TNY Presents: Roberts, Gwin, Newton, and Yune

The New Yinzer Presents is back with Celine Roberts, Ben Gwin, Matthew Newton, and Robert Yune!

Join us at Modern Formations on THURSDAY, October 15th, at 8PM. There will be beer from Mellingers and various snacks. $5 or FREE with potluck contribution!


A little about our readers:

Celine Roberts is a lapsed fiction writer. Her non-fiction works which involve drinking and talking about it can be found in the City Paper. 

Ben Gwin is the Fiction Editor at Burrow Press Review. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Normal School, Mary: A Journal of New Writing, Word Riot and others. His novel manuscript Clean Time: The True Story of Ronald Reagan Middleton was shortlisted for the 2014 Pressgang Prize. He lives in Pittsburgh with his daughter.

Matthew Newton is a writer, author, and editor from Western Pennsylvania, where he lives in the Electric Valley with his wife and two young sons. He has written essays, many about class and culture, for Guernica, the Oxford American, and The Rumpus, and his reporting has appeared in The Atlantic, Esquire, Forbes, and Spin. He is at work on the manuscript for his first book, Shopping Mall, which will be published by Bloomsbury in early 2017. He is currently associate editor at Carnegie Museum of Art, where he edits the CMOA Blog and oversees editorial content for the Hillman Photography Initiative and Teenie Harris Archive, in addition to working on book and exhibition projects.

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 in Short Fiction and was one of five finalists for the Prairie Schooner Book Prize, selected by Sherman Alexie and Colin Channer. His fiction has appeared in Green Mountains Review, the Kenyon Review, and Los Angeles Review, among others.

 His debut novel Eighty Days of Sunlight was published this summer through Thought Catalog Books.

And TNY is back: BRICKNER, SOLTESZ, DEKA, BICKFORD

The New Yinzer Presents returns for our fall installment on SEPTEMBER 17th, with some MAJOR TALENT:

Rachel Ann Brickner
Natty Soltesz
Seth Bickford
Christina Deka

As usual we'll enjoy FREE BEER from Mellingers at the one, the only, MODERN FORMATIONS GALLERY, September 17, 2015, 8PM, $5 cover of FREE with potluck contribution!

About our readers:

Rachel Ann Brickner is originally from Pittsburgh. In a previous life, she worked in publishing in both New York and San Francisco. Currently, she's a first-year MFA candidate at the University of Pittsburgh in fiction and the Writing Pittsburgh Fellow for Creative Nonfiction magazine. You can find her work at Pank, Corium Magazine, and The Female Gaze, among others. 

Natty Soltesz's novel Backwoods was a 2012 Lambda Literary Award Finalist and features illustrations by Michael Kirwan. His erotic fiction has been widely published in magazines and anthologies. He co-wrote the screenplay for the 2009 Joe Gage- directed porn film Dad Takes a Fishing Trip. He is the co-founder of the semi-annual Pittsburgh newsletter QueerBurgher and his creative interests include collaging and zine making. 

Christina Deka teaches writing at the Community College of Allegheny County. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from Chatham University in 2011. Before she became an instructor at CCAC, she taught multi-genre creative writing courses to women at the Allegheny County Jail through Chatham University's Words Without Walls program. She lives with her husband and three spoiled cats. 

Seth Bickford throws queer Pittsburgh parties (i.e. Bro Club). He works obnoxiously hard at trying to be funny. His recent hobbies include working unmanageable hours to try and find relief from debilitating student loan debt and crying. 

March 20: Gegick, Guzick, Gwin, Jones

When--Thursday, March 20
Where- ModernFormations, 4919 Penn Avenue, Pittsburgh
Time- 8:00 p.m.
Cover- $5 or free w/ contribution of potluck dish
Proudly sponsored by Mellingers Beer Distributor
BYOB!

