Tuesday, July 11, 2017

July 11, 2017 (Yune, Weiner, Vicari, Lamb, Carter-Jones & Bauer)

Hemingway's Poetry Series
July 11, 2017

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Standing L-R: Jimmy Cvetic, Sheila Carter-Jones, Justin Vicari & Robert Yune
Seated L-R: Karla Lamb, Joan Bauer & Arlene Weiner



As a Navy brat, Robert Yune moved 11 times by the time he turned 18. In 2012, he was a finalist for the Flannery O’Connor Award and was one of five finalists for the Prairie Schooner Book Prize. His fiction has appeared in the Green Mountains Review, the Kenyon Review, and Los Angeles Review, among others. In the summer of 2012, he worked as a stand-in for George Takei and has worked as an extra in movies such as The Dark Knight Rises, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, and Father and Daughters. Currently, he teaches at DePauw University, located in beautiful Greencastle, Indiana. His novel Eighty Days of Sunlight was nominated for the 2017 International DUBLIN Literary Award; other nominees included Viet Thanh Nguyen, Margaret Atwood, and Salman Rushdie.

Robert Yune - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download 

Arlene Weiner is the author of City Bird (Ragged Sky). A city bird herself, Arlene Weiner grew up in pre-gentrification Manhattan and now lives in Pittsburgh. She has been a cardiology technician, a college instructor, an editor, and a research associate/member of a group developing educational software. She belongs to the US 1 Poets' Cooperative, Pittsburgh Poetry Exchange, Squirrel Hill Poetry workshop and Madwomen in the Attic. Arlene has had poems published in Pleiades, Poet Lore, The Louisville Review, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, anthologized in Along These Rivers, and read by Garrison Keillor on his riter’s Almanac.  Poet Joy Katz wrote of Arlene’s previous collection of poems, Escape Velocity (Ragged Sky, 2006), “I want to keep my favorite of these beautifully alert, surprising poems with me as I grow old." Her play, Findings, was produced this past March by the Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company. 

A lifelong writer, Justin Vicari is a widely published poet, critic and translator.  His first collection, The Professional Weepers (Pavement Saw, 2011), won the Transcontinental Award.  His work has appeared in Barrow Street, Spoon River Poetry Review, 32 Poems, Hotel Amerika, The Ledge, Oranges & Sardines, American Poetry Review, Southern Poetry Review, Third Coast, and other journals. He is the author of six books of film and literary theory, including Male Bisexuality in Current Cinema: Images of Growth, Rebellion and Survival (McFarland, 2011). He lives in the South Hills of Pittsburgh.    


Karla Lamb’s work has appeared in Word Riot, Brooklyn-based A Women’s Thing Magazine, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, Pittsburgh City Paper, Runaway Hotel, and Voices from the Attic Vol. XIX. Lamb is a current MFA candidate in Carlow University’s Creative Writing program, and is currently working on her full length manuscript. She edits for After Happy Hour Review, and curates DOUBLE MIRЯOR EXHIBIT in Pittsburgh, PA.


Sheila Carter-Jones has been described by Herbert Woodward Martin as one who writes with "immediacy of tone, voice and language." Much of her work to date charts in images and music the lived experiences of a small-town girl brought up in a house across from the boney dump of Republic Steel Coal Mines outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She has been published in Pennsylvania Review, Pittsburgh Quarterly, Tri-State Anthology, Blair Mountain Press and Flights. Grace Cavalieri, producer and host of "The Poet and the Poem from the Library of Congress" says that Sheila's recent book Blackberry Cobbler Song premiers a narrative poet in the greatest tradition of American storytellers. She is currently working on a new poetry manuscript and a memoir.


Joan E. Bauer is the author of The Almost Sound of Drowning (Main Street Rag, 2008). Since she began writing poetry again in 2001, more than 180 of her poems have appeared in journals, anthologies and periodicals, including most recently Calyx, Chiron Review, Cider Press Review, Paterson Literary Review, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, Slipstream, Uppagus, US 1 Worksheets, Voices from the Attic, and Vox Populi: A Public Sphere for Politics & Poetry.  She is a longtime member of the Squirrel Hill Poetry Workshop, the Madwomen in the Attic program at Carlow University and the Pittsburgh Poetry Exchange. For some years, Joan worked as an English teacher and educational counselor and now divides her time between Venice, CA, and Pittsburgh, PA where she co-hosts and curates the Hemingway Summer Poetry Series with her friend Jimmy Cvetic. Her second full-length poetry manuscript is making the rounds. 

