Book Launch! Kristofer Collins, "The Vesper Room" reading with Jen Ashburn

We are grateful to celebrate local writer and champion of Pittsburgh's rich literary community, Kristofer Collins, and launch his new collection of poetry, The Vesper Room! Kris will be joined in conversation by Jen Ashburn.

"Kristofer Collins's Vesper Room takes us from specific and concrete places of encounter-a dark bar on Butler, Allegheny Cemetery, the bus stop-into stations of living, friendship, love, parenthood, and into the deeper questions of purpose and mettle. All the while, there is careful assessing, judging, but not limiting. This is not to say there isn't fun. Oh no, if you like a good meandering gossipy narrative poem, it's found here with references to Cher at her Bob Mackie best and the high and low of popular culture. There is an experience to be had in Vesper Room, a fullness. Unlike the poets addressed in "Lazy Day Poets," I could read this collection again and be rewarded with even more pleasure, I feel certain. I'm grateful for Vesper Room. It's an evening prayer of a book." -Doralee Brooks is a poet and educator, the editor of The Gulf Tower Forecasts Rain, and City of Asylum's poet laureate of Allegheny County 2022-2024.

"Kristofer Collins writes verse of arresting imagery and turns-of-phrase that lodge in the brain, that as Dickinson would say takes the top of your head off so that you know you've read real poetry. These are lyrics at the bar stool, of cashed cigarettes and spilled beer. There are few contemporary poets with his batting average; The Vesper Room's preponderance of great poems (all of them in my opinion) is dizzying, lyrics simultaneously hard-boiled and lush, hard-earned and beautiful. The sacred and the profane, history and other writers, parenthood and Pittsburgh, all of it comes under Collins' purview. These are goddamn great poems. I loved this collection." -Ed Simon is the editor of The Pittsburgh Review of Books and Rust Belt Magazine

"A guy walks into a bar.... He emerges with this beautiful and compelling book. Kristofer Collins' The Vesper Room is a place of moving, secular prayer - lament, praise, gratitude, blues, solace, stark witness, mutual forgiveness and, above all, generous attention. Like jukebox music spilling from a doorway, the collection widens to fill the street, the city, our whole our damaged world. These immediate, engaging poems appear offhand, but they go deep. And they end, ultimately, in authentic, earned commitment -- to family, friendship, beauty, grit and love. In "A Sixer from Graziano's," Collins ponders the mystery of how he found his way "into such shining company." After downing the poems in this book, one feels the same. I'm not much of a drinker myself, but I want to stay with him and have a few more. You will, too." -Richard St. John, author of Book of Entangled Souls

"Sometimes mournful, sometimes prickly, Kristofer Collins finds joy in a puddle, grasps rapture in an old Cher song and sees admonishment in a fancy cocktail list. Vesper Room is a collection full of razor-sharp sense memory, communion with the dead, and a deep feeling for home." -Jody DiPerna, author of the forthcoming All We Have Is Each Other: Literary Appalachia

JEN ASHBURN is the author of the poetry book The Light on the Wall and has work published in numerous venues, including The Fiddlehead, The Writer’s Almanac and Mud Season Review. She holds an MFA from Chatham University, and teaches creative writing and first-year composition at Duquesne University. She is currently working on a memoir, Borax, Cornmeal, and Cherry Blossoms, and her second poetry collection, Cracked Paraffin.

KRISTOFER COLLINS has been writing about books and their authors professionally for over twenty years. He has spent the last fifteen years as the Books Editor for Pittsburgh Magazine covering the local literary community. He is the author of several poetry collections, including Roundabout Trace published by Kung Fu Treachery Press in 2022. He was the publisher of Low Ghost Press from 2008-2020. His writing has appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The New Yinzer, 1839, LitHub, Belt Magazine, Chiron Review, Nerve Cowboy, Gasconade, Vox Populi, Kidsburgh, Appalachian Journal, The New Antiquarian, Jerry Jazz Musician, Uppagus, and more. He was nominated for a Robert L. Vann Award for Excellence in Written Journalism in 2022. He is co-curator with Joan Bauer of the long-running Hemingway’s Summer Poetry Series. The Vesper Room (Luchador Press, 2025) is his latest poetry collection. He lives in Pittsburgh, PA with his wife Dr. Anna Johnson and their children.

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