Richard L. Gegick is from Trafford. His work has appeared in Hot Metal Bridge, The Cleveland Review, and Stymie Magazine. He lives in Pittsburgh and waits tables for a living.

SJ Guzik is an oral story telling recorder. Her favorite interviews include getting stoned with Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings at a Sherton Hotel and a night long debate with Das Racist on 90s r&b. She has published with Bitch and Bust magazines. She edits for publications on diversity and inclusion recently working with the National Arbor Day Foundation. When she's not working for monies, she enjoys delivering babies, tending gardens, and drinking dirty martinis.

Ben Gwin's fiction has appeared in Burrow Press Review, Dark Sky Magazine, Mary: A Journal of New Writing, and others. He lives in Pittsburgh with his daughter.

T.C. Jones is a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh. His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in The Monarch Review, The New Yinzer, Gadfly Magazine, and Prairie Gold: An Anthology of the American Heartland. In 2013, Jones won the TAR award for fiction in The April Reader. He currently directs Jam2Jam, a quarterly literary and art series and recently has been named the fiction editor at Lime Hawk Literary Arts Collective, a New York City based literary magazine. He lives in Lawrenceville with his fiancée, poet SJ Guzik.

November 21: Cook, Gaydos, Martinac, Parker

When--Thursday, November 21st 
Where- ModernFormations, 4919 Penn Avenue, Pittsburgh 
Time- 8:00 p.m. 
Cover- $5 or free w/ contribution of potluck dish 
 Proudly sponsored by Mellingers Beer Distributor 
 BYOB! 

Julie Ann Cook, of Rock Hill, South Carolina, is a happily married, joyfully outnumbered mother of five boys, two of whom were stillborn. Between assisting in living room railroad construction and addressing concerns of who would win in a fight between Megatron and Iron Man, Julie is an author, artist, and webmaster. With her mom and dad having been raised in the Pittsburgh area (Carrick and Kennedy Township respectively), Julie grew up in Beaver County until she flew south for college in 1998. A graduate of Winthrop University, Julie has been published in various venues, including Kakalak Anthology of Carolina Poets, Iodine Poetry Journal, moonShine review, MaMaZina.com, and The Wolf. She is celebrating the release of her inaugural poetry book, Love Like Weeds, (Main Street Rag Publishing Company, October 2013).

Raiona Gaydos grew up in a Brooklyn soap-factory-turned-performance-space that, on weekend nights, was commandeered by street poets, topless drummers, and white-faced Butoh dancers who used her childhood lair as their dressing room. When a radio interviewer asked her at eight years old how she felt about all of this, she is reported to have said, “I’m gonna be really weird when I grow up.” She was right. She has studied at the New School in New York City, lived in Paris, and is now back in her birth-town of Pittsburgh running “B.E. Literary” events and publications at Biddle’s Escape. She has finally started to edit and share some of the things she’s been writing over the years.





Paula Martinac is the author of three published novels, including the Lambda Literary Award-

winning Out of Time, which was recently re-released as an e-book. She has also published three nonfiction books on lesbian and gay culture and politics, and numerous articles, essays, and short stories. Her plays have had productions with Pittsburgh Playwrights Theater Company, Manhattan Theatre Source, the Pittsburgh New Works Festival, No Name Players, and others. Find out more about her writing at
www.paulamartinac.com.

Kelcey Parker’s first book, For Sale By Owner (Kore Press), won the 2011 Next Generation Indie Book Award in Short Fiction and was a Finalist for the 2012 Best Books of Indiana. She directs the creative writing program at Indiana University South Bend. During the summer of 2012, she worked as an Ask-Me Guide at Fallingwater, where she asked as many questions as she answered, helped visitors get the perfect photo of Fallingwater, and always kept an eye out for Liliane’s ghost. Visit Kelcey’s website: http://kelceyparker.com/

October 17: Dietrich, Rem-Martin, Steffen

When--Thursday, October 17th 
Where- ModernFormations, 4919 Penn Avenue, Pittsburgh 
Time- 8:00 p.m. Cover- $5 or free w/ contribution of potluck dish 
Proudly sponsored by Mellingers Beer Distributor 
BYOB!

