TNY Presents 2010 Season Finale

Featuring Readings by the poetastic:

Ed Steck, Jason Baldinger, Margaret Bashaar, M. Callen, Kevin Finn, Scott Silsbe, Jerome Crooks, Laura Davis, Don Wentworth, Jonathan Loucks, Andy Mulkerin, Jessica Fenlon, Crystal Hoffman

When - Wednesday, November 17
Where - ModernFormations, 4919 Penn Avenue, Pittsburgh
Time - 8 p.m.
Cover - $5 or free w/ contribution to potluck

Please join us for the TNY Presents 2010 Season Finale! We've packed the night with some of our favorite Pittsburgh purveyors of poesy!! The evening also marks the end of an era(?) as we say goodbye to one of our own. Kristofer Collins (TNY managing editor 2005-2009,Co-Director TNY Presents) is retiring from the TNY staff, so come out and help us bid a fond farewell to that weirdo. :-)

ALSO! We've got a fantastic line-up for 2011.

(We're moving to every third Thursday of the month.)

It's already shaping up to be a beautiful year ahead!

October TNY Presents...

Join us for a ghoulishly good TNY Presents on October 20th! (Indeed. We were absolutely unable to resist the alliterative reference to Halloween. We have it out of our system now, however, and we will very sincerely try not to use it again.)

Where? ModernFormations 4919 Penn Ave.
When? Wednesday, October 20 @ 8pm
Cover? $5 or a contribution to our potluck dinner

<-- Matt Bell is the author of the collection How They Were Found, from Keyhole Press. His fiction has been anthologized in Best American Mystery Stories 2010 and Best American Fantasy 2. He is also the editor of The Collagist, and can be found online at www.mdbell.com.




Aaron Burch is the author of How to Predict the Weather (Keyhole Books). His stories have appeared in New York Tyrant, Barrelhouse, and Quick Fiction, among others. He is also the editor of Hobart: another literary journal. -->





Robert Isenberg is author of The Archipelago: A Balkan Passage, forthcoming from Autumn House Press. An award-winning writer and stage actor, Isenberg is a columnist for Pittsburgh Magazine and a regular theatre critic for Pittsburgh's City Paper. His many stage-plays have received enthusiastic reviews, as has his Pittsburgh Monologue Project, a stand-up performance series based on overheard conversations (co-authored with Brad Keller). He holds a dual degree in Nonfiction Writing and Medieval & Renaissance Studies from the University of Pittsburgh and has taught Playwriting at Duquesne University. Originally from Vermont, he has traveled to 31 countries on five continents. -->

<--Jennifer Meccariello Layman used to be a writer. Really - she wrote all sorts of stuff for local publications and even had a television show in development. It was for cable, but still. She also co-founded The New Yinzer. That's gotta count for something. Now she spends most of her time working at a job she really likes, being the mom to the coolest three-year-old boy you'll ever meet and fighting the good fight against all the dirt and dust her pets and husband drag into the house. This is the first piece she's written in over four years and the first reading she's given in over five. Be kind.


The Richards Family Bible is a Pittsburgh-based trio dedicated to singing songs about Sanctification, Love, and The Violent End of Love. The trio is fronted by Brother Richards, leading the three-piece on acoustic guitar; Sister Richards, second harmony and tambourine; and Brother Phil, holding down the ones and twos on the stripped-down drum-kit, as well as the third harmony. Tight vocal blending and a sincere dedication to bringing their audience songs of integrity and real old-fashioned good-times are the hallmarks of the Richards Family Bible, hallmarks that you will be able to notice as soon as Brother Richards opens his mouth to say "Hello, we're the Richards Family Bible." The Richards Family Bible: SANCTIFIED. -->

TNY Presents is holding a Special Edition to celebrate Small Press Fest!

When? Friday, September 24th @ 7 p.m.- 9 p.m.
Where? Beehive Coffehouse 1327 East Carson Street, Southside!
Cover? None! Free to all.

We have an excellent line-up of readers! Check them out our line-up so far:

Originally from New England, Noel Sloboda currently teaches at Penn State York and serves as dramaturg for the Harrisburg Shakespeare Company. He is the author of the poetry collection Shell Games (2008) as well as two chapbooks: Stages (2010) and Of Things Passed (2010).

