Pitt-Greensburg will celebrate the many joys of the written word April 15 through April 18 when it hosts its annual Writers Festival and Senior Capstone Book Launch Celebration, featuring special guest authors Sarah Shotland and Jim Ray Daniels, as well as 2019 graduating Creative and Professional Writing majors and esteemed alumni authors.
Readings begin at 7 p.m. in the Fireside Lounge on the Pitt-Greensburg campus. All readings, receptions, and book signings are free and open to the public. (The Fireside Lounge is located in Chambers Hall.)
Monday, April 15:
Award-winning author and playwright Sarah Shotland will be the featured guest opening Monday, April 15.
Shotland is the author of the novel Junkette and a playwright whose work has been performed in professional theaters around the world. She was a 2018 Equal Justice Resident at the Santa Fe Art Institute, where she worked on her current project, a collection of essays about teaching creative writing in jails and prisons. Her essays about the subject have appeared or are forthcoming in Creative Nonfiction, Baltimore Review, Lunch Ticket, and Proximity, where she won the Proximity Personal Essay Prize, judged by Paul Lisicky. Sarah regularly speaks and writes about art as a tool for prison abolition. She is the cofounder and program coordinator of Words Without Walls, which brings creative writing classes to jails, prisons and rehabilitation centers in Pittsburgh, PA.
With Sheryl St. Germain, Shotland coedited the literary anthology Words Without Walls: Writers on Addiction, Violence & Incarceration, published by Trinity University Press in spring of 2015.
Shotland’s most recent play, Cereus Moonlight, was commissioned by miR Theater. After opening on the Space Coast of Florida, it played at the 25th annual Rhino Fest in Chicago. Other work for the stage has been performed in theaters in Dallas, Austin, New Orleans, and Chicago, and internationally in Spain and China. She’s also written commissioned work for Corningworks Dance and Sonarcheology Pittsburgh.
She is Assistant Professor of English at Chatham University, where she teaches in the MFA in Creative Writing program.
Joining Shotland on the stage will be the following Pitt-Greensburg Creative and Professional Writing majors, who will be debuting and reading from their just-published chapbooks: Jenna Aleski (poetry); Maura Barron (poetry); Emily Buckel (creative nonfiction/experimental form; Honorable Mention, The Joan Didion Prize for Excellence in Creative Nonfiction); and Rob Carlson (creative nonfiction/memoir).
Copies of Shotland’s novel, as well as copies of all student chapbooks, will be available for sale and signing during a post-reading reception.
Tuesday, April 16:
Acclaimed fictioneer and poet Jim Daniels will be featured on the Pitt-Greensburg stage, where he will be celebrating the release of his most recent book, Perp Walk, a genre-busting collection that maps out the emotional capitals and potholes of coming of age in a blue-collar town in the Great Lakes State.
In Perp Walk, Daniels captures both the shooting stars and the constellations that build into earned insights and honest reflections. In Daniels’s work, the check is always in the mail but somehow never arrives, and honor is more than a certificate.
Daniels is the author of six fiction collections, 17 poetry collections, and four produced screenplays. He has edited five anthologies. A native of Detroit, he is the Thomas Stockham Baker University Professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
Joining Daniels at the mic will be Pitt-Greensburg graduating seniors Brianna Dettlinger (fiction; Honorable Mention, The Scott Turow Prize for Fiction); Matthew Boyer (multi-genre; winner of the Gerald Stern Prize for Excellence in Poetry); and Kaylee Hauck (creative nonfiction; winner of the Joan Didion Award for Excellence in Creative Nonfiction ), as well as special guest Pitt-Greensburg alum, Shelby Newhouse (fiction and poetry; former recipient of the Gerald Stern Prize for Excellence in Poetry).
Copies of Daniels’ books, as well as chapbooks from graduating student writers and Newhouse, will be available for sale and signing during a post-reading reception.
Wednesday, April 17:
Pitt-Greensburg’s line-up of talented senior capstone students will light up the night with readings from Audrey Gee (multi-media/graphic memoir); Bri Filer (fiction); Aaron Forbes (nonfiction/journalism); Courtney Gaffey (poetry); Chelle Jackson (fiction; Honorable Mention in the Ida B. Wells Prize for Excellence in Journalism and Reportage); and Julie Moeslein (YA fiction).
A special highlight of the evening will be a reading by alumni author Michelle Boring.
Boring is a 2014 graduate of Pitt-Greensburg’s Creative and Professional Writing Program, a 2017 graduate of Chatham University's MFA program, an editor for Stranded Oak Press, and a teacher of Creative Nonfiction at Pittsburgh's Creative and Performing Arts school. Her work has appeared in Crab Fat Magazine, Atticus Review, and more. She also teaches at Pitt’s Oakland campus, is the winner of the Joan Didion Award for Excellence in Creative Nonfiction at Pitt-Greensburg, and an alum of the summer writers’ festival at Chautauqua Institution.
A reception, book sale and signing, featuring chapbooks by all graduating seniors as well as work published by Stranded Oak Press, follows the readings.
Thursday, April 18:
Celebrations conclude with readings by senior Creative and Professional Writing majors Nicholas Morozowich (fiction): Alex Obringer (YA fiction); Dan Spanner (poetry and music); Kaylee Stinebiser (winner of the Scott Turow Fiction Prize for excellence in , fiction); and Dorothea Lint (with special guest Sammie).
Author Lori Jakiela, professor of Creative and Professional Writing, will close the evening with a reading from her most recent book, Portrait of the Artist as a Bingo Worker: Notes on Work and the Writing Life. Jakiela is the author of five books, most notably the memoir Belief Is Its Own Kind of Truth, Maybe, which received the Saroyan Prize for International Writing from Stanford University, and the New York Times bestseller Miss New York Has Everything, a memoir of her years growing up in Trafford, Pennsylvania, and her transformation to life as an international flight attendant based in New York City.
Copies of all student chapbooks will be available for sale and signing (and Sammie the Dog will be available for paw-signings). A wine and cheese reception will close out the celebrations. (21 and older for wine, please. Cheese for all!)
For more information, please contact Professor Jakiela at loj@pitt.edu or 724-836-7481.