Karen Dietrich grew up in the 1980s in Connellsville, a small factory town fifty-seven miles from Pittsburgh. Her first memoir, THE GIRL FACTORY (skirt/Globe Pequot) was published October 1, 2013. Karen lives in Greensburg, where she works as an adjunct writing instructor at Westmoreland County Community College and the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg. She recently joined the faculty of the online creative writing MFA program at the University of Arkansas at Monticello. Her work has appeared in Joyland, Smokelong Quarterly, Specter, and elsewhere.

Michael Steffen is the author of three collections of poetry. His first, No Good at Sea, was published by Legible Press in 2002. His second, Heart Murmur, was released in 2009 by Bordighera Press. Bad Behavior, his third collection, was published by Brick Road Poetry Press in 2012. A long-time resident of northeastern Pennsylvania, Michael was granted a 2002 Fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and has had poems appear in a wide variety of journals including Poetry, Potomac Review, The Ledge, Poet Lore,Rhino, Smartish Pace and many others. He is a Y2K graduate of the MFA in Creative Writing Program at Vermont College and currently lives in Lancaster, NY.

Sarah Beth (Rem) Martin, penname SBR Martin, was bred, born, and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where she continues to live and work as a writer, journalist, and mother. An alumna of The Ellis School, the University of Pittsburgh, and the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, she currently writes for The South Pittsburgh Reporter and is employed as an independent copywriter serving a variety of clients from small businesses to Fortune 500 companies. Described as "a psychological and thoughtful novel of suspense" by Midwest Book Review, Martin's debut novel, "In Wake of Water," was published in Oct. 2011. Less than a year later, her second book, "Pig," hit the market after placing as a Second Prize Quarterfinalist in the 2012 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Contest, where Publisher’s Weekly said of it, “The ultimate resolution of the story makes for quite a surprise… (Martin) is able to build good characters, flawed and believable, yet familiar, so that at the end one is saddened, but also, in a strange way, enriched.” “Pig” was recognized by Suspense Magazine as a Best of 2012 book, in the category of Indie Fiction, and won First Place for Best Lesbian Contemporary General Fiction in the 2012 Elisa Rolle International Rainbow Awards. Martin is presently working on her third novel, which takes a controversial look at murder as an artform and uniquely explores one’s ownership over the creative process.

September 19: Feldman, Greenlaw, Korn, Shapiro

When--Thursday, September 19th
Where- ModernFormations, 4919 Penn Avenue, Pittsburgh
Time- 8:00 p.m.
Cover- $5 or free w/ contribution of potluck dish
BYOB!


Ben Feldman-----> is a novelist and short story writer. Originally from Philadelphia, he came to Pittsburgh in 2001 to pursue his MFA in Writing, which he received from Pitt in 2004. He presently works at Carnegie Mellon University in "Advancement" (the polite name for fundraising). In July 2012, he was an Artist in Residence at the Starry Night Artists Retreat in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico.












<------Carrie Greenlaw lives in Troy Hill, writes poems and makes a damn good autumnal mixtape. She is currently documenting her life by writing a tanka poem for every day of 2013. You can read her writing and daily tankas at mousesized.com.













 

John Korn----> is a mental health social worker living in Pittsburgh PA. He writes, draws and enjoys experimenting. His book of poetry "Television Farm" can be found on Amazon.com or at Barnes and Noble. It contains the poem "14 Young Women" which was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Daniel M. Shapiro is a special education teacher in the Woodland Hills School District. How the Potato Chip Was Invented, his first full-length collection of poems, is forthcoming from sunnyoutside press.

New Season Kickoff! August 15: Malloy, Patton, Sepe

When--Thursday, August 15th
Where- ModernFormations, 4919 Penn Avenue, Pittsburgh
Time- 8:00 p.m.
Cover- $5 or free w/ contribution of potluck dish
BYOB!