Micah Ling earned her MA and MFA at Indiana University. She teaches courses in writing and literature at DePauw University and Franklin College. She lives in Bloomington, Indiana with her husband and dog.

Chris Bowen is administrator for the Cleveland small press, Burning River. His work has appeared in Leaf Garden, A Trunk of Delirium, and anthologized by Fast Forward Press. Previous work can be found at Hobart, Blue Print Review, New Yinzer Fiction and a slew of other journals, online or in print. Another of his stories will appear in the fall 2010 issue of The New Yinzer.

Stay tuned for additional readers!

And don't forget about our September 15th TNY Presents at Modern Formations. Details appear just below!

Join us for the start-up of our fall season of TNY Presents on September 15th!

Where: ModernFormations 4919 Penn Ave.
When: Wednesday, September 15 @ 8pm
Cover: $5 or a contribution to our potluck dinner

Also, join us for drinks at Brillobox before the show. You'll find us warming a booth and having a beer (or, usually, a Manhattan) by 6:30 p.m. on show nights.

Our guest readers this month include:

Brian O'Neill has been a newspaper columnist in Pittsburgh for more than 20 years. He is a winner of the Associated Press Managing Editors of Pennsylvania Award for column writing as well as the Pennsylvania Newspaper Publishers Keystone Award. A graduate of Syracuse University, O'Neill lives on the North Side with his wife and daughters, both of whom are students at CAPA Middle School downtown. His book, The Paris of Appalachia, has sold more than 7,000 copies since last September. It is the fastest-selling book in the 35-year history of Carnegie Mellon University Press.

Nathan Kukulski


>>Becca Mertz lives in Lawrenceville. Her poems have been published in such journals as Drunken Boat, H_NGM_N, and Indefinite Space. She has an MFA from University of Pittsburgh and is a founding editor of the influental poetry journal, A Joint Called Pauline. She will teach Composition for food, and does so currently at Duquesne University.

Red Bob

Lucy Goubert was born with a red mark on her forehead. When her parents were taking her out of the hospital for the first time a mystical-looking sheik told them that she had the "Mark of the Cobra" and that she would do "great things". Now she lives in Pittsburgh and hasn't really done anything except write a couple of poems.


Our musical guest is:
>>Heather Kropf is a singer/songwriter/producer living in Pittsburgh. A native of Portland, Oregon, and trained in classical piano and fine art, she has produced three albums and appeared as a vocalist on numerous other projects. Her sound is a blend of poetry and pop, and dips into the classic sounds of 70s folk and singer/songwriters, to contemporary AAA and neo-soul. Her pristine and mellifluous voice, named "an esoteric slice of blue-eyed soul" lives somewhere between Jill Sobule, Tracy Thorn, and Aimee Mann. She has performed live all over the region, including the Three Rivers Arts Festival, First Night, WYEP and WQED Studios, the Philadelphia Music Conference, and has opened for national acts such as Mason Jennings, The Weepies, Betty LaVette and Ben Arnold.

Join us for an excellent Special Edition TNY Presents on August 18th. This pre-season show starts up our engines for the fall season....vroom, vroom, VROOM!!

Where: ModernFormations 4919 Penn Ave.
When: Wednesday, August 18 @ 8pm
Cover: $5 or a contribution to our potluck dinner

Also, join us for drinks at Brillobox before the show. You'll find us warming a booth and having a beer (or, usually, a Manhattan) by 6:30 p.m. on show nights.

Readers Include:
Lisa Alexander
Michelle Stoner
Caitlin Crawford
Taylor Grieshober

Musical Guests:
The Committee for Getting Attention
Robin Vote

Watch this space.

Details about August's TNY Presents, which will be held at Modern Formations Gallery and Performance Space, will appear here very soon!

Thanks so much to everyone who braved the heat and came out to Lili Cafe and the Polish Hill Arts Fest on Sunday to hear Kris Collins, Elwin Michael Cotman, Daniel McCloskey, and Amanda Reynolds!

