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