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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Sarah Rafson
Biography
Sarah Rafson received her BA in Architecture Studies from the University of Toronto and Masters from Columbia University’s Critical, Curatorial and Conceptual Practices program, where she was awarded the Buell Center Oral History Prize for her thesis supervised by Mary McLeod on the outlandish Chicago feminist architecture curatorial collective, CARYATIDS. She is an editor of subteXXt, the online journal of ArchiteXX, the New York-based advocacy group for women in architecture. Rafson’s writing has appeared in ArchDaily, The Architect’s Newspaper, Princeton’s Pidgin magazine and the Beverley Willis Foundation’s Women of 20th Century American Architecture. She was a curatorial assistant for Bernard Tschumi’s 2014 retrospective at the Centre Pompidou and editor of the recent publication Parc de La Villette (2014, Artifice). Rafson has also assisted the development of architecture exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, and most recently was editorial assistant for the catalogue of the exhibition Latin America in Construction, curated by Barry Bergdoll. Currently, she is a freelance editor, writer and researcher and is preparing to launch an editorial and curatorial agency for architecture and design.
Lesley Rains
Biography
Lesley Rains was the founder of East End Book Exchange, a general interest used bookstore in Pittsburgh’s Bloomfield neighborhood, and is now the manager of City of Asylum’s bookstore.
Further reading:
“Big Ideas Can Fuel a Small Business” (USA Today)
“Lesley Rains tries to find new bookselling niche” (City Paper)
“Bloomfield Bookstore Owner Bucks Naysayers” (Pittsburgh Tribune-Review)
Grace Randall
Biography
Grace Randall is a writer, interviewer, blogger, and aspiring actor. Among other opportunities, she interviews authors for Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures’ Kids and Teens Series. She has interviewed Gregory Maguire, Andrea Davis-Pinkney and Nick Courage. Some of her Pittsburgh author friends and personal favorites are Betsy Fitzpatrick, Elizabeth Fitzgerald Howard, Nicole Peeler, Katherine Ayres, Elizabeth Segel and Stewart O’Nan.
Born in Arlington, Virginia, Grace moved to Pittsburgh when she was three. She attends the Environmental Charter School.
Natalie Sacco
Biography
A Pittsburgh native, Natalie received her M.A. in Media Studies from The New School in 2011, and headed to Cleveland to manage digital strategy for a national media company. After three years, Natalie decided it was time to head back to the burgh – and buy a bookstore in her hometown of Oakmont! A strong supporter of local community and small business, Natalie and her partner, Trevor Thomas, are passionate about keeping Mystery Lovers Bookshop thriving for another 25 years and more. While Natalie loves the mystery genre, she is mostly just a fan of books and community – and there’s nothing quite like a small, independent bookstore to bring the two together. Mystery Lovers Bookshop hopes to continue to support writers and readers of all kinds, offering a selection of mystery, children’s, non-fiction, and general interest books, and hosting or contributing to various events throughout the city. Natalie lives in Oakmont with her partner, Trevor, and their two sons, Milo and Ellis.
Connect with Mystery Lovers on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
Kelly Scarff
Biography
Kelly Scarff is an editor and a graphic designer who lives in Greensburg, Pennsylvania. She also teaches English at a local university. Her first chapbook, I Fall in Love with Strangers, is available from Liquid Paper Press; her second chapbook, Mother Russia, is forthcoming from Kattywompus Press. Her poems have been published in various poetry journals, and you can find her tweeting about fruit flies on her Twitter handle, @kscarff.
Daniel M. Shapiro
Biography
Daniel M. Shapiro is the author of How the Potato Chip Was Invented (sunnyoutside press, 2013), a collection of celebrity-centered poems. His work has been featured in numerous online and print journals. He is a poetry editor of Pittsburgh Poetry Review and interviews poets online at Little Myths.
Fred Shaw
Biography
Fred Shaw is a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh, and Carlow University, where he received his MFA. He teaches writing and literature at Point Park University and Carlow University in Pittsburgh, PA. He is the author of the chapbook, Argot (Finishing Line Press). His poems have been published in 5AM, Poet Lore, Briar Cliff Review, Permafrost, SLAB, Spry Literary Magazine, Floodwall, Nerve Cowboy, Mason’s Road, Shaking Like A Mountain, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and Pittsburgh City Paper, where he currently reviews books. In a parallel life, he has also worked in the service industry for the past twenty-five years. He lives in Pittsburgh with his wife and rescued hound dog.
Adam Shuck
Biography
Adam Shuck is the creator of Eat That, Read This, the lunchtime link round-up e-newsletter about Pittsburgh. Informing and entertaining in equal measure, Eat That, Read This’s regular aggregation of local news, politics, culture, and miscellany has been called “a must-read” by Pittsburgh Magazine. A native of Frederick, Maryland, Adam holds a degree in German Studies and Linguistics from NYU and lives in Lawrenceville with his husband.
Scott Silsbe
Biography
Scott Silsbe was born in Detroit. He now lives in Pittsburgh, where he writes and works for Caliban Bookshop. His poems and prose have appeared in numerous print and web periodicals including Chiron Review, Nerve Cowboy, The Chariton Review, Third Coast, The Volta, and the Cultural Weekly. He is the author of two poetry collections: Unattended Fire (Six Gallery Press, 2012) and The River Underneath the City (Low Ghost Press, 2013).
Ellen McGrath Smith
Biography
Ellen McGrath Smith teaches at the University of Pittsburgh and in the Carlow University Madwomen in the Attic program. Her poetry has appeared in The American Poetry Review, Los Angeles Review, Quiddity, Cimarron, and other journals, and in several anthologies, including Beauty Is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability and the forthcoming Rabbit Ears. Smith has been the recipient of an Orlando Prize, an Academy of American Poets award, a Rainmaker Award from Zone 3 magazine, and a 2007 Individual Artist grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Her second chapbook, Scatter, Feed, was published by Seven Kitchens Press in the fall of 2014, and her book, tentatively titled Nobody’s Jackknife, will be published in fall 2015 by the West End Press. Her fiction has appeared in Weave, Thumbnail, Switchback, Kestrel, and other journals, and her critical work on women writers, craft, and poetic form has appeared in Sagetrieb, Talking Writing, Cerise; an article on the public poetics of Adrienne Rich is forthcoming in Voice, Vision, Politics, and Performance in the Poetics of Adrienne Rich and Jayne Cortez: Feminist Superheroes in Conversation (Lexington Books).
Richard St. John
Biography
Richard St. John is a nationally-published poet whose collections include Book of Entangled Souls (Broadstone Books, 2022), Each Perfected Name (Truman State University Press, 2015), The Pure Inconstancy of Grace (published in 2005 by Truman State University Press, as first runner-up for the T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry), and Shrine (a long poem released as a chapbook in 2011).
His work has also appeared in numerous periodicals and anthologies. He has read widely across the country, connecting not only with literary audiences but with listeners new to poetry. You can hear or read some of Rick’s poems, presentations and reviews by clicking Media.
To schedule a reading or class visit, or to contact Rick, please click Let’s Connect.
Uwe Stender
Biography
Literary Agent Dr. Uwe Stender is a Full Member of the AAR (Association of Authors’ Representatives). He is interested in all kinds of commercial fiction, especially Young Adult, Middle Grade, Mysteries, and Women’s Fiction. He is also interested in all kinds of non-fiction projects. But surprise him, his tastes are eclectic, and he may just love what you wrote!
His favorite five novels right now are: Eleanor And Park, How It Went Down, Code Name Verity, High Fidelity, and The Big Sleep.
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