Details on August's readers to come shortly....

TNY Goes to the Polish Hill Arts Fest!

TNY Presents is excited to be part of the 2010 Polish Hill Arts Fest!

When? Sunday, July 18, 2010 @ 2:00 p.m.
Where? Lili Coffee Shop, 3138 Dobson (Neighborhood: Polish Hill)
Cover? None! Free to all.

This TNY Special Edition is held in conjunction with a weekend celebrating the wonderful Polish Hill Neighborhood. Come enjoy a coffee or tea at the beautiful, newly opened Lili Coffee Shop (in the meantime, see Karen Lillis' DiggingPitt article on Lili Coffee Shop!).

Read more about the event here at the Polish Hill Civic Association's "Blogski".
Thanks so much to Susan Constanse of the Polish Hill Civic Association!

Kristofer Collins is publisher and editor-in-chief of Low Ghost Press, co-director of the TNY Presents Performance Series, managing editor of The New Yinzer 2005-09, an occasional book reviewer for The Pittsburgh Post Gazette, and owner of Desolation Row Records & CDs. A book of his poems entitled King Everything was published in 2007 by Six Gallery Press, The Book of Names was published by Low Ghost Press in 2008, and The Liturgy of Streets was published by Six Gallery Press in 2009. His most recent collection, Last Call, will be published by Speed & Briscoe in 2010.

Cyberpunk Apocalypse writer -in-residence Elwin Michael Cotman reads from his recently released dark collection of fantasies, The Jack Daniels Sessions EP, which combines urban fantasy, black folktale, punk rock, and magic brought to you by one of Pittsburgh’s most animated readers.

At the age of 20 Daniel McCloskey graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with a BA in fiction writing. At the age of 21 he founded the Cyberpunk Apocalypse Writers' Co-op, and at 22 he finished a clean draft of his first novel which jumps between comics and prose. Daniel's work has been printed in Urban Velo magazine, in his own Cyberpunk Apocalypse publication, and he has a two page comic set to come out in Shrunken Wool issue 8.

Amanda Reynolds left Pittsburgh in 2002 for hurricanes and alligators in Florida. There she received an MFA in poetry from the University of Florida and a PhD in poetry from Florida State University. Her poems have appeared in journals such as: Gargoyle, Alimentum, Gander Press Review, Mississippi Crow, and The Aurora Review among others. She has a poetry chapbook entitled Degrees of Separation forthcoming from Pudding House Press in 2010. She has recently returned home to Pittsburgh to teach and write about the city she loves.

What are Yinz doin'?

Well, stay tuned! The New Yinzer is working on a Special Edition that will take place at Lili Cafe at 2 p.m. on July 18th. The event is part of the Polish Hill Arts Festival. Watch this space for details!

Also, Kris Collins' new book of poetry,titled Last Call, will be officially released on May 29th at 8p.m. The launch party will be held at Gallery 4, located at 206 South Highland Avenue in Pittsburgh.

Here are the vitals:
Speed & Briscoe Book Release for Last Call by Kristofer Collins

with poetry and fiction readings from:
Kayla Sargeson
Lucy Goubert
Karl Hendricks
Jason Baldinger
Carrie Shaley
Renée Alberts
Kristofer Collins

$5 admission (includes book)
Saturday, May 29th
8 pm

byob

May's Excellent Line-up!

Join us for an excellent new line-up of readers on May 19th! This show is a close to our spring features (of course, we start revving our engines again in August with an equally excellent show organized by writer and fellow New Yinzer Taylor Grieshober)!

Where: ModernFormations 4919 Penn Ave.
When: Wednesday, May 19st @ 8pm
Cover: $5 or a contribution to our potluck dinner

Also, join us for drinks at Brillobox before the show. You'll find us warming a booth and having a beer (or, usually, a Manhattan) by 6:30 p.m. on show nights.

