cut and run: benefit reading to fund nikki allen and renée alberts' word tour

Wednesday, July 7 2010
8:00pm
$5

This is a benefit reading to fund Nikki Allen and Renée Alberts' out-of-town readings this summer. Help us show love beyond Pittsburgh!

featuring readings from:

Sophie Klahr
Jerome Crooks with Red Bob
Kayla Sargeson
Brian Francis
DJ Brewer
Holly Coleman
Renée Alberts
Nikki Allen

and a dj set afterward from Joseph Wilk


Shadow Lounge
www.shadowlounge.net
5972 Baum Boulevard
Pittsburgh, PA 15206-3815
(412) 363-8277

If you can't make it to the event, there are some other ways you can help us out:
- Consider making a donation on this site.
- Connect us with poets or reading series you know of in other cities, so we can schedule more dates.
- Spread the word! Forward this email, post the flyer on Facebook, tell your friends!

We will say nice things about you. We will mean them.

About the performers:
Renée Alberts listens to rivers and shortwave radio to create poetry, collage, sound and photography. Her poetry collection, No Water, came out in 2009, and her work has appeared in The New Yinzer, Encyclopedia Destructica, Pittsburgh City Paper and Subtletea. She has given dozens of readings, including on WYEP’s Prosody, WRCT's A Live Show and as a 2001 and 2004 member of the Steel City Slam Team. She organizes numerous poetry and music events, including the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh Sunday Poetry & Reading Series, for which she edited Natural Language: Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh Sunday Poetry and Reading
Series Anthology. Morning glories, boxcutters, vox: animalprayer.com.

Nikki Allen is a 29 year old writer living in Pittsburgh. She’s been getting on stages for over 11 years and scribbling poems on homework, in notebooks and all over cocktail napkins for most of her life. She is the author of numerous chapbooks, including My Darling Since, Gutter of Eden, and Quite Like Yes. She competed on national poetry slam teams in Dayton and Pittsburgh from 2001 to 2003. Her poetry has appeared in The New Yinzer, Crash, Open Thread Regional Review Vol. 2, and Encyclopedia Destructica. She’s also performed with beatboxers, bucket drums and the Incredibly Thin Collective. She uses clothes pins for hair barrettes and
lives to witness others doing what they love. Her work can be found online at honeydunce.com.

Dj Brewer started sharing his creativity around the turn of the 21st Century. He is a regular at the Shadow Lounge and can be seen spitting into microphones throughout the city of Pittsburgh. He was a member of Pittsburgh's 2000-2002 national poetry slam teams, and is the current slam organizer. These days, he mainly makes music as Jack Wilson. (www.myspace.com/jackwilson). His mixtape can be downloaded for free at
www.takethefire.com.

Holly Coleman, graduate of Point Park University, began doing spoken word in college in the late 90s. She w rites creative non-fiction about growing up in Pittsburgh, such as stories about the neighborhood flasher and the vampires who reside at the bus loop. Her writing has been described as: "Does your mother know that you write about her?" She has read her work to hostage audiences for The New Yinzer, Encyclopedia Destructica and at Most Wanted Fine Art Gallery and the Andy Warhol Museum. To book Holly for a reading, you can bribe her with an adult beverage to calm her genetic anxiety.

Jerome Crooks has been writing for 18 years and performing for 14. In 2002, he earned a creative writing degree from the University of Pittsburgh. In 1998, he founded the Speed and
Briscoe, a collective and support system for other writers. In 2009, he edited Encyclopedia Destructica Volume Coatlicue 2, an anthology of work by Pittsburgh-based contributors featuring 29 writers and 18 artists.

Brian Francis Born in New York, Brian Francis is a poet living and working in Pittsburgh, PA. Brian graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with a degree in creative nonfiction. Always seeking the occasional stage, Brian has performed at universities and art galleries, in coffee shops and theaters, at bars and on street corners. This summer, Brian published his first chapbook, Do It Yourself Divinity. In between writing and performing, Brian has taught poetry workshops at schools and community organizations throughout Pittsburgh. In 2007, Brian was a member of the team representing Pittsburgh in the Rust Belt Poetry Slam. You can read more of his work at www.septembersharvest.com.

Sophie Klahr was born in Pittsburgh in 1983. She earned her BFA in Writing, Literature & Publishing from Emerson College, will begin an MFA program at the University of Houston in Fall 2010. She is the author of the chapbook _______ Versus Recovery (Pilot Books). Her poems appear in Strange Machine Poetry, 24Opus, DIAGRAM, Open Thread Regional Review, Isreads and Pebble Lake Review. She is the poetry editor for print journal Gigantic Sequins.

Kayla Sargeson’s poems appear in 5 AM and Paper Street, as well as the anthologies Voices from the Attic Volume XIV, Dionne’s Story and Time You Let Me In, selected by Naomi Shihab Nye. She was the emcee for the Hungry Sphinx reading series and co- founded the Pittsburgh-based Girls with Glasses reading series with Deena November in 2009.

Joseph Wilk has deejayed at Pandemic, Beatz, and 90s night.