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February 8
Terrance Hayes’s second book of poems, Hip Logic (Viking-Penguin 2002), was chosen by Cornelius Eady as a National Poetry Series selection. His debut collection, Muscular Music, won the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and a Whiting Emerging Writers Award and also received reviews in Black Issues Book Review and Washington Post Book World. Terrance’s work has recently appeared in Chelsea, Harvard Review, The Journal, River City, and The Southern Review. He is currently an assistant professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University.
Jon Ritz grew up in Pittsburgh and is very happy to be living in western Pennsylvania again for the first time in a decade. His fiction and essays have appeared recently in American Literary Review, North Atlantic Review, Literature and Belief, and the Chicago Tribune, and have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Currently he teaches writing at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown. Sample of his work
March 1
Barbara Edelman received an MFA in poetry from the University of Pittsburgh, where she currently teaches. She is also poet in residence at the Ellis School. Her poems have appeared in Cimarron Review, 5 AM, Prairie Schooner, and Poet Lore. Her awards include a PA Council on the Arts grant and residencies at the Vermont Studio Center and Va. Center for the Creative Arts. Her one-act play, “Charades” was produced by the Pittsburgh New Works Festival. In her pre-Pittsburgh life, she worked as an ESL instructor in Los Angeles, an actor, and a theatrical agent. Her chapbook, A Girl in Water (2002) was published by Parallel Press, University of Wisconsin.
Currently working on her first novel, Four O’Clock, Ellen Placey Wadey will complete her MFA in fiction writing at the University of Pittsburgh this spring. She is co-host of Prosody, a weekly show on WYEP-FM. She received the 2001 Scott Turow Prize for her short story, “Burning Beauty.”
April 5
Kathleen Lee has traveled extensively for two decades in Asia, South America and the Middle East. She has written for Condé Nast Traveler magazine and her work appears in Best American Travel Writing 2001. Travel Among Men is her first collection of stories. She recently moved from Santa Fe to Pittsburgh.
May 3
Yona Harvey: Like William “Bootsy” Collins, Macy Gray, and Toni Morrison, Yona Harvey is from the great state of Ohio. Like Morrison, she left that great state and came to Washington, DC to attend Howard University. Since her graduation several years ago, she has taught in Japan, earned an MFA from The Ohio State University, and received a Barbara Deming award for poetry. Her work has appeared in various anthologies and journals, including Step Into A World and Meridians.
Heather Arnet recently moved back to Pittsburgh in 2000, from NYC, to join the full time staff at City Theatre. Heather has been involved in theatre as an actor, writer, and director for over twenty years. She has her Bachelo’s degree from Carnegie Mellon University in English and Drama and has directed over a dozen professional plays in the New York City and Pennsylvania areas, participated as a director for the NYC International Fringe Festival and New York New Playwrights Festival, directed a world premiere of her original adaptation of Oscar Wilde's Salome at the Chelsea Playhouse in New York, and her adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates’s I Stand Before You Naked at the Harold Clurman Theatre on 42nd Street. Most recently, Heather directed a staged performance of her monologue Superheroes, Artists, and Other Fly Things at the Making A Scene Event in downtown Pittsburgh. Heather currently has two new Pittsburgh based projects underway, one with the Three Rivers Arts Festival and Attack Theatre and the other with Carnegie Mellon University’s Center for Arts in Society, both planned for production in 2003.
June 14
Lois Williams writes poems and lives in Pittsburgh. “Calling Out the Days” appears in the Spring 2002 edition of the journal 5 AM. (Is it ok to be this short? I kinda hate to mention the UK growing up stuff and teaching at Pitt. I’d rather people just show up and hear what’s in the poems, which is mostly all about living between two countries and feeling always at a loss to join both of them fully and and of course all the large-misreadings-in-the-area-of married-bliss kinds of poems.)
John Talbird is a fiction writer currently writing a novel, The World Out There. He has been published or has work forthcoming in Coe Review, Delirium Journal, and the Quarterly Review of Film and Video to name a few. He lives in Lincoln, NE where he is working on his Ph.D. in English and plays drums in the band Prairie Psycho on the side. He lives with two cats, Harold and Toonces, neither of which drive cars. He dresses nicely about four times a year.
July 20
Beth Amsbary was Founding Artistic Director of Seattle Public Theater from 1988–1995. Under her direction, the Public Theatre grew to nation wide touring in its mission to produce theatre and educational programs which addressed issues of social justice, ecology, and the importance of a good barbershop quartet. With more than fifty productions to her directing credits, she has directed for Krut Tarn Teateret, Norway, Nebraska Directors’ Theatre, University of Nebraska, Canterbury Players, and the Episcopal Ministry in Higher Education.
