Pitt-Greensburg’s Written/Spoken series welcomes writers Sharla Yates and Ben Gwin to campus Monday, November 5, at 7 p.m. in the Mary Lou Campana Chapel and Lecture Center. The reading is free and open to the public. Pitt-Greensburg student-writers Peyton Clark and Liz Laughlin will open. A book sale and signing will follow the event.
Ben Gwin is the author of the new novel “Clean Time: The True Story of Ronald Reagan Middleton” (Burrow Press). His fiction and nonfiction writing has appeared in “The Normal School,” “Mary: a Journal of New Writing,” “Bridge Eight,” “Thin Noon,” “Belt Magazine” and others. His “Rust Belt Heroin Chic,” a critically-acclaimed essay about the personal impact of the heroin epidemic, was featured in Belt Publishing’s recent anthology, “Voices from the Rust Belt.” He’s taught creative writing to inmates in the Allegheny County Jail, and to veterans in the Pittsburgh VA. He lives in Pittsburgh with his daughter.
Sharla Yates lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her poetry chapbook, “What I Would Say if We Were To Drown Tonight,” is a 2015 Villa Paper Nautilus finalist & published by Stranded Oak Press, 2017. You can find her poems at “The Boiler,” “Lynx Eye,” “The Hartskill Review,” and elsewhere. Her nonfiction story, “Address,” was a finalist for the 2015 Columbia Journal Writing contest and the 2016 Penelope Niven Award in Creative Nonfiction. She's the director of education for the Creative Nonfiction Foundation & teaches for Southern New Hampshire University's Master of Arts in Creative Writing.
Written/Spoken is a reading series that brings nationally known poets and writers to the Pitt-Greensburg campus. Undergraduate student writers participate in readings and give performances of their own work. The series is sponsored by Pitt-Greensburg’s 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.