Sunday, August 16:
Carnegie Library Sunday Reading Series: Along These Rivers
Readings from Along These Rivers: Poetry & Photography from Pittsburgh.
Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh (Main Branch)
Quiet Reading Room, Main Floor
4400 Forbes Ave, Pittsburgh, PA (Oakland)
2:00pm - free – (412)622-3151
Tuesday, August 18:
Steel City Poetry Slam
Hosted by DJ Brewer
Local poets perform slam poetry
Shadow Lounge
972 Baum Blvd Pittsburgh, PA (East Liberty)
9:00pm(18+) - $5 - (412) 363-8277
WEAVE FEATURED EVENT:
The New Yinzer Presents
Join The New Yinzer for the kick-off of this year's season of TNYPresents featuring
the literary talents of Scott McClanahan, Cathy Day, Paco Mahone, and Weave
Co-Editor Laura Davis, along with musical guest, Justin Andrew.
ModernFormations
4919 Penn Ave Pittsburgh, PA (Lawrenceville)
8:00pm - $5 (free w/ pot luck contribution) - (412) 362-0274
Do you have a literary event you want to see listed on our calendar?
E-mail details to: joel.weavezine@gmail.com
August 16, 2009
August 10, 2009
Pittsburgh Lit Events August 10-16
Thursday, August 13:
The Moth - Building a Bridge: Stories From Both Sides
American Shorts presents The Moth in Pittsburgh. Hosted by The Daily
Show’s Tom Shillue, the cast for the evening includes Pittsburgh’s own
Terrance Hayes (poet and Guggenheim fellow), Boris Timanovsky (a
Moth regular), Stephanie Summerville (actress and singer) and local
musician Liz Hammond (aka UkuLizzy) who will serve as the evenings
timekeeper.
WYEP Community Broadcast Center
67 Bedford Sq Pittsburgh, PA (Southside)
7:00pm - $10 - (412)622-8866
Sunday, August 16:
Carnegie Library Sunday Reading Series: Along These Rivers
Readings from Along These Rivers: Poetry & Photography from Pittsburgh.
Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh (Main Branch)
Quiet Reading Room, Main Floor
4400 Forbes Ave, Pittsburgh, PA (Oakland)
2:00pm - free – (412)622-3151
Do you have a literary event you want to see listed on our calendar?
E-mail details to: joel.weavezine@gmail.com
The Moth - Building a Bridge: Stories From Both Sides
American Shorts presents The Moth in Pittsburgh. Hosted by The Daily
Show’s Tom Shillue, the cast for the evening includes Pittsburgh’s own
Terrance Hayes (poet and Guggenheim fellow), Boris Timanovsky (a
Moth regular), Stephanie Summerville (actress and singer) and local
musician Liz Hammond (aka UkuLizzy) who will serve as the evenings
timekeeper.
WYEP Community Broadcast Center
67 Bedford Sq Pittsburgh, PA (Southside)
7:00pm - $10 - (412)622-8866
Sunday, August 16:
Carnegie Library Sunday Reading Series: Along These Rivers
Readings from Along These Rivers: Poetry & Photography from Pittsburgh.
Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh (Main Branch)
Quiet Reading Room, Main Floor
4400 Forbes Ave, Pittsburgh, PA (Oakland)
2:00pm - free – (412)622-3151
Do you have a literary event you want to see listed on our calendar?
E-mail details to: joel.weavezine@gmail.com
August 2, 2009
Pittsburgh Lit Events August 2 - 9
Tuesday, August 4:
Prosody
91.3 WYEP Radio
7:00pm
Zine Collective Release Party
Celebration Zine Collective for Teens' first issue of Closet Culture
Joseph-Beth Booksellers
2705 E Carson St Pittsburgh, PA (South Side)
7:00pm - free - (412) 462-5743
Wednesday, August 5:
Warhol-o-rama
Presentation by Warhol-o-rama author Peter Oresick
Greentree Public Library
10 W Manilla Ave, Pittsburgh, PA (Greentree)
7:00pm - free - (412)921-9292
Thursday, August 6:
Shilpa Agarwal Reading
Fox Chapel native Shilpa Agarwal will discuss her new book "Haunting
Bombay," recipient of a starred review in Library Journal and the First
Words Literary Prize for South Asian Writers.