Her full length solo works to date include Standing Ground, The Maiden and The Makita, Widening Rings of Being: The Poetry of Rumi, and Bones of the Building. Her newest piece, Bones of the Building was selected for inclusion in the first FringeACT Festival of New Original Work at ACT Theatre. Other pieces were selected as Artistic Picks by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Seattle Weekly, and Seattle Gay News. They have toured across Canada and the Western U.S., as well as appeared in many venues in Seattle, including Bumbershoot Festival, Union Garage, Mae West Fest, Odd Duck Studio, and the Seattle Fringe Festival. Her website: http://www.prayeriegirl.com/
When Frank Marion met his future wife Ann in a Chicago bowling alley, Hank Williams met Big Band. Hayseed met Downtown. And their son, Bob Marion’s, musical sensibilities were conceived. Bob is half of the Minneapolis-based musical duo, The Bob and Jeff Show, best known for their cult-hit, “If People Knew How To Be People Like Dogs Know How To Be Dogs”. He has performed with Taproot Theatre, Seattle Public Theater, Beer Theatre, and the Banana People. He is currently editing a book on the life of the anarchist Catholic Worker Ammon Hennessy as well as writing a new play, which will premiere at the Minneapolis Fringe Festival in 2002.
August 9
Keely Bowers received her MFA from University of Pittsburgh in 1995 and has published stories in The Chicago Tribune, Creative Nonfiction, Dickinson Review, and Three Rivers. She received the Nelson Algren Award for Short Fiction in 1990 and is currently working (and working...and working) on a novel in progress, titled A Practice Life. Keely has taught writing at Community College of Allegheny County and La Roche College, and now teaches fiction writing at Pitt.
Ladette Randolph holds a Ph.D. in creative writing from the University of Nebraska, and is a senior editor at the University of Nebraska Press where she acquires European fiction in translation, general trade nonfiction (including the new series American Lives, with Tobias Wolff as editor-at-large), scholarly monographs focusing on French and American literature and culture. Her fiction has appeared in a number of literary journals, including Prairie Schooner, Passages North, and South Dakota Review. Her story “The Girls” was included in Best New American Voices: 2000. Essays have appeared or are forthcoming in The Connecticut Review, The Clackamas Literary Review, Fourth Genre, and Prairie Schooner. The essay, “Mercy,” was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Fourth Genre. She is married to Noel Eicher and the mother of three children: Leif, Jordan, and Bronwyn.
September 6
Lee Martin is the author of a novel, Quakertown (Dutton 2001) and a memoir, From Our House (Dutton 2000) and and a story collection, The Least You Need to Know (Sarabande 1996). The Washington Post Book World named Quakertown one of the notable books of 2001. From Our House was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection and a Quality Paperback Book Club selection. The Least You Need to Know was the winner of the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction.
September 28
Robin Becker’s fifth collection of poems, The Horse Fair, appeared in 2000 with the University of Pittsburgh Press. In that year, she received the George W. Atherton Award for Excellence in Teaching, a university-wide award given by the Pennsylvania State University. Her fourth collection of poetry, All-American Girl (Pitt, 1996) won the 1996 Lambda Literary Award in Lesbian Poetry. From Prairie Schooner magazine she won the Strouse Prize (2002) for a group of five poems and the Virginia Faulkner Prize for Excellence in Writing (1997) for an essay and long poem.
Professor of English and Women’s Studies at the Pennsylvania State University, Becker has received fellowships from The Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College, the Massachusetts Artists Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Her poems and book reviews appear in publications including American Poetry Review, Boston Globe, Gettysburg Review, and Ploughshares. Becker serves as Poetry Editor for Women’s Review of Books. During the 1998-99 academic year, she was a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies of the City University of New York. During her 2000-2001 sabbatical, she was the William Steeple Davis Artist-in-Residence in Orient, New York. In 2002, Robin is a Visiting Artist at the Frick Art & Historical Center in Pittsburgh. Sample of her work
Hilda Raz is Professor of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Editor in Chief of the venerable literary quarterly Prarie Schooner. Her most recent books are Trans (Wesleyan UP), poems on transformations—including transexual—and a book of essays, Living on the Margins: Women Writers on Breast Cancer (Persea).
October 11
Jim Daniels is the author of seven books of poems, Places/Everyone (1985), winner of the Brittingham Prize for Poetry, University of Wisconsin Press and Punching Out (1990), Wayne State University Press and M-80 (1993), University of Pittsburgh Press and Niagara Falls (1994), Adastra Press and Blessing the House (1997), University of Pittsburgh Press, and Blue Jesus (2000), Carnegie Mellon University Press. He has had two new books of poems published this year, Night with Drive-By Shooting Stars, New Issues Press, and Digger’s Blues, Adastra Press.