Patrick Malloy----> is originally from Philadelphia but now calls Pittsburgh home. His debut novel Bang Bang was published in November by Bedlam Press. Other than that, he reads a lot of Reddit and Post Gazette, which is the closest to publishing credits he's accumulated thus far.

 <------Joshua M. Patton is a Pittsburgh native and veteran of the US Army currently attending the University of Pittsburgh thanks to the Post-9/11 GI Bill. He is a regular contributor to Veteran Journal, Dadditudes, WhatToExpect.com, and AND Magazine. His fiction has been anthologized in The Sins of the Seven, published by Wicked East Press. His work has taken first-place in the 2011 & 2012 Writer's Cafe/Prosody awards in non-fiction and poetry, respectively. He is a Member Spokesperson for Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. He spends the rest of his time trying his best to not embarrass his eleven-year-old daughter.







Mark Sepe------> is not from Pittsburgh, but he has lived here for 4 years. He went to West Chester University for a degree in English Education with minors in Art History and Comparative Literature. He currently is rehabiliting a house and has no life.

May 16: Jones, Salvadeo, Wagner

When--Thursday, May 16th
Where- ModernFormations, 4919 Penn Avenue, Pittsburgh
Time- 8:00 p.m.
Cover- $5 or free w/ contribution of potluck dish
BYOB!

T.C Jones is a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh. His writing has appeared in the Monarch Review, The New Yinzer, Gadfly Magazine, and won the TAR award for fiction in The April Reader. A resident of the east end of Pittsburgh, T.C. currently directs a quarterly literary and art series called Jam2Jam.




















Alicia Salvadeo was raised in Staten Island, NY, and Stroudsburg, PA. She now lives in Pittsburgh's Polish Hill, where she spends more time on her porch than in any other room in the apartment. Current obsessions include Game of Thrones, Muriel Rukeyser, and Freddie Mercury. Her poetry and critical work has most recently appeared or is forthcoming in Bombay Gin, The Volta, DIAGRAM, and Phantom Limb.














Jasmine Dreame Wagner is the author of Rewilding (Ahsahta Press, 2013) and Listening for Earthquakes (Caketrain Journal and Press, 2012.) Her writing has appeared in American Letters & Commentary, Blackbird, Colorado Review, Indiana Review, NANO Fiction, New American Writing, Seattle Review, Verse, and in two anthologies: The Arcadia Project: North American Postmodern Pastoral (Ahsahta Press, 2012) and Lost and Found: Stories from New York (Mr. Beller's Neighborhood Books, 2009.) A graduate of Columbia University and the University of Montana, Jasmine has received grants and fellowships from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Summer Literary Seminars - Kenya, and The Wassaic Project. She lives in Brooklyn and teaches creative writing at Western Connecticut State University.

April 18: Boyd, Good, Hall, Irwin, Mancus, Wong

When--Thursday, April 18
Where- ModernFormations, 4919 Penn Avenue, Pittsburgh
Time- 8:00 p.m.
Cover- $5 or free w/ contribution of potluck dish
BYOB!





Eric Boyd-----> is a short story writer living in Pittsburgh. A graduate of Chatham University's Words Without Walls program, Boyd is also a winner of the 2012 PEN Prison Writing Contest and was recently nominated for the Pushcart prize.Boyd has previously edited for magazines such as Pork & Mead and Dead Flowers: a poetry rag; he is the current Lit editor for Twisted South magazine.






<-----Mike Good is a binge coffee drinker from Plum Boro, who graduated from the University of Pittsburgh in 2011. Since then, he co-founded the Hour After Happy Hour Writers' Workshop (thehourafterhappyhour.wordpress.com) - a casual writers' workshop that meets biweekly in Bloomfield's Big Idea Bookstore. Mike writes poetry and fiction.

