(run time 60-min) *please note the 5:00 PM start time*

An intimate evening of live readings with exceptional Pittsburgh and beyond writers co-curated by Pat Hart and Marc Nieson of the Free Association Reading Series.

Susan Buttenwieser is the author of the short story collection, We Were Lucky with the Rain (Four Way Books). Her writing has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and appeared in numerous literary publications. She contributes news features regularly to  Women’s Media Center and teaches creative writing in New York City public schools in high-poverty neighborhoods, with incarcerated women and older adults.

M. Soledad Caballero is Professor of English at Allegheny College. Her scholarly and interdisciplinary work focuses on British Romanticism, travel writing, post-colonial literatures, WGSS. She is a 2017 CantoMundo fellow, has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes, has been a finalist for the Missouri Review's Jeffry E. Smith poetry prize, the Mississippi Review's annual editor's prize, a finalist for the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award sponsored by the Poetry Society of America and winner of the Joy Harjo poetry contest sponsored by Cutthroat: A Journal of the Arts. Her poems have appeared in the Missouri Review, the Mississippi Review, the Iron Horse Literary Review, Memorius,theCrab Orchard Review, Anomaly, and other venues.

Sam Pittman is the author of Mostly Water, which won the 2016 Rane Arroyo Chapbook Prize from Seven Kitchens Press. His poetry has appeared in such journals as Grist, Bellevue Literary Review, Newfound, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, West Wind Review, and The Good Men Project. Sam received an MFA in Writing from the University of Pittsburgh, and holds a BA from the University of California, Berkeley. Sam lives and teaches writing in Pittsburgh, PA.

Tony Norman is a columnist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette as well as the PG's book review editor. He's been at the PG since 1988. He's also the president of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. Tony is currently working on a novel and typing as fast as he can to get it done.

Pat Hart writes plays, monologues, short stories, and novels. Hart has a BA in Creative Writing from the University of Pittsburgh.

Marc Nieson is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and NYU Film School. Nieson teaches at Chatham University, edits The Fourth River, and is working on a new novel, HOUDINI’S HEIRS.

Founded in May of 2016, Free Association Reading Series is for established and emerging Pittsburgh writers of prose, poetry, and non-fiction. Not affiliated with any formal writing programs, FARS is ‘non denominational’ and draws writers from universities, workshops, and those toiling away alone in their garrets.

Free Association Reading Series presented by City of Asylum