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.

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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.

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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.  

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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. 

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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. 

 

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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Open Mic

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May 27, 2025 (Buccilli, Douglass, Simon, Miller & Walker)

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Back Row: Marguerite Miller, Anastasia Walker & Kristofer Collins

Front Row (L-R): Ed Simon, Joan Bauer, Daniela Buccilli, & M. Scott Douglass

 

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)

 

Daniela Buccilli's poetry chapbook is What It Takes to Carry (Main Street). She has writing degrees from Carlow University and University of Pittsburgh. She teaches high school, has co-edited a poetry anthology, serves as her union's secretary, and has been published in anthologies, journals, and Tiny Day. She workshops with Madwomen in the Attic. 

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M. Scott Douglass is the Publisher/Managing Editor at Main Street Rag Publishing Company. He grew up in Pittsburgh, lived in North Carolina for over thirty years, and now calls Edinboro, PA home. He’s a North Carolina ASC Grant recipient and a Pushcart Prize nominee. His poetry books include Auditioning for Heaven, Balancing on Two Wheels, Steel Womb Revisited, Hard to Love, Just Passing Through, and most recently, Living in a Red State Blues. His graphic design work has earned two PICA Awards and an Eric Hoffer Award nomination. 8000 Mile Roll A Motorcycle Memoir is his first book of prose.

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Ed Simon is Public Humanities Special Faculty in English at Carnegie Mellon, editor of The Pittsburgh Review of Books and a staff writer for LitHub. A contributor at several dozen sites, including The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Paris Review Daily, and The Washington Post, he is also the author or editor of nineteen books, including Heaven, Hell and Paradise Lost and An Alternative History of Pittsburgh. In July of 2024, Melville House Publishing released his Devil's Contract: The History of the Faustian Bargain, the first comprehensive, popular account of that subject.

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Marguerite Miller is an English and Journalism teacher in Pittsburgh, PA. She is the Co-founder and Editor of Lefty Blondie Press based in Pittsburgh and a member of the Madwomen in the Attic writing workshops through Carlow University. She has a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing and a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry and Editing and Publishing from Chatham University where her poetry thesis was a finalist for Best Thesis in Poetry. Her poetry has appeared in Mangrove, The Minor Bird, IDK Magazine, The Labletter Monthly Notes, Perversion Magazine, and elsewhere.  

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Maine native Anastasia Walker (she/her/hers) is a queer poet, essayist, and scholar. Her first book of poetry, The Girl Who Wasn’t and Is, was published in 2022. Her essays have appeared in several journals, and she's currently shopping an essay collection subtitled “A Memoir in Shards.” She's on the board of Pittsburgh’s PFLAG chapter, volunteers for the Transgender Law Center’s prison mail program, and is a lover of long walks and swimming in the ocean. She's old school and has a snazzy blog (also called "The Girl Who Wasn't and Is") if anyone is interested in keeping up with her publications, her kitchen adventures, updates on her plants, and other matters of world-historical significance.

Anastasia Walker - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

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May 13, 2025 (Caballero, Dignam, McCafferty, Priest & Rudolph)

 Featured Readers

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Back Row: Kristofer Collins, Jane McCafferty & Cedric Rudolph

Front Row (L-R): Mark Dignam, M. Soledad Caballero, Joy Priest, & Joan Bauer

 

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)

 

M. Soledad Caballero is a Professor of English and Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies at Allegheny College. She is a Macondo and CantoMundo fellow. Her collection, I Was a Bell (2021; Red Hen Press) was a 2022 International Latino Book Award winner. Her second collection, Flight Plan, is scheduled for publication with Red Hen Press in September 2025. She’s an avid tv watcher and a terrible birder. Learn more about her work at msoledadcaballero.com

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Mark Dignam is originally from Dublin in Ireland and this year celebrates his 25^th year living in Pittsburgh. He is critically and popularly well respected for his live performances, poetic turn of phrase as a Singer/Songwriter and has opened for, or toured with many named musical artists. Alongside his musical performances in 2025, Mark has begun to put down the guitar and have his words stand on their own. His work, with or without a guitar revolves around the themes of, a love of nature, family dynamics and how we can live better, emotionally healthier lives in a challenging world.

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Jane McCafferty is author of two story collections and two novels. Her work has received an NEA, two Pushcarts, several Pushcart special mentions, the Drue Heinz prize, The Great Lakes Writers Award, and the Talking Writing award for non-fiction. More recent work has appeared in The Sun, The Common, Iowa Review, and the journal formerly known as Crazy Horse. Her first collection of poems, The Sea Lion Who Saved the Boy Who Jumped from the Golden Gate was published by Saddle Road Press in fall of 2024. She’s always working on stories and hoping for poems and attempting to fix the draft of a novel. She teaches writing at Carnegie Mellon and for Madwomen in the Attic.

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Joy Priest is the author of Horsepower (Pitt Poetry Series, 2020) and the editor of Once a City Said: A Louisville Poets Anthology (Sarabande, 2023). She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, a Fine Arts Work Center fellowship, and the Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize from American Poetry Review. Her poems, essays, and criticism have appeared in Boston Review, Gulf Coast Magazine, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Sewanee Review, among others. She teaches on faculty in the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program at the University of Pittsburgh. 

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Cedric Rudolph is a Black, gay writer living in Pittsburgh, PA. He works as a Visiting Lecturer for the University of Pittsburgh’s Writing Department. He has also taught for the Institute for Anti-Racist Education and led workshops in Allegheny County Jail. His publications include The Pittsburgh Neighborhood Guidebook and The Coal Hill Review. Eavesdrop Magazine awarded him third place in their Queer Joy Contest. Most recently, Bellevue Literary Review awarded him an honorable mention in their 2025 BLR Literary Prizes.

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