June 24, 2025 (Dilworth, Smith, Collins)

 Featured Readers

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Front Row: Ellen McGrath Smith, Joan Bauer & Jen Ashburn

Back Row (L-R): Sharon Dilworth & Kristofer Collins

 

Jen Ashburn is a poet and nonfiction writer. She’s the author of The Light on the Wall and has work published in numerous venues, including The Fiddlehead, The Writer’s Almanac, and Pedestal Magazine. She is the recipient of the 2023 Lori White Non-Fiction Fellowship and has been nominated for several Pushcart Prizes. Her current projects include a poetry manuscript, "Cracked Paraffin," and a memoir, "Borax, Cornmeal and Cherry Blossoms." She holds an MFA from Chatham University and lives in Edgewood.

Opening Comments by Jen Ashburn - 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). Recent work has appeared in Paterson Literary Review, Slipstream and Chiron Review. She divides her time between Venice, CA and Pittsburgh, PA where she co-curates the Hemingway's Summer Poetry Series with Kristofer Collins. 

 

Additional Opening Comments by Joan Bauer - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

 

Sharon Dilworth is an award-winning fiction writer. She's the author of three short story books including Year of the Ginkgo, Women Drinking Benedictine, and The Long White. Her work is also featured in the collection of short stories, Here: Women Writing on Michigan's Upper Peninsula. She's the recipient of numerous awards including The Iowa Award in Short Fiction, a National Endowment for the Arts Grant, a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Grant, a Pushcart Prize in Fiction, a Hopwood Award. Currently, Sharon lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where she is the Director of Carnegie Mellon University's Creative Writing program.  Her latest novel, To Be Marquette, was published by Carnegie Mellon University Press in 2024.

Sharon Dilworth - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download) 

 

Kristofer Collins is the Books Editor for Pittsburgh Magazine as well as co-curator of Hemingway's Summer Poetry Series. He lives in Stanton Heights with his wife and two children. His latest poetry collection, "The Vesper Room" is forthcoming from Kung Fu Treachery Press.

Kristofer Collins - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Ellen McGrath Smith teaches at the University of Pittsburgh and in the Carlow University Madwomen in the Attic program. Her poetry has appeared in The Georgia Review, The New York Times, The American Poetry Review, Talking Writing, Los Angeles Review, and other journals and anthologies. Books include Scatter, Feed (Seven Kitchens 2014) and Nobody's Jackknife (West End Press 2015). Her chapbook Lie Low, Goaded Lamb was published in January 2023 by Seven Kitchens Press as part of its Keystone Series.  

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

Open Mic

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Entire Event from Start to Finish

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June 10, 2025 (Anderson, Katz, Khoury, Vicari & Sanders)

  Featured Readers

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Front Row: Joy Katz, Jill Khoury, Justin Vicari  & Joan Bauer

Back Row (L-R): Kristofer Collins, Laurie Anderson, & Judith Sanders

 

Kristofer Collins is the publisher and editor-in-chief of Low Ghost Press founded in 2008 and the longtime Books Editor for Pittsburgh Magazine. He is also the co-curator of the Hemingway's Summer Poetry Series. His latest book, Roundabout Trace, was published in 2022 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)

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). Recent work has appeared in Paterson Literary Review, Slipstream and Chiron Review. She divides her time between Venice, CA and Pittsburgh, PA where she co-curates the Hemingway's Summer Poetry Series with Kristofer Collins. 

 

Additional Opening Comments by Joan Bauer - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Laurie Anderson was born in western New York in the mid-50s. With a Baptist minister father, the family moved on to New Jersey, then Maine, and West Virginia. As an adult, she ping-ponged between Philly and New Jersey, moving to Pittsburgh in 1989. The thread woven through her career and much of her life is writing.  She’s written consumer user guides, memos, reports, meeting minutes, concept papers, newsletters, and solicitation letters, ending with a growing focus on grant applications and grant reports, which is about all she writes now. Here and there, she’s attempted to write a few poems. 

Laurie Anderson - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Joy Katz writes poetry, nonfiction, and memoir. Her latest poetry collection is All You Do Is Perceive, a National Poetry Series Finalist; her recent essay “Tennis is the Opposite of Death: A Proof,” in The Paris Review, was a Best American Essays finalist. She lives in Boston and Pittsburgh, where she collaborates in the socially engaged art collective IfYouReallyLoveMe, whose most recent project, OverHear, was live music for wage workers. Honors for her work include National Endowment for the Arts, Barbara Deming Foundation, Pittsburgh Foundation, and Stegner fellowships, and a Pushcart prize. She teaches poetry and nonfiction in Carlow University’s Madwomen in the Attic writing workshops. 

 

Joy Katz - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Jill Khoury (she/her) is a disabled poet and a Western Pennsylvania Writing Project fellow. She has taught poetry in high school, university, and enrichment settings. She holds an MFA from The Ohio State University and edits Rogue Agent, a journal of embodied poetry and art. Her poems have appeared in numerous venues, including Copper Nickel, VerseDaily, CALYX, and The Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day. Winner of the Gatewood Prize, her second full-length collection earthwork is available from Switchback Books. Connect with her at jillkhoury.com. 

Jill Khoury - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Judith Sanders’ debut poetry collection In Deep was recently published by Kelsay Books.  Her work appears in numerous journals, including Pleiades, Calyx, The American Scholar, and Modern Language Studies; on the websites Vox Populi, Humor Darling, and Full Grown People; and in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.  She has a B.A. in literature from Yale, an M.A. in fiction writing from Boston University, and a Ph.D. in English from Tufts.  She taught English at universities and independent schools, and in France on a Fulbright Fellowship.  She lives with her family in Pittsburgh. 

Judith Sanders - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Although they dropped out of college in the 1980s, Justin Vicari went on to write and publish two books of poetry and six volumes of critical theory. Their first book of poems, The Professional Weepers (Pavement Saw, 2011), won the Transcontinental Award. Vicari has also received awards from Third Coast and New Millennium Writings. A disabled person, Vicari suffers from a number of disorders which give unique perspective to their work, including being intersex, being bipolar, and having Asperger’s. Vicari’s second collection, In Search of Lost Joy, was published by Main Street Rag in 2018. 

Justin Vicari - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Open Mic

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Entire Event from Start to Finish

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