His second book of stories, Detroit Tales, stories, Michigan State University Press, will be published in 2003. His first book of stories, No Pets, was published in 1999 by Bottom Dog Press. In addition, he has edited or co-edited four anthologies of poetry, including Letters to America: Contemporary American Poetry on Race, Wayne State (1995), and American Poetry: The Next Generation (2000), Carnegie Mellon. He also wrote the screenplay for No Pets, an independent feature film directed by Tony Buba (Braddock Films), and wrote “Heart of Hearts,” a one-act play produced at the 13th Street Repertory Theater in New York.
He has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. His poems have appeared in the Pushcart Prize and Best American Poetry anthologies. He is a Professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University, where he directs the Creative Writing Program and has received teaching awards from the University and from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences.
Gwen Ebert’s book of poems, The Little Bat Trainer, won the Four Way Books intro prize in 2001. Though she currently lives and works in Madison, WI, the inspiration for much of her work came from her outdoor teaching experiences in the Southwest, and much of the actual writing happened here in Pittsburgh. She’s won many prizes for individual poems, and in 2000 she published a chapbook, Twig Songs. Sample of her work
November 15
Tony Hoagland has published two collections of poetry: the first, Sweet Ruin, was chosen by Donald Justice in 1992 for the Brittingham Prize from the University of Wisconsin Press. The second, Donkey Gospel, from Graywolf Press, won the James Laughlin Award for the best second book of poems published in l998. Hoagland has received two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Zacharis Award from Emerson College and was a Guggenheim Foundation Fellow in 2000-2001. His essays and poems have appeared widely in magazines and anthologies. His work has won three Pushcart awards.
He is at work finishing a third collection of poems and a collection of essays about poetry tentatively titled Real Sofistikashun. He has taught at many schools, including George Washington University, Colby College, and New Mexico State University, and he is an ongoing faculty member of the Warren Wilson College low residency MFA program. He currently teaches at the University of Pittsburgh.
John Rybicki’s main gig, his missionary work, is teaching creative writing to inner-city children in Detroit. He tours the land teaching students at various colleges and schools about the holiness of a sentence. Every day he falls in love with stuff like the slightest trembling of a leaf. His wife is his sun and moon and more. And when he isn’t teaching, or hammering away at the page, he likes to roll around in the dirt doing carpentry.
His poems and stories have appeared in the North American Review, Bomb, Field, Ohio Review, The Quarterly, Alaska Quarterly, as well as in numerous anthologies. His first book of poems, Traveling at High Speeds is out on New Issues Poetry Press. And he has a chapbook, Yellow-Haired Girl with Spider, forthcoming on March Street Press. His second book of poems is Fire Psalm. Sample of his work
December 13
Jonah Winter’s first book of poems, Maine, was chosen by David Lehman as the inaugural winner of the Slope Editions’ book contest and was published in the Fall of 2002. His poem “Sestina: Bob” won the Cohen Prize from Ploughshares and was selected for the 2001 Pushcart Anthology. See samples at www.slopeeditions.org/winter-samples.pdf .
Winter currently teaches llama repair at George Mason University.
Sally Denmead’s favorite music is “Live” so as long as there’s an audience, she is equally at home singing opera, French art songs, English music-hall tunes, commercial jingles from the 1970s, and the classics of the American standard repertoire. Currently, she’s having fun performing the music she hoid in her yute—the great songs of the 20s, 30s and 40s.
Sally has sung at the Amato Opera, Access Theatre, Samuel Beckett Theater, Olmsted Theatre (at Adelphi University), Merkin Concert Hall, CAMI Hall, and Alice Tully Hall (all in NYC), at the Merriam Theater (in Philadelphia), and on Martha’s Vineyard. She has guested with the Gerard Carelli Orchestra, Vince Giordano’s Nighthawks Orchestra, and on board The Spirit of San Francisco. Sally has also fronted several bands, including The Perth Amboy Society Tea Orchestra, Last Chance Sal and the Ultimatums, Pine-top Sal and her Virgin Gentlemen, and regrettably, Speculum Sal and the Pap Smears.
Sally is also responsible for the Inside and Out Salon Series, a major venue for professionals in the arts to share their new and evolving works with each other. Her next performance will be opening the KGB Bar’s February poetry series with accordionist Brian Dewan.
Paul Cosentino and the Boilermaker Jazz Band is an ecstatically fun band in the real New Orleans Tradition. It’s a good time funky roots American gumbo! The Boilermaker Jazz Band has performed at major jazz festivals, concert halls, colleges, and clubs throughout the world. Everywhere they go the good feeling that only real jumpin’ jazz creates goes with them. Paul and the Band have recorded 6 critically acclaimed CDs—including an award winning children’s recording, and have received rave reviews for their excellent live performances. The Boilermakers have been featured on radio shows across the country and overseas, including a National Public Radio jazz series that was broadcast on over 50 stations. Visit their website for more information.
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