PGHwrites: “Keystone Poetry” (Book Launch)

City of Asylum is delighted to host the book launch for Keystone Poetry: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania, a poetry anthology from Penn State University Press, about Pennsylvania by Pennsylvanians. This reading features 11 of the poets from the anthology’s “The Allegheny Highlands” and “Three Rivers and Old Mills” sections sharing their work.

Organized geographically, the poems traverse county lines, ancestral lineages, and thematic concerns, as well as gender, racial, and socioeconomic barriers. From Philadelphia to Erie, and from the shale fields to the coal mines, Keystone Poetry celebrates the varied landscapes and voices of Pennsylvania. This collection brings together the work of 182 poets, whose poems seek to bring the reader close to home while fostering the discovery of new places and a deeper understanding of all those who live in the Keystone State.

A public reception with light bites and wine will follow the reading.

You can purchase a copy of Keystone Poetry: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania at City of Asylum Bookstore.

About the Poets:

Jan Beatty’s eighth book, Dragstripping, was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in September 2024. Jan is at work on her ninth full-length book, a collection of essays about gender and censorship. Jan’s work has been published in the Atlantic, the New York Times Sunday Magazine, Poetry, BuzzFeed, North American Review, and Best American Poetry. Of Jan’s work, Pitt Poetry Series Editor Ed Ochester said, “Nobody has a better sense of the colloquial American idiom. Nobody among her contemporaries writes better poems about urban working-class life.” Jan is Faculty Emerita at Carlow University, where she directed creative writing, the Madwomen in the Attic writing workshops, and the international low-residency MFA program.

Paola Corso is the author of seven books of poetry and fiction set in her native Pittsburgh area, where her Southern Italian immigrant family members were steel workers. Her latest are Vertical Bridges: Poems and Photographs of City Steps, The Laundress Catches Her Breath (winner of The Tillie Olsen Award for Creative Writing), and Catina’s Haircut: A Novel in Stories. As a member of an artist’s collective, Paola’s photographs have been exhibited in galleries, libraries, and open houses. She co-founded Steppin Stanzas, a grassroots performing arts project to celebrate city steps.

Jim Daniels is a Detroit native who currently lives in Pittsburgh and teaches in the Alma College low-residency MFA program. His latest publications include the poetry collection Gun/Shy (Wayne State University Press), the chapbook Comment Card (University of Chicago Press), and the fiction collection The Luck of the Fall (Michigan State University Press).

Katy Giebenhain is a poet advocating for access to essential medicines. She is the author of Sharps Cabaret (Mercer University Press), winner of the Adrienne Bond Award for Poetry. Her creative writing MPhil is from the University of South Wales. Her MA is from the University of Baltimore. Her BFA is from Oregon State. Along with Marty Malone and Alan Bogage, she co-hosts a First Friday poetry series from September to June at the Ragged Edge Coffeehouse in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Katy has been a regional judge for Poetry Out Loud and is the former Poetry and Theology editor and designer for Seminary Ridge Review.

Mike Good’s debut poetry collection, Rung by Rung, is forthcoming from Cavan Kerry Press in Spring 2027. His poetry has been published in Bennington Review, Ploughshares, Waxwing, Zyzzyva, and elsewhere, in addition to several anthologies, including, most recently, Keystone Poetry: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania (Penn State University Press). He also works as a critic and book reviewer, and his writing has received support from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Aspen Words, and The Sun. He lives in Pittsburgh. From 2018 to 2024, he served as managing editor at Autumn House Press.

Matt Hohner holds an M.F.A. in Writing and Poetics from Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, where he studied under legendary Beat Generation poets Allen Ginsberg, Anne Waldman, Amiri Baraka, Joanne Kyger, and others, as well as renowned poets, translators, scholars, and writers including Anselm Hollo, Jane Hirshfield, Andrew Schelling, Bobbie Louise Hawkins, Pierre Joris, Jerome Rothenberg, Sam Hamill, Wanda Coleman, Arthur Sze, and many others. Published in nine countries on five continents, Matt’s poetry has garnered numerous local, national, and international awards and recognition. He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a Best of the Net Award. In selecting Matt Hohner’s manuscript At the Edge of a Thousand Years as the Jacar Press 2023 Full Length Poetry Book Prize (published 2024), renowned poet Carolyn Forché writes: “The voice is elegiac with an unsentimental edge: to kill is language enough…This is a poet unafraid of risk.”

Kristin Kovacic was born and lives in Pittsburgh, PA, where she has taught for 20 years. She received her BA in writing from Carnegie Mellon University and her MFA from the University of Pittsburgh. Her essays have won the Pushcart Prize and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship, among other awards, and have appeared in Brain, Child, Full Grown People, and other publications. She is co-editor of Birth: A Literary Companion and author of the poetry chapbook House of Women.

Marjorie Maddox is Professor Emerita of English and Creative Writing at the Lock Haven campus of Commonwealth University, a 2023 Monson Arts Fellow, a poetry editor of Presence, and a radio host of WPSU-FM’s Poetry Moment. Marjorie has published 17 collections of poetry as well as over 700 poems, stories, and essays in journals and anthologies. Her poem, “Arise,” about the Thailand cave rescue, was awarded the 2019 Foley Poetry Prize by America Magazine (first out of 1,200 entries).

Rachel Roupp is a poet from the mountains of Pennsylvania. She proudly graduated from Mansfield University of Pennsylvania and went on to earn an MFA. Her poetry has appeared in Crab Fat Magazine, Persephone’s Daughters, Honey & Lime, Rust + Moth, and elsewhere. By day, she serves over 300 children and 70 colleagues as the community relations associate at an independent grade school in Pittsburgh. She lives every day to make Dolly Parton proud of her.

Matthew Ussia is the director of Duquesne University’s First Year Writing Program, in spite of the fact that he got a C- in freshman writing and was rejected from Duquesne’s MA program.  He is also an editor, podcaster, post-doom thereminist, softcore punk, postpunk backup singer, social media burnout, and sentient organic matter. His first book, The Red Glass Cat, was published by Alien Buddha Press in 2021.

Gabriel Welsch is the author of a collection of short stories, Groundscratchers, and four collections of poems, the latest of which is The Four Horsepersons of a Disappointing Apocalypse. He lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and works as a vice president for marketing and communications at Duquesne University.

About Your Visit: 

The in-house restaurant, Cucina Alfabeto, is open for brunch from 9:30 to 2 p.m. and for dinner from 5 to 10 p.m. Please visit Open Table or call 412-435-1111 to make a reservation.