Pittsburgh is home to an incredible range of authors, publishing professionals, literary event organizers and opinion leaders.
Our city nurtures well-known and emerging literary talent and is the inspiration for many works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. In addition to the authors you may recognize, Littsburgh’s evolving literary roster features some of the passionate people who work behind the scenes to find local and national audiences for this work, and who help make Pittsburgh a haven for writers and readers.
If you would like to suggest yourself or someone you know (who currently lives in Pittsburgh) for inclusion in this directory, please email us with a biographical sketch, and any relevant website and social links.
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Michael Albright
Biography
Michael Albright is the Managing Editor of the Pittsburgh Poetry Review, and curates the “Under the Sign of the Bear” reading series. He has published poetry in numerous online and print journals. His first book of poems, In the Hall of Dead Birds and Viking Tools was published in 2015 by Finishing Line Press. He lives on a windy hilltop near Greensburg, PA. with his wife Lori and an ever-changing array of children and other animals.
Kelly Andrews
Biography
Kelly Andrews’ poems have appeared or are forthcoming in PANK, Prick of the Spindle, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, Menacing Hedge, Lime Hawk, IDK Magazine, Rogue Agent, and Weave Magazine, among others. Her chapbook “Mule Skinner” is available from Dancing Girl Press (2014). She is a poetry coeditor for the online journals Pretty Owl Poetry and Hot Metal Bridge, and has a hand in creating B.E. Quarterly, a community-based Pittsburgh zine. She also curates the Pretty Owl Poetry Spotlight reading series held at Classic Lines bookstore. More information about her publications and literary endeavors can be found at her website.
Joan E. Bauer
Biography
Jan Beatty
Biography
Jan Beatty is the author of four books of poetry, all published by the University of Pittsburgh Press. The Switching/Yard won the 2014 Paterson Award for Literary Excellence. Library Journal named it one of …30 New Books That Will Help You Rediscover Poetry. Beatty’s work was featured in The Huffington Post as one of ten women writers for “required reading.” Other books include Red Sugar, finalist for the 2009 Paterson Poetry Prize; Boneshaker, finalist for the Milt Kessler Award; and Mad River, winner of the Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize. Her chapbook, Ravage, was published by Lefty Blondie Press in 2012. Beatty’s limited edition chapbook, Ravenous, won the 1995 State Street Prize.
Awards include a $10,000 Regional Artists Grant from the Pittsburgh Foundation, the $15,000 Creative Achievement Award from the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, the Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry, a finalist for the Discovery/The Nation Award, and two fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Individual poems have appeared in journals such as TriQuarterly, Gulf Coast, and Court Green, and Best American Poetry, with work forthcoming in POETRY. Her essays on writing have appeared in anthologies by Autumn House Press, Creative Nonfiction, and The State University of New York Press.
Beatty worked as a waitress for fifteen years, and as a welfare caseworker, an abortion counselor, and a social worker and teacher in maximum-security prisons. She is the managing editor of MadBooks, a small press that has published a series of books and chapbooks by women writers. She has toured at venues such as the Los Angeles Times Book Festival and the Geraldine R. Dodge Festival. For twenty years, Beatty has hosted and produced Prosody, a public radio show on NPR-affiliate WESA-FM featuring national writers. Jan Beatty directs the Madwomen in the Attic writing workshops at Carlow University, where she is also director of creative writing and teaches in the low-residency MFA program.
Jennifer Jackson Berry
Biography
Jennifer Jackson Berry’s first full length collection of poetry The Feeder is forthcoming from YesYes Books in 2016. She is also the author of the chapbooks When I Was a Girl (Sundress Publications) and Nothing But Candy (Liquid Paper Press). Her poems have appeared in journals such as Booth, The Emerson Review, Harpur Palate, Moon City Review, Stirring, and Whiskey Island, among others. Poems also appeared in various anthologies, including New Poetry from the Midwest (New American Press, 2015), We Will Be Shelter (Write Bloody Publishing, 2014), and By the Slice (Spooky Girlfriend Press, 2014). She has been featured on Prosody, a public radio show on the NPR affiliate WESA-FM showcasing the work of national writers. She holds degrees from the University of Pittsburgh and Indiana University’s MFA program. She is the Editor-in-Chief of Pittsburgh Poetry Review and an Assistant Editor for WomenArts Quarterly Journal. She lives in the Braddock Hills neighborhood of Pittsburgh.
