Spring 2015 Schedule
Thursday, January 29
4:30 PM
YOU! Welcome back! Reedies write poetry, read poetry, sing poetry, make poetry, live poetry. Come bring your own writing. Come bring your own questions. Come bring your own favorite poems. Let’s talk about some poetry you already love and encounter some poetry you may love next.
Thursday, February 19
4:30 PM
Claudia Rankine is the author of several collections of poetry: Don't Let Me Be Lonely (Graywolf Press, 2004), Plot (Grove Press, 2001), The End of the Alphabet (Grove Press, 1998), and Nothing in Nature is Private (Cleveland State University Press, 1994). Her newest collection, Citizen: An American Lyric, is forthcoming from Graywolf later this year. In addition to poetry, Rankine has written plays including The Provenance of Beauty: A South Bronx Travelogue (commissioned by the Foundry Theater) and Existing Conditions (co-authored with Casey Llewellyn). She is co-editor of several anthologies including American Poets in the Twenty-First Century: The New Poetics (Wesleyan University Press, 2006) and The Racial Imaginary: Writers on Race in the Life of the Mind, forthcoming from Fence Books. She has been awarded fellowships by the Academy of American Poets, the Lannan Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2013, she was elected as a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. Among her most recent awards is the 2014 Morton Dauwen Zabel Award, presented by the American Academy of Arts & Letters and the Jackson Prize. Rankine currently teaches at Pomona College, where she is the Henry G. Lee Professor of English.
Thursday, February 26
4:30 PM
Yona Harvey is the author of the poetry collection, Hemming the Water, winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award from Claremont Graduate University. Her work has been published and anthologized in many places including Callaloo, jubilat, The Volta, and A Poet's Craft: A Comprehensive Guide to Making and Sharing Your Poetry (ed. Annie Finch). Her work has also been commissioned by poet and visual artist Vanessa German as part of German's museum installation "It's Out of My Hands," 21st Century Juju: New Magic, Soul Gadgets, and Reckoning." Harvey also created a audio poem for visual artist Casey Droege's Six x Ate project (MOCA Cleveland). She directed the Creative Writing Program at Carnegie Mellon University before coming to The University of Pittsburgh where she is currently an assistant professor in the Writing Program. She lives with her family in the Pittsburgh neighborhood not far from where jazz composer and pianist Mary Lou Williams grew up. Her website is yonaharvey.com.
Thursday, March 5
4:30 PM
Jen Bervin’s work brings together text and textile in a practice that encompasses poetry, archival research, artist's books, and large-scale art works. She has published four books with Granary Books and three others with Ugly Duckling Presse. The recent trade release of her artist's book first published as a limited edition by Granary, The Gorgeous Nothings: Emily Dickinson's Envelope Poems, co-edited with Marta Werner (with a preface by Susan Howe) from Christine Burgin / New Directions, made "Best Books of 2013" lists in The New Yorker, The Times Literary Supplement and Hyperallergic. Current research for her next project, The Silk Poems, an experimental book nanoimprinted on silk film, includes consulting nanotechnology and biomedical labs, medical libraries, and over fifty international textile archives and sericulture museums. Jen Bervin has received fellowships and residencies in art and writing from the Bogliasco Foundation, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, Creative Capital, The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, New York Foundation for the Arts, MacDowell Colony, Visual Studies Workshop, Center for Book Arts, and Camargo Foundation in France. Her work has been shown at The Power Plant in Toronto, The Walker Art Center, The Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, The Soap Factory, and Temple Contemporary, and is in more than thirty collections including Yale University, Stanford University, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, and The J. Paul Getty Museum.
Thursday, April 23
4:30 PM
Wendy Chin Tanner is the author of the poetry collection Turn (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2014) and co-author of the graphic novel American Terrorist (A Wave Blue World). Her work can be found at The Rumpus, Denver Quarterly, RHINO Magazine, Vinyl Poetry, Ink Node, The Huffington Post, The Mays Anthology of Oxford and Cambridge, and elsewhere. She is a founding editor at Kin Poetry Journal, poetry editor at The Nervous Breakdown, staff interviewer at Lantern Review, and co-founder at A Wave Blue World. Born and raised in NYC, Wendy was educated at Cambridge University, UK and now resides in Portland, OR. Getty Museum.
Fall 2014 Schedule
Thursday, September 18
4:30 PM
Armin Tolentino received his MFA in poetry at Rutgers University in Newark, NJ. He works with Camp Fire Columbia, a non-profit organization that provides enrichment programs to youth in Portland. He is a 2014 Oregon Literary Arts Fellowship recipient and his poetry has appeared in The Same Journal, Mason's Road, and Verseweaver. He enjoys playing punk songs on ukulele, fishing for anything that is willing to bite, and hopes one day to earn a Guinness Record for world's loudest clap.
Thursday, October 9
4:30 PM
Bruce Smith was born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is the author of six books of poems: The Common Wages, Silver and Information (National Poetry Series winner), Mercy Seat, The Other Lover, a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, Songs for Two Voices, and most recently Devotions, a finalist for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the LA Times Book Prize. Winner of the 2012 William Carlos Williams Award, his work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Nation, The New Republic, The Paris Review, The Partisan Review, Poetry, The American Poetry Review, and many others. He teaches at Syracuse University.
Thursday, November 20
4:30 PM
Mary Szybist Mary Szybist is the author of Incarnadine, winner of the 2013 National Book Award for Poetry, and Granted, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Poetry, Best American Poetry, Pushcart Prize Anthology, Virginia Quarterly Review, Cincinnati Review,Tin House, The Iowa Review, The Kenyon Review, and other journals. Her honors include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Witter Bynner Foundation in conjunction with the Library of Congress, the Rona Jaffe Foundation, the Great Lakes Colleges Association, the MacDowell Colony, and the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center. She is a 2014 Guggenheim Fellow and teaches at Lewis & Clark College.
Thursday, December 11
4:30 PM
Brittney Corrigan was raised in Colorado but has called Portland, Oregon her home since 1990. She holds a degree from Reed College, where she is also employed. She is the poetry editor for the online journal Hyperlexia: poetry and prose about the autism spectrum (http://hyperlexiajournal.com/). Brittney's poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, and she is the author of the collection, Navigation, published by The Habit of Rainy Nights Press (2012), and the chapbook, 40 Weeks, published by Finishing Line Press (2012). For more information, visit Brittney's website: http://brittneycorrigan.com/.