WRITERS IN THE GARDENS 2008
A collaboration between the Gist Street Reading Series and City of Asylum/Pittsburgh
Preceding City of Asylum’s annual JAZZ-POETRY CONCERT, Writers-in-the-Gardens is a literary event staged in the cozy and eclectic public gardens of the Mexican War Street area.
Small groups of ten people are led on a tour from garden to garden. Waiting in each garden is a different poet or short-story writer, who will read for 5-10 minutes for each group. All gardens are within easy walking distance of one another. This year’s tour features six readers in five private gardens.
Kazim Ali has worked as a political organizer, lobbyist, and yoga instructor. His books include two volumes of poetry, The Far Mosque and The Fortieth Day, and two novels, Quinn’s Passage and the forthcoming The Disappearance of Seth. Co-founder of Nightboat Books, his poetry and essays appear widely. He currently teaches at Oberlin College and in the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast MFA Program.
Sherrie Flick (curator) is author of the award-winning flash fiction chapbook I Call This Flirting (Flume Press, 2004). Anthologies include two from Norton, New Sudden Fiction and Flash Fiction Forward. A recipient of a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts individual artist fellowship, Flick is co-founder and artistic director of the Gist Street Reading Series. Her first novel, Reconsidering Happiness, will be published in Fall 2009.
Yona Harvey is the recipient of a Barbara Deming Award for poetry and the Archie D. and Bertha H. Walker Foundation Scholarship, which enabled her to study at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Her work has appeared in Callaloo, Gulf Coast, Ploughshares, The Journal, West Branch, and Gathering Ground. She lives in Pittsburgh with her husband and children.
Nancy Krygowski's book of poems, Velocity, won the 2006 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize from the University of Pittsburgh Press. She's received grants from the PA Council on the Arts and from the Pittsburgh Foundation, plus residencies at the Jentel Foundation and The Kimmel Nelson Harding Center for the Arts. She works as an adult literacy instructor.
Lois Williams writes about landscape and migration. Her work appears in 5AM, Fourth River, Reader, the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, and Western PA History. Her poems and non-fiction have been honored with two full fellowships from Vermont Studio Center, a Barbara Deming Memorial Award for women writers, and a PA Council on the Arts fellowship. She teaches writing and reading at the University of Pittsburgh.