The 2024 Hemingway’s Summer Poetry Series (50th Anniversary Season): Week Five – Jen Ashburn, Taylor Grieshober, Romella Kitchens, Sharon Fagan McDermott & Robert Yune!

The 2024 HEMINGWAY’S SUMMER POETRY SERIES
50^th Anniversary Season @ Hop Farm Brewing Company

Eight Tuesdays – 2nd & 4th of the Month –  May through August @ 7 p.m.

Founded by Jimmy Cvetic in 1974 or thereabouts.  Open Mic!

Curated by Joan E. Bauer & Kristofer Collins

Audio archive: www.hemingwayspoetryseries.blogspot.com

Hop Farm Brewing: www.hopfarmbrewingco.com

Week Five: Tues July 9

Jen Ashburn, Taylor Grieshober, Romella Kitchens, Sharon Fagan McDermott & Robert Yune

Jen Ashburn is a poet and nonfiction writer. She’s the author of The Light on the Wall and has work published in numerous venues, including The Fiddlehead, The Writer’s Almanac, and Pedestal Magazine. She is the recipient of the 2023 Lori White Non-Fiction Fellowship and has been nominated for several Pushcart Prizes. Her current projects include a poetry manuscript, “Cracked Paraffin,” and a memoir, “Borax, Cornmeal and Cherry Blossoms.” She holds an MFA from Chatham University and lives in Edgewood.

Taylor Grieshober earned an MFA in fiction from Oregon State University in 2018. Her short stories have most recently appeared in Joyland and the Columbia Review. You can find her debut story collection, Off Days (Low Ghost Press), at fine bookstores around the city.

Romella Kitchens has performed and read poetry with poets such as Ed Ochester, Terrance Hayes, Gerald Stern and many others. Her work has been published in Uppagus, Coal Hill Review, California Quarterly, Brevity, and numerous online publications including the University of Pittsburgh’s Hot Metal Bridge. For many years, she was a panel judge for the Pittsburgh level of Poetry Out Loud. She has published four chapbooks and has been anthologized in three Autumn House poetry collections. She holds two Masters Degrees in Education from the University of Pittsburgh and is a playwright as well as a poet.

Sharon Fagan McDermott is a poet and writer who teaches literature at a private school in Pittsburgh, PA. She has four collections of poetry published: Voluptuous; Alley Scatting (Parallel Press); and Bitter Acoustic (winner of 2011 Jacar Press chapbook competition) and a full manuscript, Life Without Furniture (Jacar Press, 2018). In November 2023, McDermott’s book of hybrid essays about creative writing, co-authored with M. C. Benner-Dixon–Millions of Suns: On Writing and Life–was published by the University of Michigan Press (part of their “Writers on Writing” series). “Poets and Writers Magazine” just named it a “Best Book for Writers.”

As a Navy brat, Robert Yune moved 11 times by the time he turned 18.  After graduating from Pitt, he lived in Pittsburgh for the next 15 years. In the summer of 2012, he worked as a stand-in for George Takei and has appeared as an extra in commercials and movies such as Me and Earl and the Dying Girl and Fathers and Daughters. In 2009, he received a writing fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Yune won the 2017 Mary McCarthy Prize and his debut collection, Impossible Children, was published by Sarabande Books in 2018.