Readings with The Pittsburgh Poetry Society

Christine Aikens Wolfe, president of Pittsburgh Poetry Society, will serve as emcee and introduce the poets.

About the Poets:

Elisabeth Crago holds an MFA from Carlow University with a dual focus on poetry and creative non-fiction. A graduate of Lehman College, CUNY and the University of Michigan, she also has degrees in English and Nursing. In a former life, Crago administered a large breast health services program in Eastern Pennsylvania. She then spent 12 years involved in farming and aquaculture in New Zealand where she served on the board of a retreat center with a heavy emphasis on women’s spirituality. In 2014 she relocated to Pittsburgh where she volunteers at Pittsburgh’s City of Asylum, the Center for Women, and is active in the Madwomen in the Attic program of Carlow University. Her work has been published in Voices in the Attic, Eye on the Telescope, Dreamers Creative Writing, One Art Poetry, and 20, Carlow University’s MFA anthology.

Karen Howard Karen Howard is a published poet in Voices from the Attic by the Madwomen at Carlow University. She has an article called Dying with Dignity published by Mennonite Media. Karen is part of the Empowered Educators at Carnegie Museum of Art and is helping the Western Pennsylvania Writing Project at the University of Pittsburgh to organize their 40th year anniversary year (2024) with a number of community offerings. She serves as recording secretary for the Pittsburgh Poetry Society.

Sheila Carter-Jones is the author of Three Birds Deep, winner of the Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Book Award, and her chapbook Crooked Star Dream Book was named Honorable Mention for the New York Center for Book Arts ChapbookContest. She is a fellow of Cave Canem, the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop and a Walter Dakin Fellow of the Sewanee Writer’s Conference. She was born and raised in a small coal mining town in Western Pennsylvania which is the site of many of her poems which have been published in various journals, anthologies and newspapers. Sheila received her MFA from Carlow University where she currently teaches in their Madwomen in the Attic Program. Her book Every Hard Sweetness is forth coming from Boa Editions in the spring of 2024.

Judy Yogman is a retired ESL instructor and enthusiastic poet with publication in the Pittsburgh Poetry Society's The Potter's Wheel over the last few issues. Other publication includes poems in Along These Rivers, Crossing Limits: African Americans and American Jews; Out of the Rough: Women's Poems of Survival and Celebration; and Written on Water: Writings about the Allegheny River, plus poems in several other anthologies from a 40-year span which were lost in the most recent move. She is a member of The Pittsburgh Poetry Society.

Jay Carson holds a doctorate in English from Carnegie-Mellon University. He taught for many years at Robert Morris University where he was a founding advisor to the literary magazine, Rune. He has published more than 100 poems and a number of short stories and essays in local and national journals, magazines, and collections. Jay is also the author of Irish Coffee (Coal Hill Press) and The Cinnamon of Desire (Main Street Rag). He is presently working on a memoir. Jay considers his work Appalachian, accessible, the ongoing problem-solving of a turbulent life, and just what you might need.

Host or Publisher Riverstone Books