Kirk Nesset (reader): is author of two books of fiction, Mr. Agreeable and Paradise Road, as well as The Stories of Raymond Carver (nonfiction), Saint X (poems, forthcoming), and Alphabet of the World: Selected Works by Eugenio Montejo (translations, forthcoming). He was awarded the Drue Heinz Literature Prize in 2007 and has received a Pushcart Prize and grants from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. His work has appeared in The Paris Review, Kenyon Review, Southern Review, American Poetry Review, Gettysburg Review, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner and elsewhere. He teaches at Allegheny College, and serves alternate years as writer-in-residence at the Chautauqua Writers Institute in upstate New York. Learn more about him at http://kirknesset.com

Timothy Gager (reader): is the author of eight books of short fiction and poetry. His latest Treating a Sick Animal: Flash and Micro Fictions (Cervena Barva Press) features over forty stories, many previously published in various literary magazines. He hosts the Dire Literary Series in Cambridge, Massachusetts every month and is the co-founder of Somerville News Writers Festival.

Timothy is the current Fiction Editor of The Wilderness House Literary Review, the founding co-editor of The Heat City Literary Review and has edited the book, Out of the Blue Writers Unite: A Book of Poetry and Prose from the Out of the Blue Art Gallery.

A graduate of the University of Delaware, Timothy lives in Dedham, Massachusetts and is employed as a social worker.

Lori Jakiela (reader): As a native Pittsburgher, Lori Jakiela (rhymes with tequila) has a weakness for gigantic deep-fried fish sandwiches, thinks slippy is a real word, and sometimes drinks Iron City Beer for sentimental reasons.

Her hometown, Trafford, PA, is widely thought of as the birthplace of the chocolate-covered pickle.

Jakiela, who once had a great fear of flying, worked as a flight attendant at a major airline for six years. She is currently on leave from the airlines. She now spends her days on the ground, teaching at The University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg, where she is also director of the writing program.

Miss New York Has Everything (Warner Books) was published in January 2006. Jakiela's essays and poems have appeared in DoubleTake, River Styx, Creative Nonfiction, The Pittsburgh Post Gazette, The Chicago Review, 5 AM, Nerve Cowboy, Tears in the Fence, Chiron Review, Slipstream, and elsewhere. Her chapbook, The Regulars -- a collection of poems and essays -- was published by Liquid Paper Press and was awarded first prize in Nerve Cowboy’s 2001 chapbook contest.

Ha' Penny (music): stay tuned!

Close out your TNY experience for the month of April with an extra shot of TNY Presents. Join us Friday, April 30th as we host out-of-towners Chris Leo and Marcellus Hall! Also on tap are TNY up-n-comers Taylor Grieshober and Wesley Conroy!! Stick around for a nightcap with Pittsburgh’s own Uke & Tuba!!! It’s truly been an action packed month for everybody here at TNY, so come out for one last huzzah for April, to misquote TS Eliot, “the coolest month”.

Where: ModernFormations 4919 Penn Ave.
When: Friday, April 30 @ 8pm
Cover: $5 or a contribution to our potluck dinner

Chris Leo: (Reader) Chris Leo is the author of 3 books, including 2009's Feathers Like Leather, the only book of pure writing carried in the Artbook Spring 2009 catalog. He's also released over 10 albums as frontman for bands like The Van Pelt, The Lapse, and Vague Angels.

Taylor Grieshober: (Reader) Taylor Grieshober will graduate with a BA in Professional and Creative writing in May. She splits her time between the bakery where she works and school. Currently Taylor is trying to fulfill her New Year's resolution to see every Woody Allen film ever made. At the time of writing this biography she is up to 23.

Wesley Conroy: (Reader) Wesley Regis Conroy was born in Pittsburgh, PA. After a brief stint in New York City, he returned to Pittsburgh, where he now lives in Lawrenceville. He is working on a series of short stories. This will be his first reading.

Marcellus Hall: (Words + Music) Marcellus Hall is an illustrator based in New York. He was born on the great plains of the midwest and spent languid summer hours as a youth at the fishing hole or playing video games. Hall graduated with a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and moved to New York. His clients have included the New Yorker, the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic Monthly, and Time, among others. His work has appeared in American Illustration, Communication Arts, and the Society of Illustrators annuals. His first cover for the New Yorker was published in 2005. In addition illustrating the books White Pigeons and 57 Octaves (fifthplanetpress.com), Hall has self-published books of drawings and writing including "Hard Luck Stories" and "Legends of the Infinite City" (a collection of black & white drawings of New York City). Hall has illustrated for Harry Abrams Inc a children’s book entitled Because You Are My Baby (2008). As a musician Hall has made recordings with bands Railroad Jerk and White Hassle and has toured the U.S., Europe, and Japan. Hall continues to make music under his own name.

