Featured Readers
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Kristofer Collins has been writing about books and their authors professionally for over twenty years. He has spent the last fifteen years as the Books Editor for Pittsburgh Magazine covering the local literary community. He is the author of several poetry collections, including Roundabout Trace published by Kung Fu Treachery Press in 2022. He was the publisher of Low Ghost Press from 2008-2020. His writing has appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The New Yinzer, 1839, LitHub, Belt Magazine, Chiron Review, Nerve Cowboy, Gasconade, Vox Populi, Kidsburgh, Appalachian Journal, The New Antiquarian, Jerry Jazz Musician, Uppagus, and more. He was nominated for a Robert L. Vann Award for Excellence in Written Journalism in 2022. He is co-curator with Joan Bauer of the long-running Hemingway’s Summer Poetry Series. The Vesper Room (Luchador Press, 2025) is his latest poetry collection. He lives in Pittsburgh, PA with his wife Dr. Anna Johnson and their children.
Opening Comments by Kristofer Collins - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)
Joan E. Bauer is the author of three full-length poetry collections, Fig Season (Turning Point, 2023), The Camera Artist (Turning Point, 2021), and The Almost Sound of Drowning (Main Street Rag, 2008). With Judith Robinson and Sankar Roy, she co-edited the award-winning international anthology, Only the Sea Keeps: Poetry of the Tsunami (Bayeux Arts and Rupa & Co, 2005). Over 350 of her poems have been published in journals, periodicals and anthologies in the US and abroad. Recent work has appeared in Paterson Literary Review, Slipstream, Chiron Review and Vox Populi: A Curated Webspace for Poetry, Politics and Nature. For some years, she was a teacher and counselor. She now divides her time between Venice, CA and Pittsburgh, PA where she co-curates the Hemingway's Summer Poetry Series with Kristofer Collins.
Jennifer Browne (she/her) is the author of Whisper Song (tiny wren publishing, 2023) and The Salt of the Geologic World (Bottlecap Press, 2023). Browne’s poems have been published in Steel Jackdaw, Gargoyle, One Sentence Poems, and Humana Obscura. She contributed to the Poem for Cleveland anthology (Red Giant Books, 2023) and the Women of Appalachia Project’s Women Speak, Volume Nine (Sheila-Na-Gig, 2024). She lives in Frostburg, Maryland, where she serves as director of the Frostburg State University Center for Literary Arts.
Jennifer Browne - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)
Michelle Gil-Montero's recent books include translations of Berlin Interlude (Black Square Editions) and Exilium (Ugly Duckling Presse) by Argentine writer María Negroni, as well as her own poetry collection Object Permanence (Ornithopter Press). Her writing has appeared in Lana Turner, Interim Poetics, Spoon River Poetry Review, Black Sun, and other publications. Her work has been supported by the NEA, Howard Foundation, PEN, and Fulbright. At Saint Vincent College, she directs the Minor in Literary Translation and is the founding editor of the translation press Eulalia Books.
Michelle Gil-Montero - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)
Alexi Morrissey is an artist, writer, and musician. Artifacts from his performance writing work, “Möbius Text”, are in the collection of the Jaffe Center for Book Arts. He exhibits at the Grolier Book Club in NYC, Mattress Factory, Andy Warhol Museum, American Museum of Ceramic Art in Los Angeles, Museum of the Future in Linz, Austria. He performs in Free Doom duo, Pain Island. His first novel, THE HOLE IN THE SKY OVER PITTSBURGH, was released as a 100-piece limited edition art print in Fall 2025 for the local Pittsburgh community. His work is not available online.
Alexi Morrissey - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)
Michael Simms' latest collection of poems is Jubal Rising and his latest novel is The Hummingbird War. His work has been published in Poetry (Chicago), Plume, Scientific American and Poem-a-Day (Academy of American Poets). He is the Founding Editor of Vox Populi and the Founding Editor Emeritus of Autumn House Press. In 2011, the Pennsylvania Legislature awarded Simms with a Certificate of Recognition for his service to the arts. He lives in the historic neighborhood of Mount Washington overlooking the three rivers of Pittsburgh.
Michael Simms - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)
Patricia Jabbeh Wesley began writing in her original home country of Liberia, West Africa. Patricia Jabbeh Wesley’s work includes Praise Song for My Children: New and Selected Poems, When the Wanderers Come Home, and Breaking the Silence: Anthology of Liberian Literature. Her work has appeared in Harvard Review, Transition, Prairie Schooner, The New York Times Magazine, and her poetry has been widely translated. Some of her awards include the 2022 Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Prize for Praise Songs for My Children…, a Levinson Prize from Poetry Foundation, and a 2021 Edward Stanley Prize. Recently, her new book Patricia Jabbeh Wesley: Collected Poems, 1998-2020 (University of Nebraska Press), was named Publishers Weekly’s Top 10 forthcoming Poetry collections. She is Professor of English at Penn State Altoona.
Patricia Jabbeh Wesley - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)
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