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Free. Books will be available for purchase. Handicap accessible.Luray Gross grew up on a Pennsylvania dairy farm in a household full of music and books. Her Elegant Reprieve was the 1995–96 Still Waters Press Poetry Chapbook Competition winner. She was the 2002 Poet Laureate of Bucks County and resident faculty at the 2006 Frost Place Festival and Conference on Poetry in Franconia, NH. She was the recipient of a fellowship in poetry from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and, in 2000, named one of the Council’s Distinguished Teaching Artists. A storyteller as well as poet, she has worked with thousands of students and teachers over the last twenty-some years. Ragged Sky has published two poetry collections by her, Lift and With This Body.
Mike Schneider began writing during the Vietnam War when, while serving at an air force base in Ohio, he published an anti-war “underground” newspaper. He has practiced law, worked as a science writer, won awards for magazine writing, and written book reviews and essays on culture for several publications. For a series of essays on art and politics in the Thomas Merton Center’s New People, he received a 2003–04 Creative Artists Stipend in Arts Commentary from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Three times nominated for the Pushcart Prize, his poems appear in many literary journals, several anthologies and three chapbooks. He received the 2012 Editors’ Award from The Florida Review and the 2016 Robert Phillips Prize from Texas Review Press. In 2017, for the Lifelong Learning program at Carnegie Mellon University, he taught the first course on Bob Dylan in Pittsburgh. Recently, the Hungry Hill Writing Group in West Cork, Ireland, awarded Schneider’s work second prize in its Poets Meet Politics 2022 International Open. He lives in Pittsburgh’s historic South Side neighborhood. Ragged Sky published his Spring Mills.
Born and raised in Texas, Michael Simms has been active in politics and poetry for over 40 years as a writer, teacher, editor, and community activist. He is the founder of Vox Populi, an online forum for poetry, politics and nature, as well as Autumn House Press, a nonprofit publisher of books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. He’s also the author of three full-length collections of poetry and two college textbooks about poetry—and the lead editor of over 100 published books. He has recently published spec-fiction and fantasy novels. Simms has won a number of awards and fellowships, including a Certificate of Recognition in 2011 from the Pennsylvania State Legislature for his contribution to the arts. Simms has an MFA from the University of Iowa and a Certificate in Plant-based Nutrition from Cornell University. He lives with his wife Eva in the historic Mount Washington neighborhood overlooking the city of Pittsburgh. Ragged Sky published three poetry collections by him: American Ash, Nightjar, and Strange Meadowlark.
Arlene Weiner grew up in New York City. She is active in Pittsburgh Poetry Exchange, the Porch Poets, and the Squirrel Hill Poetry Workshop. She has been a Shakespeare scholar, a cardiology technician, a den mother, a member of a group developing educational software, and an editor. Her poems have appeared in many journals, including the Paterson Literary Review, Pleiades, Poet Lore, and U.S. 1 Worksheets; have been anthologized; and have been heard on The Writer’s Almanac. Ragged Sky Press published three collections of her poems, Escape Velocity (2006), City Bird (2016), and More (2022). Arlene was awarded a fellowship to MacDowell. She also writes plays.
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5002 Penn Ave, Pittsburgh, PA, United States, Pennsylvania 15224