Uke & Tuba: (Music) Uke & Tuba are Pittsburgh's finest ukulele/tuba/accordion band with back-up dancers (challengers welcomed). Their hilarious stage show explores the common ground between a punk show, performance art, and a karaoke night gone horribly wrong. Memorable past performances include a Girl Scouts convention, Andy Warhol's grave, a wedding, and the One Nation Under a Uke festival in Philadelphia. Visit them at www.ukeandtuba.com

April's TNY Presents! We're two years old!

It's our 2nd birthday, kids. Started in 2008, our series is in its third season, but we're now officially two years old! But no terrible twos for us though....we're celebrating with a fantastic selection of 5 writers and 1 excellent band. This month, we're excited to welcome the Cleveland own Burning River Press!

Here's the first of three--count 'em, three!--events this month:

Where: ModernFormations 4919 Penn Ave.
When: Wednesday, April 21st @ 8pm
Cover: $5 or a contribution to our potluck dinner
Will there be cake, you ask: You bet there will.

Also, join us for drinks at Brillobox before the show. You'll find us warming a booth and having a beer (or, usually, a Manhattan) by 6:30 p.m. on show nights.

Michelle Reale (Reader): Michelle Reale's fiction has been published in Smokelong Quarterly, Word Riot, Monkeybicycle, elimae, Eyeshot, JMWW, Pank, Foundling Review, Rumble, Underground Voices, Emprise Review, Matchbook, Pear Noir, The Stray Branch, Blue Print Review and a host of others. Her fiction chapbook , Natural Habitat will be published by Burning River in April, 2010 and available this Wednesday. She's been twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize and lives in the suburbs of Philadelphia. She is currently working on a novel of linked stories.

Chris Bowen (Reader): Chris Bowen is an author, editor, and life-long learner. His fiction has appeared in multiple small press and college journals. Among others: Hobart, Muse & Stone, Penumbra and forthcoming, A Trunk of Delirium, Fast Forward Press and Leaf Garden. He is the creator of the Cleveland based website and small press Burning River. He enjoys the culinary arts at Cleveland’s Tri-C Metro campus and swimming in lakes during summer.

M. Callen: (Reader) In the morning, the first thing M. Callen does is push-ups. M. Callen has always carried a knife. She maintains a promise never to eat Wonderbread again, to never buy ValuTime anything. If once you saw her drinking from the whiskey tree, she apologizes for your gnarled face and busted lip. Sometimes she has a hard time knowing when enough is enough.

M. Callen is full of bad ideas, but not the kind you think. Her memory is, at best, circumspect; full of the ghosts she once slow danced with, or wanted to slow dance with. The trellis and string quartet. M. Callen has always wanted to use the word ‘pirouette’ in a poem; but like many other things, the timing has never been right.

Everyone who has ever come to call M. Callen “home” probably regrets it, because she would not leave and she would not stay. She comes from the silence that folds the night into morning, is descendent of both the albatross and the 8-track. She is less interested in apologizing than she is in asking forgiveness.

Don Wentworth: (Reader) Don Wentworth is a small press poet whose work has been or will be published in Bear Creek Haiku, Bottle Rockets, Modern Haiku, The New Yinzer and Rolling Stone, among others. He has published two chapbooks - Tenpenny Stamens (Random Weirdness) and The Nostalgia Papers (Mockersatz Zrox) - and has a forthcoming book, Past All Traps(Sixth Gallery), due sometime this year.

Martin Dodd: (Reader) Martin Dodd joined a writers group at age 67 in 2002. Since then, he has been published in The Barmaid, The Bean Counter, and The Bungee Jumper; Chicken Soup For The Recovering Soul; Homestead Review; Hobart (Web Issues Dec '06. Jun '07); Cadillac Cicatrix; and Writers Weekly. Dodd has also won awards, or been a finalist, in contests of NorthernPros; St. Louis Short Story Contest; Central Coast Writers (California); Writer's Digest; Inkwell; and Glimmer Train.

