Pitt-Greensburg’s Written/Spoken series welcomes nonfiction writer Adriana Es Ramírez and poet Malcolm Friend on Thursday, December 7, at 7 p.m. in Lynch Hall 102. The reading is free and open to the public. Pitt-Greensburg Creative and Professional Writing majors Matthew Burch and Kara Goughnour will open, and a book sale and signing will follow the event.
Adriana Es Ramírez is a nonfiction writer, storyteller, and performance poet born in Mexico City, Mexico, raised in McAllen, Texas, and educated at Rice University and the University of Pittsburgh, where she received her BA and MFA in English, respectively. Ramírez is the winner of the 2015 PEN/Fusion Emerging Writer’s Prize for her nonfiction novella, “Dead Boys,” which was published in 2016, and, in 2016, she was named “Critic At Large” by the “Los Angeles Times’” Book Section.
Ramírez’s writing has been published in the “Los Angeles Review of Books,” “LitHub,” and “Guernica/PEN America,” and more. She is the author of two small-press books of poetry—“The Swallows,” reissued in 2016, and “Trusting in Imaginary Spaces,” published in 2010—and her debut full-length book of nonfiction, “The Violence,” is set to be released by Scribner in 2018.
Ramírez also serves as the editor of “DISMANTLE,” is a co-founder of “Aster(ix) Journal” and the Pittsburgh Poetry Collective and Nasty Slam. She has also been featured in the 2014 Legends of Poetry Slam Showcase and TEDxHouston, as well as the 2016 Three Rivers Arts Festival.
Malcolm Friend is a poet originally from the Rainier Beach neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, and he received his BA from Vanderbilt University and his MFA from the University of Pittsburgh. While at Vanderbilt, Friend was the 2014 recipient of the Merrill Moore Prize for Poetry. He is the author of two chapbooks, “mxd kd mixtape” and “Case Study on the Afro-Seattleite,” and has received awards and fellowships from several organizations, including CantoMundo, VONA/Voices of Our Nations, and the University of Memphis.
Friend’s work has also appeared in numerous publications, including “Vinyl,” “Word Riot,” and “Fjords Review’s Black American Edition.” Currently, he serves as a poetry editor for “Freezeray Poetry.”
Pitt-Greensburg’s Written/Spoken is a reading series that brings nationally known poets and writers to the campus. Undergraduate student writers participate in readings and give performances of their own work. The series is sponsored by the Pitt-Greensburg Creative & Professional Writing Program and the Office of Academic Affairs. For more information, please contact Professor Lori Jakiela by phone at 724-836-7481 or email at loj@pitt.edu.