Lauri Ann West Memorial Library
1220 Powers Run Rd Pittsburgh, PA (O'Hara)
7:00pm - free- (412) 828-9520
Saturday, August 8:
Chatham Summer Reisdency Reading
feat Kathleen George & Ann Fisher-Wirth
Chatham University
Woodland Rd Pittsburgh, PA (Shadyside)
7:30pm - free - (412) 365-1100
Arefa's Espresso Poetry Reading
feat Jill Khoury & Kherry McKay
Arefa's Espresso
5827 Forbes Ave Pittsburgh, PA (Squirrel Hill)
8:00pm - free - (412) 436-0908
Sunday, August 9:
Chatham Summer Reisdency Reading
feat Sheryl St Germain & Pamela Stover
Chatham University
Woodland Rd Pittsburgh, PA (Shadyside)
time? - free - (412) 365-1100
WEAVE FEATURED EVENT!
Autumn House Master Authors Reading Series
feat Phillip Terman & Judith Vollmer
Kiva Han
410 S Craig St Pittsburgh, PA (Oakland)
2:30pm - free - (412) 687-6355
Do you have a literary event you want to see listed on our calendar?
E-mail details to: joel.weavezine@gmail.com
Prosody
91.3 WYEP Radio
7:00pm
Zine Collective Release Party
Celebration Zine Collective for Teens' first issue of Closet Culture
Joseph-Beth Booksellers
2705 E Carson St Pittsburgh, PA (South Side)
7:00pm - free - (412) 462-5743
Wednesday, August 5:
Warhol-o-rama
Presentation by Warhol-o-rama author Peter Oresick
Greentree Public Library
10 W Manilla Ave, Pittsburgh, PA (Greentree)
7:00pm - free - (412)921-9292
Thursday, August 6:
Shilpa Agarwal Reading
Fox Chapel native Shilpa Agarwal will discuss her new book "Haunting
Bombay," recipient of a starred review in Library Journal and the First
Words Literary Prize for South Asian Writers.
Lauri Ann West Memorial Library
1220 Powers Run Rd Pittsburgh, PA (O'Hara)
7:00pm - free- (412) 828-9520
Saturday, August 8:
Chatham Summer Reisdency Reading
feat Kathleen George & Ann Fisher-Wirth
Chatham University
Woodland Rd Pittsburgh, PA (Shadyside)
7:30pm - free - (412) 365-1100
Arefa's Espresso Poetry Reading
feat Jill Khoury & Kherry McKay
Arefa's Espresso
5827 Forbes Ave Pittsburgh, PA (Squirrel Hill)
8:00pm - free - (412) 436-0908
Sunday, August 9:
Chatham Summer Reisdency Reading
feat Sheryl St Germain & Pamela Stover
Chatham University
Woodland Rd Pittsburgh, PA (Shadyside)
time? - free - (412) 365-1100
WEAVE FEATURED EVENT!
Autumn House Master Authors Reading Series
feat Phillip Terman & Judith Vollmer
Kiva Han
410 S Craig St Pittsburgh, PA (Oakland)
2:30pm - free - (412) 687-6355
Do you have a literary event you want to see listed on our calendar?
E-mail details to: joel.weavezine@gmail.com
July 27, 2009
Pittsburgh Lit Events July 27 - August 2
Tuesday, July 28:
Prosody
91.3 WYEP Radio
7:00pm
WEAVE FEATURED EVENT!
Hemingway's Summer Reading Series
feat. Dmitry Berenson, Ed Carvalho, Kristofer Collins, Nancy Esther
James, Jill Khouri, Ed Lilley, Liane Ellison Norman, Deena November,
Kayla Sargeson, Lucille Siebert, and Michelle Stoner in the final event
of the series for this summer.
Hemingway’s Cafe
3911 Forbes Ave Pittsburgh, PA (Oakland)
8:00pm – free – (412) 621-4100
Friday, July 31:
The Diner Divas: Writers with Bite
Sue Rumbaugh of Carlow University presents a spectacular afternoon of
creative nonfiction at Pittsburgh's most greasy, gratifying diner: Ritter's.
Ritter's Diner
5221 Baum Blvd Pittsburgh, PA (Bloomfield)
3:00pm - No Cover
Do you have a literary event you want to see listed on our calendar?
E-mail details to: joel.weavezine@gmail.com
Prosody
91.3 WYEP Radio
7:00pm
WEAVE FEATURED EVENT!
Hemingway's Summer Reading Series
feat. Dmitry Berenson, Ed Carvalho, Kristofer Collins, Nancy Esther
James, Jill Khouri, Ed Lilley, Liane Ellison Norman, Deena November,
Kayla Sargeson, Lucille Siebert, and Michelle Stoner in the final event
of the series for this summer.