House of Assassins (Music): Stay tuned!

Three Excellent Shows in April!

Join us Wednesday, April 21 for a jam-packed night of words and music. On the literary side of things we'll be featuring M. Callen, Don Wentworth, Michelle Reale, Chris Bowen, and Martin Dodd. House of Assassins have been tapped to provide the evening's soundtrack.

Then on Friday, April 30 join us for an extra helping of TNY Presents.
We'll have wordsmiths Chris Leo, Marcellus Hall, Taylor Grieshober, and
Wesley Conroy at the mic. And the amazing Uke & Tuba will also be on hand
to get your toes a-tappin'!

Both events will follow precise TNY Presents order:
Where: ModernFormations 4919 Penn Ave.
When: April 21 & April 30 @ 8pm
Cover: $5 or a contribution to our potluck dinner


But wait! There's more....

On Friday, April 23, in a benefit for the Pittsburgh Women's Shelter, The New Yinzer is hosting a reading and rocking out at Howler's Cafe on Liberty Avenue in Bloomfield. At the mic will be writers Evelyn Pierce and Savannah Schroll Guz, along with a fantastic selection of DJs and bands. Our theme? "Good Country People".

Join us again on March 17, 2010!
Where: ModernFormations 4919 Penn Ave.
When: Wednesday, March 17, 2010 @ 8pm
Cover: $5 or a contribution to our potluck dinner

Adam Kavulic (Reader) graduated from California University of Pennsylvania in 2008 and is going back to school to get his masters in elementary education. He spends his creative time between writing and photography. His top three root beers are as follows: Appalachian Brewery Co. Root Beer, D's SixPax and Dogz 1919 Real Draft Root Beer, and Dominion Root Beer. He is an atheist and currently learning Japanese.

Terry Hawkins (Reader) was born in Uniontown, PA in 1956. He is author of the novel Rage of Achilles. Through a series of administrative errors still the subject of chagrined scrutiny, he was permitted not only to attend but graduate from Yale, where he was publisher of the Yale Daily News. The wind next blew him to Madison, Wisonsin, for law school. After practicing there for three years, he returned to New Haven, where he chases ambulances for a day job. Find out more about Terry here.

Crystal Hoffman (Reader) Crystal Hoffman's poetry is forthcoming or has in appeared in journals such as A Capella Zoo, FRiGG, Weave, Blackbox, and The World According to Goldfish. She fancies herself a revolutionary for a number of reasons, one of which is The TypewriterGirls Poetry Cabaret (typewritergirls.net), where she subverts banalities in order to create living poetic experiences. In order to eat, she teaches English Literature and Composition courses at a community college and works as a pen-wielding mercenary for organized labor. It is her dearest wish is to decrease the amount of concrete in the world.

The Skirt Tasters (Music) Rock and Roll + Poesy Slingin'

Poet Angele Ellis Celebrates the warmth of TNY Presents!

'Tho forty winters have besieged our 'Burgh,
And buried alleys that never will see a plow,
When from our frozen burrows we emerge,
We'll seek distraction--friends, the time is now!
Then being asked, where all the culture lies,
Point thy chilled fingers toward Penn Avenue--
Modern Formations will make several poets rise,
Hosting this year's premiere New Yinzer revue.
So venture forth next Wednesday, pretty please,
Ramirez, Joseph, Ellis, Elias, and Weird Paul
Will pluck your heartstrings, and calm every sneeze
Bringing the warmth of verse and song to all.
I trust to meet you there, dear yinzers new and old,
For art's our best defense against the cold.

-Angele Ellis

Please come out to this month's The New Yinzer Presents!

WEDNESDAY, FEB. 17, 8 P.M., at Modern Formations Gallery, 4919 Penn Avenue.
Performing are Adriana Ramirez, Diana Joseph, Che Elias, Angele Ellis, and musical guest Weird Paul Petroskey.

Thanks, Angele!!

