of the best Appalachian writers to the world. Damian also serves as Editor-in-Chief for the journal Appalachian Lit. For more, check out www.damiandressick.com.

Damian Dressick - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download) 

Jody DiPerna is an award-winning journalist and longtime book lover. She is one of the founders of the Pittsburgh Institute for Nonprofit Journalism and covers books and literary life Pittsburgh, with a specific focus on writers and books in and about Pittsburgh, the Rust Belt and Northern Appalachia.

Jody DiPerna - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)   

Jane McCafferty writes and publishes across genres. She is author of four books of fiction. Her work has been awarded two pushcart prizes, an NEA, the Drue Heinz, and others. Recent stories have appeared in Catapult, Iowa Review, Crazy Horse, and The Sun. She lives and works in Pittsburgh, teaching at CMU and for Madwomen in The Attic. She is working on a third story collection.

 Jane McCafferty - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download) 

Sarah Shotland is the author of the novel Junkette and the nonfiction project Abolition is Everything. She co-founded Words Without Walls, which brought creative writing classes to jails, prisons and drug treatment centers in Pittsburgh for 13 years. Her writing about art and prison has appeared in The Iowa Review, Creative Nonfiction, Baltimore Review and elsewhere. In 2022, she joined the faculty of Carlow University as the Program Director of Madwomen in the Attic.

Sarah Shotland - 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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