Poetry Reading: Russell, Mohn-Slate, McDermott, Walicki

Tune in for a poetry reading with local (or formerly local but still local in our hearts) poets Lauren Russell, Emily Mohn-Slate, Sharon Fagan McDermott, and Bob Walicki!

Copies of Emily's book The Falls are available on our main website! Check out our ready-to-ship website, which has a wide selection of recommended and best-selling books, store merch, book subscription boxes, and more. You can request specific books you don't see on the site through this form, too. All orders ship from our store in Pittsburgh.

Other books by these authors are available on our Bookshop.org list for recent and upcoming events. You can also check out our curated lists and picks on our main Bookshop.org affiliate page, or use the search bar in the upper center-right to look for any book. (Using the book's ISBN usually works best.)

This event will be hosted on Zoom. You'll receive the link to the Zoom meeting the day of the event via email. Free registration/ticket sales will end at 6:30pm ET on 11/20. Please email events@whitewhalebookstore.com if you miss this cut-off and need a ticket. For questions, check out our FAQ for events here.

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About the authors:

Lauren Russell’s first full-length book, What’s Hanging on the Hush, came out from Ahsahta Press in 2017. Her second book, Descent, is a winner of the 2019 Tarpaulin Sky Book Awards and came out from Tarpaulin Sky Press in June, 2020. A 2017 National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellow in Poetry, she has also received fellowships from Cave Canem, The Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, and VIDA / The Home School, and residencies from the Rose O’Neill Literary House, the Millay Colony, and City of Asylum/ Passa Porta. Her work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, boundary 2, The Brooklyn Rail, Cream City Review, and the anthologies Bettering American Poetry 2015 and Furious Flower: Seeding the Future of African American Poetry, among others. From 2016 to 2020, she was assistant director of the Center for African American Poetry and Poetics at the University of Pittsburgh. In the fall of 2020, she joins the faculty of Michigan State University as an assistant professor in the Residential College in the Arts and Humanities and director of the RCAH Center for Poetry.

Emily Mohn-Slate is the author of The Falls, winner of the 2019 New American Poetry Prize (New American Press, 2020) and Feed, winner of the 2018 Keystone Chapbook Prize (Seven Kitchens Press). Her poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in AGNI, New Ohio Review, Muzzle Magazine, Tupelo Quarterly, The Adroit Journal, and elsewhere. She lives in Pittsburgh, PA, where she teaches high school English at Winchester Thurston School, and poetry workshops for the Madwomen in the Attic at Carlow University.

Sharon Fagan McDermott is a poet, musician, and a teacher of literature at a private school in Pittsburgh, PA. Her most recent poetry collection, Life Without Furniture, was published by Jacar Press in 2018. It wrestles with feeling at home in the world and seeking sanctuary in an often challenging life. A generous artist award from the Pittsburgh Foundation, as well as a grant from PA Council for the Arts, allowed Fagan McDermott to create and publish three additional chapbooks: Voluptuous, Alley Scatting (Parallel Press), and Bitter Acoustic, winner of the 2005 Jacar Press chapbook award, chosen by Betty Adcock.

Robert Walicki’s work has appeared in a number of journals including Fourth River, The Kentucky Review, Vox Populi, and the radio show Prosody. He currently has two chapbooks published: A Room Full of Trees (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2014) and The Almost Sound of Snow Falling (Night Ballet Press, 2015), which was nominated to the 2016 New York Showcase of Books at The Poet’s House in NY. His first full length collection of poems, Black Angels, (Six Gallery Press, 2019). Robert lives in Verona, PA with his wife, Lynne and cat, Buttons.