Kate Daniels

Guggenheim Fellow Kate Daniels’ new book of poems In the Months of my Son’s Recovery describes a mother’s descent into Hell to save her son. What she finds is that she cannot save him – she can save only herself – and only by letting him go. This is the nightmare of America’s heroin epidemic, told succinctly, beautifully, every line exploring the depth of our national nightmare.

Supporting Kate, two wonderful Pittsburgh poets will be reading – Ellen McGrath Smith and Andy Feathers.

Featured Writers:

Kate Daniels was born and raised in Richmond, Virginia. The daughter of a British War bride of WWII, she was a first generation college student, educated at the University of Virginia (B.A. and M.A. in English Literature) and Columbia University (M.F.A. School of the Arts). At the beginning of her career, she was a Bunting Fellow at Harvard University, researching the life and poetry of Muriel Rukeyser. Over the years, her teaching career has taken her to the University of Virginia; the University of Massachusetts at Amherst; Louisiana State University; Wake Forest University; Bennington College; and Vanderbilt University, where she is the Edwin Mims Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing.

Her first book of poetry, The White Wave (Pittsburgh, 1984), won the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize. Her second volume, The Niobe Poems (Pittsburgh, 1988), received honorable mention for the Paterson Poetry Prize. Her third and fourth volumes, Four Testimonies (1998), and A Walk in Victoria’s Secret (2010), were selected by Dave Smith for the Southern Messenger Series, published by LSU Press. LSU will publish her fifth collection, In the Months of My Son’s Recovery, in the spring of 2019. A sixth collection of chapbook length, Three Syllables Describing Addiction, was published in the fall of 2018 by Bull City Press. While still in graduate school, Daniels was one of the founding editors of Poetry East. She has also edited two books, including Of Solitude and Silence: Writings on Robert Bly (Beacon Press, coeditor), and Out of Silence: Selected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser (TriQuarterly).

Ellen McGrath Smith teaches at the University of Pittsburgh and in the Carlow University Madwomen in the Attic program. Her writing has appeared in The American Poetry Review, Los Angeles Review, Quiddity, Cimarron, and other journals, and in several anthologies, including Beauty Is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability, Joyful Noise: An Anthology of American Spiritual Poetry,and Rabbit Ears: TV Poems. Smith has been the recipient of an Orlando Prize, an Academy of American Poets award, a Rainmaker Award from Zone 3 magazine, and a 2007 Individual Artist grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Her second chapbook, Scatter, Feed, was published by Seven Kitchens Press in the fall of 2014, and her book, Nobody’s Jackknife, was published in 2015 by the West End Press. www.ellenmcgrathsmith.com

Andy Feathers is an MFA candidate in poetry at West Virginia University. In 2016, his chapbook, Laying Out Tomorrow’s Outfit, was published by Finishing Line Press. He was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Carbon Culture Review in 2014, and his work has appeared in the After Happy Hour Review, Festival Writer, and Red Weather Journal, among others. He currently lives in Pittsburgh, PA, where he has co-founded community and personal projects including Runaway Studios (2014-15), Daddy’s Clothes & Gifts (2018), and The Anybody Can Do This Show (2018). Contact him @andyfeathers on Instagram and Facebook.

Curated by:

Michael Simms has been active in politics and poetry for over 40 years as a writer, teacher, editor, and community activist. He is the founder of Autumn House Press, a nonprofit publisher of books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. He’s the founder and editor of Vox Populi, a gazette of the left featuring poetry, essays, and videos. He’s also the author of four collections of poetry and a college textbook about poetry — and the lead editor of over 100 published books which have won numerous prizes and awards. Simms has an MFA from the University of Iowa and a Certificate in Plant-based Nutrition from Cornell University. He lives with his wife, Eva, and their two children in the historic Mount Washington neighborhood overlooking the city of Pittsburgh.