Open Mic

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

Jimmy Cvetic Reads McKees Rocks Charlie

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

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Tuesday, June 27, 2017

June 27, 2017 (Carson, Edwards, Esaias, Robinson & Wurster)

Hemingway's Poetry Series
June 27, 2017

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Standing L-R: Jimmy Cvetic, Timons Esaias & Joan Bauer
Seated L-R: Ziggy Edwards, Judith Robinson, Jay Carson & Michael Wurster


Jay Carson earned his doctorate in English/Rhetoric from Carnegie Mellon University. A seventh generation Pittsburgher, he taught creative writing, literature, and rhetoric at Robert Morris University for many years, where Jay was a University Professor and a faculty advisor to the student literary journal, Rune. More than 70 of his poems have appeared in local and national literary journals, magazines, and anthologies. Jay authored a chapbook, Irish Coffee, with Coal Hill Review. A full-length book of his poems, The Cinnamon of Desire, was published by Main Street Rag. Jay considers his work Appalachian, Irish, accessible, the problem-solving spiritual survival of a raging youth - and just what you might need.

Jay Carson - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download

 Ziggy Edwards grew up in Pittsburgh and earned a BA in Fiction Writing from the University of Pittsburgh.  Her poems and short stories have appeared in publications including 5 AM, Paper Street, Nexus, Main Street Rag, The Pittsburgh Post Gazette, Pittsburgh City Paper, and Ship of Fools.  She has also been a guest on the radio program, Prosody.  Ziggy's first chapbook, Hope's White Shoes. was published in 2006.  With her son Jude Rosen, she co-edits the online journal, Uppagus.  

Ziggy Edwards - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Timons Esaias is a poet, satirist, essayist, and writer of short fiction whose works have appeared in twenty languages. He has been a finalist for the British Science Fiction Award, and won the 2005 Asimov's Readers Award for poetry. Literary publications include 5 AM, New Orleans Review, Connecticut Review, and Barbaric Yawp. His Louis Award-winning full-length collection, Why Elephants No Longer Communicate in Greek, was released by Concrete Wolf earlier this year. For more, go to www.timonsesaias.com

Timons Esaias - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download) 

Judith R. Robinson is the author of Carousel: New and Selected Poems (Lummox Press, 2017 and three previous poetry collections: The Blue Heart  (Finishing Line Press), Orange Fire (Main Street Rag) and Dinner Date (Finishing Line Press). She is also the author of The Beautiful Wife and Other Stories (Aegina Press).  She is the poetry editor of Signatures (Osher, Carnegie Mellon), 2001, 2003, 2006, 2012 and The Poetry of Margaret Menamin, (Main Street Rag, three volumes) as well as Living Inland (Bennington Press).  She co-edited  Along These River: Poetry and Photography from Pittsburgh (Quadrant Publishing, 2008) and Only the Sea Keeps: Poetry of the Tsunami  (Rupa, Inc. and Bayeux Arts, 2005), and most recently, co-editor of The Brentwood Anthology (Lummox Press, 2014). She currently teaches poetry for Osher at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh.  For more, go to: www.judithrrobinson.com 

Judith R. Robinson - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download) 

Michael Wurster has lived in Pittsburgh since 1964 and is a founding member of Pittsburgh Poetry Exchange. For 17 years, 1993-2010, he taught at Pittsburgh Center for the Arts School. In 2009, his book, The British Detective, was published by Main Street Rag. His two previous poetry collections are The Cruelty of the Desert (Cottage Wordsmiths, 1989) and The Snake Charmer's Daughter (ELEMENOPE, 2000). He is co-editor, with Judith R. Robinson, of the anthology, Along These Rivers: Poetry & Photography from Pittsburgh (Quadrant Press, 2008), and The Brentwood Anthology (Lummox Press, 2014). In 1996, Wurster was an inaugural recipient of a Pittsburgh Magazine Harry Schwalb Excellence in the Arts Award for his contributions to poetry and the community.

Michael Wurster - Click to Play (Right-Click to Download)

Open Mic 

No recording of the Open Mic is available this week for reasons that remain obscure (although a technical glitch is suspected). A spokesperson for the event, speaking on condition of anonymity to allow for maximum candor and transparency, declined to comment. So, there you have it.

Mac users who lack a 2-button mouse may press Control-Click on the appropriate links to enable downloads.