July 21, 2015 (Conley, Montesonti, Repp, Trale, Walicki, Whelan)

Hemingway's Poetry Series

July 21, 2015

Tameka Cage Conley, PhD , is a literary artist who writes poetry, fiction, and plays. In 2010, she received the August Wilson Center Fellowship. Her first play, Testimony, was produced at the Center in May 2011. An excerpt of the play is published in 24 Gun Control Plays and was performed in Los Angeles and  Sydney , Australia . In 2011, she received the Advancing the Black Arts Grant from The Pittsburgh Foundation. In 2012, she became a Cave Canem Poetry Fellow and was nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the Carol R. Brown Creative Achievement Award. Her poems are published inCallaloo, Fledgling Rag, African American Review, and forthcoming in Cave Canem Anthology XIV. An excerpt of her novel-in-progress, This Far, By Grace, is published in Huizache: The Magazine of Latino Literature. She is the 2013 awardee of the Demarest Trust grant. Her poem, "Losing," was chosen by the Pennsylvania Center for the Book as a featured poem in the 2015 Public Poetry Project.

Tameka Cage Conley - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)
   

Frank Montesonti is the author of two full-length collections of poetry, Blight, Winner of the 2011 Barrow Street Book Prize chosen by D.A. Powell, and the book of erasure, Hope Tree (How To Prune Fruit Trees) by Black Lawrence Press. His poems have appeared in journals such as Tin House, AQR, Black Warrior Review, Poet Lore, and Poems and Plays, among many others. He holds a BA in English from Indiana University, an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Arizona, a longtime resident of Indiana, he now lives in Los Angeles and teaches at National University. 

Frank Montesonti - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Between January, 1984 and May, 1985, John Repp coordinated the Hemingway’s Reading Series, bringing to the Back Room such luminaries and soon-to-be luminaries as Lynn Emanuel, Michael Chabon, Ed Ochester, Etheridge Knight, Timothy Russell, Maggie Anderson, Lawrence Joseph, Chuck Kinder, and Buddy Nordan. A 1985 graduate of the M.F.A. program at the University ofPittsburgh , his most recent collections of poetry are Music Over the Water (Alice Greene & Col, 2013) and Fat Jersey Blues, winner of the 2013 Akron Poetry Prize from the University of Akron Press . 

John Repp - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Marianne Trale is a tenured professor of English at CCAC Boyce Campus who earned an MFA in Writing from the University of Pittsburgh . Her poetry has appeared in  Green Mountain Review, Thirteen, The Pennsylvania Review, After Image  and other journals.  She is a longtime free lance writer and columnist for The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, and has been awarded several National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships.  At CCAC, she was three times honored with the Student Choice Award for Extraordinary Faculty. In the early 1980's her poetry was twice awarded Second Prize and also Finalist honors from the  Academy of American Poetry Competition . From 1986 through 2000, she was a frequent reader in the Hemingway's Summer Poetry Series, and most recently featured in the Galway Kinnell Memorial Reading in January 2015. 

Marianne Trale - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Robert Walicki's poetry has appeared in Stone Highway Review, Pittsburgh City Paper, ThePittsburgh Post-Gazette, Grasslimb, and on the radio show, Prosody. His first chapbook, A Room Full of Trees, was published by Redbird Press. His next chapbook, The Almost Sound of Snow Falling, is forthcoming this winter from Night Ballet Press. He hosts and curates the monthly reading series,

VERSIFY.

Robert Walicki - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Carolyne Whelan received her MFA in poetry and nonfiction at Chatham University in 2009 where she was a finalist for Best Thesis.  She is the recipient of the 2013 Jan-ai Fellowship, the 2014 Ralph Waldo Emerson Fellowship to the Vermont Studio, and the 2015 Lucille Clifton scholarship to Squaw Valley Writer's Workshop.  Her first chapbook, The Glossary of Tania Aebi, was published by Finishing Line Press. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in a number of journals, most recently, Sugar House and Majestic Disorder. She lives in Pittsburgh, PA where she works as a freelance writer and bicycle mechanic

Carolyne Whelan - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Open Mic

Open Mic - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Jimmy Cvetic Reads Two Poems

Jimmy Cvetic - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

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