Joe Hall----> was born in the woods and is devoted to Cheryl. He is the author of The Devotional Poems (Black Ocean 2013). With Chad Hardy he wrote The Container Store Vols. I & II (SpringGun 2012). His poems, fiction, book reviews, and essays have appeared in Gulf Coast, Octopus, HTMLGiant, The Colorado Review, and elsewhere.

<-----Jason Irwin grew up in Dunkirk, NY and now live in Pittsburgh. His first collection of poetry "Watering the Dead" won the 2006/2007 Transcontinental Poetry Award and was published in 2008 by Pavement Saw Press. In 2005 his manuscript "Some Days It's A Love Story" won the Slipstream Press Chapbook Prize.

Tony Mancus----> is the author of three chapbooks: Bye Land (Greying Ghost); Bye Sea (Tree Light Books - forthcoming); and Diplomancy (Horse Less Press - forthcoming). In 2008, he co-founded Flying Guillotine Press with Sommer Browning and they make small books. He works as a quality assurance specialist and a writing instructor and lives in northern Virginia with his wife Shannon and their two yappy cats. He went to undergrad at Pitt and doesn't get back nearly as much as he should.





<-----Angela Veronica Wong is the author of how to survive a hotel fire (Coconut Books 2012). She is on the internet at angelaveronicawong.com.

March 21: Dietrich, Hill, Knapps

When--Thursday, March 21st
Where- ModernFormations, 4919 Penn Avenue, Pittsburgh
Time- 8:00 p.m.
Cover- $5 or free w/ contribution of potluck dish
BYOB!

Sean Patrick Hill------> is the author of The Imagined Field (Paper Kite Press) and Interstitial (BlazeVOX Books), as well as a chapbook, Hibernaculum, forthcoming from Slash Pine Press. Poems are forthcoming in Blackbird, Smartish Pace, and Catch Up, and have appeared recently in Cimarron Review and ILK. He is an MFA candidate in the Warren Wilson College and lives in Kentucky.













 

<------Karen Dietrich is the author of two poetry chapbooks: Anchor Glass (Finishing Line Press, 2011) and Understory (Dancing Girl Press, 2013). Her debut memoir, The Girl Factory, is forthcoming from Globe Pequot in Fall 2013. Karen's essays and poems have appeared in Weave, The Bellingham Review, PANK, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and elsewhere. She is currently an adjunct professor at The University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg.










Mike Knapps------> lives and works in Pittsburgh. He’s written for a long time, but he’s never gotten anything published. He puts things on the internet at www.theburningbarrel.com

February New Yinzer in Photos

We had a packed house for the kick off reading of 2013. Stay tuned for more about the March 21 reading, and enjoy some photos in the meantime:

Poet Laura E. Davis

Novelist Lucy Leitner

Poet Ryan Kauffman

Prose writer Matt Stidle

Fiction & comix writer Daniel McCloskey

February 21: Davis, Kauffman, Leitner, McCloskey, Stidle

When--Thursday, February 21st
Where- ModernFormations, 4919 Penn Avenue, Pittsburgh
Time- 8:00 p.m.
Cover- $5 or free w/ contribution of potluck dish
BYOB!

<-----Laura E. Davis is the author of Braiding the Storm (Finishing Line Press 2012). Her poems have appeared in A-Minor, Super Arrow, and Redactions, among others. The Founding Editor of Weave Magazine, she teaches poetry writing, translation, and recitation in San Francisco, where she lives with her partner, Sal.

ryanKauffman------> is an as yet unpublished poet with a BA in English Writing from the University of Pittsburgh. He resides in Pittsburgh's historic Little Italy neighborhood and hosts a bi-monthly reading series called POESIS which takes place at the Mr. Roboto Project. The manuscript "Ode To Recession" from which he will be reading was a finalist for the National Poetry Series.

