CELEBRATING National Poetry Month, the Battle of Homestead Foundation presents 4 Pittsburgh poets & 2 songwriters in AN EVENING OF WORKING-CLASS POETRY (AND MUSIC).

*  Thur. April 11, 2024 ~ 7:00-9:00 p.m. Admission-free!
*  Live and in-person at The Pump House, 880 E. Waterfront Drive, Munhall PA

FEATURING:  Robert Walicki, Robert Gibb, Jason Irwin, Paola Corso, kelsey jumper, Danny Rectenwald

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Robert Walicki’s work has appeared in over 50 journals, including Pittsburgh City Paper, Fourth River, Chiron Review and Evening Street Review. A two time Pushcart Prize and a Best of The Net nominee, Robert’s latest full length collection, Fountain, was released from Main Street Rag Press.

Robert Gibb is the author of Sightlines (Poetry Press, 2021), his thirteenth full-length poetry collection, winner of the 2019 Prize Americana for Poetry. Other books include Among Ruins (Notre Dame’s Sandeen Prize in Poetry for 2017), After (Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize for 2016) and The Origins of Evening (Norton, 1997), a National Poetry Series selection. He has been awarded two NEA Fellowships, a Best American Poetry, a Pushcart Prize and Prairie Schooner’s Glenna Luschei and Strousse Awards. A 2023 book, Pittsburghese, won Wheelbarrow Books Poetry Prize and is forthcoming from Michigan State University Press.

Jason Irwin is the author of three full-length poetry collections and two chapbooks, most recently The History of Our Vagrancies (Main Street Rag, 2020). In 2022 he was a Zoeglossia Fellow and part of the Poetry Foundation’s Disability Poetics Project. His nonfiction has been published in Santa Ana Review, Panorama, The Catholic Worker and City of Asylum’s Pittsburgh Live/Ability: Encounters in Poetry and Prose Project. He grew up in Dunkirk, NY, and now lives in Pittsburgh.

Paola Corso is the author of seven poetry and fiction books set in her native Pittsburgh where her Southern Italian immigrant family worked in the steel mills. Her books include Vertical Bridges: Poems and Photographs of City Steps, The Laundress Catches Her Breath (winner of the Tillie Olsen Award in Creative Writing), Once I Was Told the Air Was Not for Breathing (winner of a Triangle Fire Memorial Association Award), Catina’s Haircut:  A Novel in Stories (Sons of Italy National Book Club Selection), Giovanna’s 86 Circles and Other Stories (John Gardner Fiction Book Award Finalist on the Pennsylvania School Librarian Association’s Top 40 Young Adult Fiction List) and Death by Renaissance with archival and original photographs by George Thomas Mendel. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, USA Today, Women’s Review of Books, Writer’s Digest, U.S. Catholic, The Progressive and numerous anthologies.

kelsey jumper is a multidisciplinary performing artist grateful to have worked with well-celebrated Pittsburgh theater companies including Pittsburgh Public Theater, Quantum Theater, Bricolage Production Company, Carnegie Mellon University Drama, Barebones Productions and Pittsburgh CLO. She’s been featured alongside the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, regularly at the Honky-Tonk Jukebox and with local bands including Ames Harding & the Mirage and Watererer. She’s played big league venues like Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center, MoMA, The Studio Museum of Harlem and The Shed. Kelsey was granted the opportunity to bring the words of MacArthur Fellow, Claudia Rankine, to life under Ms. Rankine’s direction in White Card. Kelsey has held residencies at Kelly Strayhorn Theater and The Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh, been commissioned by Carnegie Museum of Art and received support from The Opportunity Fund, Advancing Black Arts, Cultural Trust and #notwhitecollective. She’s also choreographed for Point Park University, her alma mater, where she studied Musical Theater. She’s grateful to tether together an existence – a practice of expansion through learning and expression.

Danny Rectenwald is a composer and guitarist spanning classical, jazz, rock, Irish, bluegrass, tango and folk. He has two solo albums on Misra Records – Samadhi and Canyon – and has performed with Favorite Band, Bastard Bearded Irishmen, Robert Randolph & the Family Band, Jim Avett, Michael Glabicki, Jim Donovan, Liz Berlin of Rusted Root, The Clarks, Donnie Iris and The Commonheart. He has performed on the soundtrack for the mobile app Little Pizzeria created by Orta Interactive Studio, performed and composed music for the kids’ TV show Hello Humans and played on the Mid-Atlantic Emmy-nominated show Live from Nied’s Hotel.