The New Yinzer's Third Season starts up again on February 17, 2010!

Join us at our favorite haunt, Modern Formations, on 2/17 at 8:00p.m.

Readers take the stage at 8:30.

Cover: $5 or free with a contribution to our pot luck spread

Feel free to BYOB!

Adriana Ramirez: (Reader) Adriana E. Ramirez is disposed to skirts over pants, dresses over pantsuits. None of the clocks in her house are set to the right time. Adri secretly considers herself a Texan, although she's far more Mexican and Colombian than anything else. She used to be a performance poet and has over fifteen years experience in theater, spoken word, and advocacy. Once ranked the 26th slam poet in the world (iwps 2006), Adri used to co-host the Latino/Indigenous Showcase at the National Poetry Slam and now hosts the Steel City Slam in Pittsburgh. Her poems and prose have appeared on the internet, on subway station walls, and occasionally, on pieces of dead wood. She currently lives in Pittsburgh, where she works as a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Pittsburgh and is finishing a book about her death fantasies, Colombia, and the way we tell stories around violence. She is a Virgo and a Boar, and also has an MFA in Creative Nonfiction writing from Pitt.

Diana Joseph: (Reader) Diana Joseph is the author of the story collection Happy or Otherwise (Carnegie Mellon UP 2003) and the memoir I'm Sorry YouFeel That Way: The Astonishing but True Story of a Daughter, Sister, Slut, Wife, Mother and Friend to Man and Dog. Her work has been listed in Best American Stories, Best American Essays, the Pushcart Prize Anthology and has appeared in Best Sex Writing, Country Living, and Marie Claire. She teaches in the MFA program at Minnesota State University-Mankato.

Che Elias: (Reader) Che Elias was born in 1980 in Glendale, West Virginia. He spent his formative years in the surrounding Ohio River Valley area...Then relocating to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he is now currently living. He is the author of a novel Rockets Construe Vala and a poetry collection A Lesser Summer: Early Poems. His second novel, Juliet ...,Remember, was published by Six Gallery Press in 2002. His poetry collection Meddles into Preclusion appeared in 2003, and in 2004 he published his novel The Pagan Ellipsis, which is available now. Other Works by CheElias: The Abacus, Wheeling (Poems and Stories), and Death Poems.

Angele Ellis: (Reader) Angele Ellis is the author of Arab on Radar (SixGallery Press, 2007). A 2008 recipient of an Individual Creative Artist fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, her poems have appeared in Mizna, Grasslimb, Encyclopedia Destructica, Rune, Pittsburgh City Paper, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, THEMA, and the anthologies Come Together: Imagine Peace and Voices from the Attic. In September 2009, she won Pittsburgh Filmmakers’ G-20 Haiku Contest; her haiku was displayed on the marquee of the Harris Theatre for the duration of Pittsburgh’s G-20 summit.

Weird Paul: (Music) Weird Paul Petroskey is one good lookin' S.O.B. But, more importantly, he writes the damn catchiest songs. Paul began releasing his own cassettes inthe late 80's. In 1991, Homestead Records released "Lo Fidelity, Hi Anxiety", Paul's now hard-to-find cult classic CD. Since then, Paul is back to releasing his own albums of fun indie-pop/punk, including his latest (and 23rd), AS HEARD IN MY DREAMS. Currently, having written or co-written almost 600 songs, Paul has about 20 albums worth of music available for purchase (see weirdpaul.com). The new album by The Weird Paul Rock Band, "Simulating the Act of Love" will be released in early 2010. On April 21, 2006, the hour-long documentary on Weird Paul- Weird Paul, A Lo Fidelity Documentary- by Chicago filmmaker Stacey Goldschmidt - showed at the Harris Theater in downtown Pittsburgh. It has since played at the Chicago Underground Film Festival and in Leeds, England at the Leeds International Film Festival. It features interviews with Lou Barlow, Calvin Johnson, John S. Hall, BrittDaniel (Spoon), Mr. HCI (Happy Flowers) and more. The film is now also available on DVD.

And 'til we see you, please check out Bob Hoover's wonderful mention of us in the January 17th edition of Post-Gazette!