Stephanie Brea
Biography
Stephanie Brea is a writer, teacher, copy editor, and event organizer. She has 10+ years of experience facilitating creative writing workshops for local schools and non-profit organizations including Pittsburgh Public Schools, the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Literary Arts Boom, The Warhol, and Penn Trafford High School. Her work has been published in Pear Noir!, The Legendary, Nerve Cowboy and the Pittsburgh City Paper. She also spent time as a technical writer for an invention company and as copy editor for Alternative Press magazine.
Way back in 1998, she helped organize her first event: a series of motorcycle rides through the Arizona desert to support her father’s business. Then came a monthly literary series called Get Lit. She still vacillates between literary and non-literary happenings including: Bayardstown Social Club, Weather Permitting, Pittsburgh Abides (a Lebowski fest), Pittonkatonk, Rec Room: Winter Games, Girls Get Lit, and Bah Humbug: Writers Wrestle the Holiday Spirit.
She mostly uses Twitter for cat pictures, but you can contact her @wordfarm.
Angele Ellis
Biography
Angele Ellis is author of Arab on Radar (Six Gallery Press), whose poems won her an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Spared (A Main Street Rag Editors’ Choice Chapbook), and coauthor of Dealing With Differences (Corwin Press), named as an outstanding multicultural resource by The Christian Science Monitor. Her poetry, short fiction—including excerpts of a novel in progress–and book reviews have appeared in fifty journals and ten anthologies. She is a Contributing Editor for Al Jadid Magazine. A longtime writer, editor, and community activist, Ellis lives in the Friendship section of Pittsburgh, both a neighborhood and a state of mind.
Celeste Gainey
Biography
Celeste Gainey’s first full-length collection of poetry, the GAFFER, was published in March 2015 by Arktoi Books, an imprint of Red Hen Press. Her chapbook, In the land of speculation & seismography (Seven Kitchens Press, 2011), was runner-up for the 2010 Robin Becker Prize, established to recognize a chapbook of poetry by a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered or queer writer with no previous book or chapbook publication. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has been a guest on Prosody, the public radio show on NPR affiliate, WESA-FM, featuring the work of national writers.
Her poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in BLOOM, 5AM, Columbia Poetry Review, HEArt, Wild Apples, Adanna, Writers at Work, Madroad: The Breadline Press West Coast Anthology, and other publications. In addition to reading her work widely, Gainey has been a featured presenter, alongside poets Jan Beatty and Aaron Smith, at the 2012 Other Words Conference in St. Augustine, Florida, and a featured reader for BLOOM literary journal’s tenth anniversary celebration at the 2014 AWP Conference in Seattle.
In 1974, Gainey was the first woman to be admitted as a gaffer to the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (I.A.T.S.E.). In addition to lighting dozens of documentaries, she worked for such programs as 60 Minutes, ABC Close-Up, and 20/20, as well as on feature films, most memorably Dog Day Afternoon, Taxi Driver, and The Wiz. She was an early member of New York Women in Film and Television, serving two terms as President, from 1983-1985.
Moving into the field of architecture, Gainey became a leading architectural lighting designer and consultant, operating her design studio, Gotham Light & Power Inc., in both New York City and Los Angeles, designing lighting systems for restaurants, offices, retail stores, museums, and residences here and abroad, including Dreamworks Records, Warner Bros., and the beloved Manhattan restaurants Gramercy Tavern and Union Square Café. She has lectured extensively on lighting for the hospitality industry and received numerous lighting accolades, including two International Illumination Design Awards presented by the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America as well as the G.E. Edison Award of Merit.
