Free Association Reading Series

Featured Writers:

Robert Walicki‘s work has appeared in a number of publications including The City Paper, Fourth River, Signal Mountain Review, Red River Review, and others. A Pushcart and a Best of The Net nominee, Robert currently has two chapbooks published: A Room Full of Trees (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2014) and The Almost Sound of Snow Falling (Night Ballet Press). His first full length poetry collection, Black Angels is currently available from Six Gallery Press. 

Leslie Anne Mcilroy won the 1997 Slipstream Poetry Chapbook Prize for Gravel, the 2001 Word Press Poetry Prize for her full-length collection Rare Space and the 1997 Chicago Literary Awards. Her second book, Liquid Like This, was published by Word Press in 2008 and Slag by Main Street Rag Publishing Company in December, 2014 as runner-up to their 2014 Poetry Book Prize. Leslie’s poems appear in Grist, Jubilat, The Mississippi Review, PANK, Pearl, Poetry Magazine, the New Ohio Review, The Chiron Review and more. Leslie works as a copywriter in Pittsburgh where she lives with her son Silas.

Sherrie Flick is the author of the novel Reconsidering Happinessand two short story collections, Whiskey, Etc. and Thank Your Lucky Stars (Autumn House Press, 2018). Her work appears in many anthologies and journals, including Norton’s Flash Fiction Forward, New Sudden Fiction, and New Micro as well as Ploughshares, SmokeLong Quarterly, and Booth. She serves as series editor for The Best Small Fictions 2018 and teaches in Chatham University’s MFA and Food Studies programs. 

Photo credit: Richard Kelly

Born and raised in Pittsburgh, Sophie Klahr is the author of Meet Me Here At Dawn (YesYes Books, 2016) and the chapbook_______ Versus Recovery (Pilot Books, 2007). Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, AGNI, Alaska Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. Her collaborative work includes choreography for Dorothy Hoover’s play Sahara Tahoe, scenic texts for the dance theatre collective inFluxdance, and writing with the poet Corey Zeller.  She has been on staff at Gigantic Sequins since 2009, where she is the co-creator of Teen Sequins, an annual celebration of poetry by teenagers. Currently, is the Spring 2019 Philip Roth Resident at Bucknell University’s Stadler Center for Poetry.

Curators:

Pat Hart, co-curator
Marc Nieson, co-curator

Pat Hart writes plays, monologues, short stories, and novels. Playwriting credits include “Book Wench” a one-act play, performed at the Strawberry One-Act Festival, Summer 2015, New York, New York and Murderous, a 10-minute monologue, performed at Practice Monologamy, Carlow University, September 2015. Published short stories include “The Vigil,” The Writing Disorder (Fall 2015), “New Wife vs. Old Wife, a love story,” (2015) and “Dragon Boogers” novel excerpt (2016) in Voices in the Attic, and “Spider Ball,” Rune (May 2015). Pat has a BA in Creative Writing from the University of Pittsburgh and is the founder of Free Association, a reading series for established and emerging writers in Pittsburgh. She is currently working on a novel set in Pittsburgh and Burma during the 1920s.

Marc Nieson is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and NYU Film School. His background includes children’s theatre, cattle chores, and a season with a one-ring circus. His memoir, SCHOOLHOUSE: Lessons on Love & Landscape, came out from Ice Cube Press in 2016. He’s won a Raymond Carver Short Story Award, Pushcart Prize nominations, and been noted in Best American Essays. He teaches at Chatham University, edits The Fourth River, and is at work on a new novel, HOUDINI’S HEIRS.