Hemingway’s Cafe
3911 Forbes Ave Pittsburgh, PA (Oakland)
8:00pm – free – (412) 621-4100
Friday, July 31:
The Diner Divas: Writers with Bite
Sue Rumbaugh of Carlow University presents a spectacular afternoon of
creative nonfiction at Pittsburgh's most greasy, gratifying diner: Ritter's.
Ritter's Diner
5221 Baum Blvd Pittsburgh, PA (Bloomfield)
3:00pm - No Cover
Do you have a literary event you want to see listed on our calendar?
E-mail details to: joel.weavezine@gmail.com
July 23, 2009
Review: The Curse of Eve by Liliana Blum, trans. Toshiya Kamei
The Curse of Eve is a collection of stories about women—women as lovers, girls, mothers, and daughters, women of hope, violence, voice, Mexico and the violence of hope. The Curse of Eve represents a first on two counts—the first full-length story collection from author Liliana Blum, and the first full-length book translation by Toshiya Kamei.
In his opening note, Kamei uses these words to describe Blum’s fiction: ‘foreboding,’ ‘tragic,’ ‘lighthearted,’ ‘dark,’ and ‘damned feminist.’
Foreboding, yes, as in the story of a mistress who meets Stalin’s wife or when a modern-day Miss Marple attempts to solve the crime of infidelity. Tragic, when women describe their struggles to learn the touch of a man, and others who learn it too soon. Lighthearted in the case of dwarf as Avon Lady and in one woman’s chance meeting with Ron Jeremy. Dark as the inner psyche of an artist who uses real-life models for his work. The Curse of Eve as ‘damned feminist?’ Always.
Blum deftly renders each woman in her own state of personal trauma. There is the moment of discovery between a husband and wife, the beginnings of an understanding between brother and sister, and the recovery of a woman coming to terms with her past. There are men too—men defined by women, men driven by their repulsion and desire for women, men as narrators, observers, actors, and catalysts for action.
In the collection’s title story, The Curse of Eve (A Tragedy in Seven Acts), Kamei translates Blum’s story of a woman coming to terms with the pangs of pregnancy. While her husband remains blissfully absent, a modern-day Eve traces her thoughts through the course of two violent births, the loss of her youth, and her imprisonment in motherhood. From the insignificant act that marks the beginning of her curse to the birth of a daughter who will inherit “the sufferings of her kind,” the nameless narrator remarks that she is told that she must, at all times, remember to, “Take it like a woman.” A theme that is echoed throughout the collection, we are made to understand that Blum’s women can take it all. Even as we become acutely aware of the extent to which ‘Eve’ suffers, as well as the tragedy that lies in store for her, we hold on to the hope she feels when she admits to holding her child for the first time, admitting that, “at this moment nothing else matters.”
This sentiment is mirrored in the equally haunting, Periquita Shoes. With stark prose and striking imagery, Kamei renders Blum’s story about a local balloon seller’s desire for a young girl with Periquita shoes. His single-minded passion is likened to his craft, described as one that, “rises, blows up, [like] a balloon reaching its limits.” His desire is compounded by the vast difference in their ages. As the story culminates in an act of startling cruelty, we are left to lie in a field alongside the girl and her Periquita shoes, “full of pain, but alive.”
The landscape of Mexico provides the backdrop for these experiences—a country caught between the realm of superstition and spirituality, romance and reality. It defines Blum and The Curse of Eve as being both border and borderless, a nation of violence no more real than the violence of love, birth, and universal womanhood. From behind the curtains of race, class, gender, and sexuality, each woman carries her own curse of Eve, and the means to overcome it.
It is this universality that defines Blum’s work and her achievement as a writer. Although the stories in The Curse of Eve carry a thread of the foreign and the fantastical, the element of humanity that pervades each piece makes the event of one scene as recognizable as the next. The Curse of Eve is exact and exacting, written in a language that renders both the subject, and the reader, bare. The birth of both a new author and translator, The Curse of Eve marks the beginning of The Fall, a descent into a fiction where we are kept waiting for the next apple to drop.
Review by Jennifer Lue
Liliana V. Blum was born in Durango, Mexico, in 1974. She holds a B.A. in Comparative Literature from the University of Kansas and a Master’s degree in Education from the Instituto Technológico de Monterrey. English translations of her stories have appeared in various literary journals, including Eclectica, Mslexia, storySouth, Blackbird, and The Dirty Goat. More of Liliana’s work can be found at http://lasalasdelalacran.blog.com/.