<-----Lucy Leitner is the author of the horror-comedy novel Working Stiffs, a satirical take on what happens when zombies invade a corporate office. Raised in Arlington, VA, she adopted Pittsburgh as her hometown when she arrived in 2001 to attend the University of Pittsburgh. Though she earned a masters degree in journalism from Point Park, she estimates that she has earned more money betting on Penguins games than she has as a reporter. By day, she is a writer for a local marketing firm and by night, she is usually sleeping. When not working on her second novel, Lucy covers the burgeoning Pittsburgh film scene on the Hollyburgh blog and is learning Krav Maga.



Daniel McCloskey-----> is a writer, illustrator, and founder of the Cyberpunk Apocalypse project. Recent works include his hybrid novel A Film About Billy, and a collaborative comic seriesBears in Space. His work can be found online at www.gnarlyasiwannabe.com and at finer bookstores and comic shops in the Northeast and Midwest.

<-----Matt Stidle is overly verbose.

November 15th: Alexander, McIntosh, Ramirez

When--Thursday, November 15th
Where- ModernFormations, 4919 Penn Avenue, Pittsburgh
Time- 8:00 p.m.
Cover- $5 or free w/ contribution of potluck dish
BYOB!


Lisa Alexander holds an MFA in Poetry from Drew University and is a member of the Madwomen in the Attic writing workshop. Her work has been published in various journals including Bloom, The Burnside Review, Girls with Glasses, Pittsburgh's City Paper and anthologized in Voices from the Attic. She's a sound engineer for Prosody, NPR-affiliate WESA's weekly show featuring the work of national writers. Her manuscript throttlebody is being submitted for publication.


Tera McIntosh was born and raised in Johnstown, Pennsylvania where she attended Bishop McCort High School. She earned her B.S. degree at Slippery Rock University in Recreation Therapy, where she learned the power and healing of play. Tera earned her M.S. from Carlow University in PRL-Nonprofit Management, and has worked with numerous nonprofit organizations throughout the country and Pittsburgh on creating safe spaces and enriching community. She has performed Slam Poetry at many venues including Club Cafe, Cannon Coffee, Shadow Lounge, Antioch University-Seattle, The University of Pittsburgh, The It Gets Better Project, The Improv, Carlow University, and many living rooms and bathroom mirrors. Most of her writings can be found left in her jean pockets in the dryer on tumble dry while others are usually published in Randomly Accessed Poets, an online poetry magazine downloadable on any kindle or in the Steel City Slam Chapbook. She is a member of the Steel City Slam Poetry team which competed in the National Slam Poetry Competition this past August in Charlotte, NC. She is the co-founder of Project Coffeehouse a nonprofit that opens up coffeeshops in emerging areas whose revenue goes back into the community to continue building it back up. She is also the co-founder of Young Steel Youth Poetry League and the Pittsburgh Poetry Collective, the city’s only spoken word organization for youth and adults. She is finishing up her Doctorate Degree in just two weeks (so if she looks a bit frazzled its because she is) at Antioch University in Leadership and Change where she hopes to finally figure out world peace, free vending machines, equal rights, and smaller lines at the DMV. She is a member of the women’s football team the Pittsburgh Passion and also a habitual coffee drinker and pizza eater.



Adriana E. Ramirez is a nonfiction writer and performance poet with over fifteen years experience in theater, spoken word, and advocacy. Once ranked the 26th slam poet in the world (iwps 2006), she helped found and co-hosted the Latino/Indigenous Showcase at the National Poetry Slam; she now serves as creative director of Pittsburgh Poetry Collective and slammaster of the Steel City Slam. Her poems and writings have appeared on the internet, on subway station walls, and occasionally, on pieces of dead wood. She loves technology and refreshments—mineral water, limes, and cheap Mexican food. Adriana lives in Pittsburgh, where she is writing a book about her death fantasies, Colombia, and the way we tell stories around violence. She roots for el tricolor in the World Cup and teaches in the English Department at The University of Pittsburgh.