Born and raised in Santa Barbara, California, Gainey holds a BFA in Film and Television from the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University and an MFA in Creative Writing/Poetry from Carlow University. After many years of living on both the west and east coasts, she now lives with her partner, the novelist and screenwriter Elise D’Haene, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Dave Harris
Biography
Dave Harris is a spoken word poet and playwright from West Philly. As a playwright, his plays have been featured at Philadelphia Young Playwrights, New Haven Arts and Humanities Co-Op High School, Yale Playwrights Festival, the Annual Festival of New Work, UMASS Amherst, The 24 Hour Plays: Nationals, and the Yale Repertory Theater. As a poet, his work has been published or is forthcoming in The Huffington Post, Button Poetry, Upworthy, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, The Adroit Journal, The New Journal, Blueshift Journal, Freeze Ray Poetry, Up the Staircase Quarterly and The Misanthropy, amongst others. He is one of the winners of Write Bloody Publishing’s 2016 Book Contest, and his debut collection will be published in 2017.
James Croal Jackson
Biography
James Croal Jackson is a Filipino-American poet who works in film production. He has three chapbooks: Count Seeds With Me (Ethel Zine & Micro-Press, 2022), Our Past Leaves (Kelsay Books, 2021), and The Frayed Edge of Memory (Writing Knights, 2017). He edits The Mantle Poetry from Pittsburgh, PA.
James Croal Jackson (he/him/his) is a Filipino-American poet born in Akron, Ohio. After graduating from Baldwin Wallace University with degrees in Film Studies and Creative Writing, he moved to Los Angeles, where he worked in the film and television industry. Living in his Ford Fiesta near the ocean, James rediscovered his love for poetry, and has since been published in hundreds of literary magazines including Hobart, The Indianapolis Review, Rust+Moth, Whale Road Review, and Columbia Journal. He is the author of three poetry chapbooks: Count Seeds With Me (Ethel Zine & Micro-Press, 2022), Our Past Leaves (Kelsay Books, 2021), and The Frayed Edge of Memory (Writing Knights Press, 2017). He founded the journal The Mantle Poetry in 2017.
In 2015, he embarked on a long road trip, working various food delivery jobs and online crowdsource gigs to stay afloat. Thirty-seven states in, he moved to Columbus, Ohio, where he dove headfirst into the city’s robust poetry community, winning the 2016 William Redding Memorial Poetry Prize, sponsored by The Poetry Forum, the city’s longest running poetry series. He has been nominated multiple times for both the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.
In 2018, he moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and is once again working in film and television as a member of IATSE Local 161.
Email: JamesCroalJackson@gmail.com // twitter // instagram // facebook
Bryce Johle
Biography
Jenny Johnson
Biography
Jenny Johnson‘s first collection of poems, In Full Velvet, is forthcoming from Sarabande Books in 2017. She was a 2015 recipient of a Whiting Award, and she was recently awarded a 2016-2017 Hodder Fellowship at Princeton. Her poems appear in The Best American Poetry 2012, Los Angeles Review of Books Quarterly, New England Review, Troubling the Line: Trans & Genderqueer Poetry & Poetics, and elsewhere. She won Beloit Poetry Journal’s 2011 Chad Walsh Poetry Prize. She has also received awards and scholarships from the Blue Mountain Center, the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, The Pittsburgh Foundation, and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Currently, she is a Lecturer at the University of Pittsburgh where she teaches writing and gender studies.
Lori Beth Jones
Biography
Lori Beth is the Executive Director of the Pittsburgh Poetry Collective and a host of the weekly Steel City Slam. She has found community in poetry and its promotion on the local and national levels. A hostess at heart, her favorite events have been those she hosts in her home to support and celebrate traveling artists. Lori Beth also provides administrative support to Blue Sketch Press.