Toshiya Kamei has translated numerous Spanish and Latin American writers, including Liliana V. Blum, Estrella del Valle, Espido Freire, Ericka Ghersi, Leticia Luna, and Socorro Venegas. His translations have appeared in the journals The Dirty Goat, Literal: Latin American Voices and Metamorphoses, among others. His translation of Naoko Awa’s ‘White Mufflers’ can be found in Issue 02 of Weave Magazine.
In his opening note, Kamei uses these words to describe Blum’s fiction: ‘foreboding,’ ‘tragic,’ ‘lighthearted,’ ‘dark,’ and ‘damned feminist.’
Foreboding, yes, as in the story of a mistress who meets Stalin’s wife or when a modern-day Miss Marple attempts to solve the crime of infidelity. Tragic, when women describe their struggles to learn the touch of a man, and others who learn it too soon. Lighthearted in the case of dwarf as Avon Lady and in one woman’s chance meeting with Ron Jeremy. Dark as the inner psyche of an artist who uses real-life models for his work. The Curse of Eve as ‘damned feminist?’ Always.
Blum deftly renders each woman in her own state of personal trauma. There is the moment of discovery between a husband and wife, the beginnings of an understanding between brother and sister, and the recovery of a woman coming to terms with her past. There are men too—men defined by women, men driven by their repulsion and desire for women, men as narrators, observers, actors, and catalysts for action.
In the collection’s title story, The Curse of Eve (A Tragedy in Seven Acts), Kamei translates Blum’s story of a woman coming to terms with the pangs of pregnancy. While her husband remains blissfully absent, a modern-day Eve traces her thoughts through the course of two violent births, the loss of her youth, and her imprisonment in motherhood. From the insignificant act that marks the beginning of her curse to the birth of a daughter who will inherit “the sufferings of her kind,” the nameless narrator remarks that she is told that she must, at all times, remember to, “Take it like a woman.” A theme that is echoed throughout the collection, we are made to understand that Blum’s women can take it all. Even as we become acutely aware of the extent to which ‘Eve’ suffers, as well as the tragedy that lies in store for her, we hold on to the hope she feels when she admits to holding her child for the first time, admitting that, “at this moment nothing else matters.”
This sentiment is mirrored in the equally haunting, Periquita Shoes. With stark prose and striking imagery, Kamei renders Blum’s story about a local balloon seller’s desire for a young girl with Periquita shoes. His single-minded passion is likened to his craft, described as one that, “rises, blows up, [like] a balloon reaching its limits.” His desire is compounded by the vast difference in their ages. As the story culminates in an act of startling cruelty, we are left to lie in a field alongside the girl and her Periquita shoes, “full of pain, but alive.”
The landscape of Mexico provides the backdrop for these experiences—a country caught between the realm of superstition and spirituality, romance and reality. It defines Blum and The Curse of Eve as being both border and borderless, a nation of violence no more real than the violence of love, birth, and universal womanhood. From behind the curtains of race, class, gender, and sexuality, each woman carries her own curse of Eve, and the means to overcome it.
It is this universality that defines Blum’s work and her achievement as a writer. Although the stories in The Curse of Eve carry a thread of the foreign and the fantastical, the element of humanity that pervades each piece makes the event of one scene as recognizable as the next. The Curse of Eve is exact and exacting, written in a language that renders both the subject, and the reader, bare. The birth of both a new author and translator, The Curse of Eve marks the beginning of The Fall, a descent into a fiction where we are kept waiting for the next apple to drop.
Review by Jennifer Lue
Liliana V. Blum was born in Durango, Mexico, in 1974. She holds a B.A. in Comparative Literature from the University of Kansas and a Master’s degree in Education from the Instituto Technológico de Monterrey. English translations of her stories have appeared in various literary journals, including Eclectica, Mslexia, storySouth, Blackbird, and The Dirty Goat. More of Liliana’s work can be found at http://lasalasdelalacran.blog.com/.
Toshiya Kamei has translated numerous Spanish and Latin American writers, including Liliana V. Blum, Estrella del Valle, Espido Freire, Ericka Ghersi, Leticia Luna, and Socorro Venegas. His translations have appeared in the journals The Dirty Goat, Literal: Latin American Voices and Metamorphoses, among others. His translation of Naoko Awa’s ‘White Mufflers’ can be found in Issue 02 of Weave Magazine.
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