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.
Gerry Crinnin, a native of Syracuse, is an ex-U.S. Navy journalist who used the G.I. Bill to get a Master’s degree from Brown and a Ph.D. from Binghamton University. For 23 years Crinnin taught English and writing classes at Jamestown Community College. His work has appeared most notably in Modern American Poetry. His most recent books include I Know You Know, with Peter Temes, and Haiku to the Chief (Ghost City Press 2016), a series of 43 haiku—one for each U.S. president.
Gerry Crinnin - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)
Having spent most of her life moving to various parts of the country, Lisa Hase-Jackson happily finds herself living in Pittsburgh, PA with her husband, poet Gary Jackson. She has published two full-length collections of poetry, Insomnia in Another Town (Clemson University Press 2024,) and Flint and Fire (Word Works 2019), and has placed poems in such journals as Sugar House Review, Vox Populi, and Verse Daily, to name a few. She is Editor in Chief for the Zingara Poetry Project and teaches creative writing and literature at the University of Pittsburgh.
Lisa Hase-Jackson - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)
Born and raised in Topeka, Kansas, Gary Jackson is the author of the poetry collections small lives, origin story, and Missing You, Metropolis, which received the 2009 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. He’s also co-editor of The Future of Black: Afrofuturism, Black Comics, and Superhero Poetry. His poems have appeared in journals including Callaloo, The Sun, Los Angeles Review of Books, Copper Nickel, and elsewhere. He calls Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania home with his wife, the poet Lisa Hase-Jackson. He is the Toi Derricotte Endowed Chair of English in the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh, and the Director of the Center for African American Poetry and Poetics.
Gary Jackson - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)
Emily Mohn-Slate is the author of The Falls, winner of the 2019 New American Poetry Prize (New American Press), and Feed, winner of the 2018 Keystone Chapbook Prize (Seven Kitchens Press). Her poems and essays can be found in AGNI, The Adroit Journal, New Ohio Review, Poet Lore, Tupelo Quarterly, and elsewhere. She teaches for the Madwomen in the Attic Workshops, writes the Be Where You Are newsletter, and co-hosts the Ass in Chair Collective.
Emily Mohn-Slate - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)
Anthony Swofford is the author of the memoirs Jarhead and Hotels, Hospitals, and Jails and the novel Exit A. The 2005 Sam Mendes film Jarhead was adapted from his first book, detailing his service in the United States Marine Corps and his combat deployment for the 1990-91 Gulf War. His essays, reportage, and opinion pieces have appeared in Harper’s, The Guardian, Slate, and The New York Times, among other places. He has taught at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and is currently Special Faculty in the Department of English at Carnegie Mellon University, where he teaches screenwriting, television writing and fiction.
Anthony Swofford - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)
Open Mic - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)
Entire Event from Start to Finish
Entire Event - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)
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