John Lawson
Biography
John Lawson has taught creative and dramatic writing at Robert Morris University for many years. His poems have been published in a variety of print and online venues including Main Street Rag, Uppagus, and Vox Populi. He hosts the Literature Out Loud podcast, which has featured Pittsburgh poets such as Jan Beatty, Jim Daniels, Ed Orchestra, Joan Bauer, and many others.
Sarah Leavens
Biography
Sarah Leavens’ poetry has appeared in The Diverse Arts Press, Weave, and So to Speak and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She was the 2012-2013 Out of the Forge Writer-in-Residence in Braddock, PA. Leavens holds an MFA in Poetry & Nonfiction from Chatham University, where she organized the Word Circus reading series in collaboration with Most Wanted Fine Art, and a BFA in Oil Painting from Wittenberg University. (Paintings and handmade books are currently on display at the East End Book Exchange.) With a background in public arts initiatives and outreach, Leavens is a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Pittsburgh, where she teaches professional writing. She also teaches creative writing at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, including the July 2015 travel writing retreat in Ambialet, France.
Joshua Lew McDermott
Biography
Joshua Lew McDermott is a Pittsburgher who originally grew up in Idaho and Utah. His first full poetry collection, Codex, was released in August, 2019 by Hand to Mouth Books, the latest publishing outfit of legendary Berkeley poet and publisher Charles Potts.
McDermott is the co-founder of the new small press/poetry website Line Rider Press, along with his twin sister and fellow poet Jessica Colleen McDermott. Line Rider launched in June 2019. The site spotlights a different poem/poet weekly and also publishes cultural commentary and essays. The press’s inaugural print publication We’re Dancing like Planets Now: The Selected Poems of M. Tyler Esplin is coming out in August, 2019.
McDermott is also a sociologist and activist who has been published by Jacobin Magazine online, the Hampton Institute, and in academic journals. He is the president of the African Socialist Movement International Support Committee, an organization which promotes equality, press freedoms, and democracy in the Mano River Region of West Africa. He is also the co-editor for Africanist Press, a progressive news and print publisher based in Sierra Leone.
Rachel Mennies
Biography
Rachel Mennies is the author of The Glad Hand of God Points Backwards, winner of the 2013 Walt McDonald First-Book Prize in Poetry, and the chapbook No Silence in the Fields. Her poetry has appeared recently in Black Warrior Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Drunken Boat, The Journal, Crazyhorse, and elsewhere, and has been reprinted at Poetry Daily. Mennies teaches at Carnegie Mellon University and serves as a member of AGNI’s editorial staff.
Emily Mohn-Slate
Biography
Emily Mohn-Slate’s recent poems are forthcoming or have appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Cimarron Review, Poet Lore, Indiana Review, The Adroit Journal, and elsewhere. She teaches writing at Chatham University and Carnegie Mellon University. She is a graduate of Bennington College (MFA), Boston University (MA), and Colgate University (BA). She has been part of the Madwomen in the Attic writing workshops since 2009.
Dave Newman
Biography
Dave Newman is the author of five books, including The Poem Factory (White Gorilla Press, 2015), the novel Two Small Birds (Writers Tribe Books, 2014), and the collection The Slaughterhouse Poems (White Gorilla Press, 2013), named one of the best books of the year by L Magazine. He works in chronic pain research, serving elders, and lives in Trafford, PA, the last town in the Electric Valley, with his wife, the writer Lori Jakiela, and their two children.
Lisa Panepinto
Biography
Lisa Panepinto is the author of two poetry collections, On This Borrowed Bike (Three Rooms Press, 2013) and Island Dreams (Cabildo Press, 2009). Her writing has appeared in Pittsburgh City Paper, Planet Drum, Maintenant, The Accompanist, and more. She has served as a mentor and a senior companion with the United Way of Allegheny County and as an AmeriCorps VISTA with the Penobscot Indian Nation, and received the President’s Volunteer Service Award. She is the poetry editor for Cabildo Quarterly, an online and print literary journal.
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