Writers' Café: From Story to Self: "Meaning-Making Through Narrative Poetry"

Writers' Café
From Story to Self: Meaning-Making Through Narrative Poetry

Join local poets Malcolm Friend and Cameron Barnett in an exploration of poetry’s narrative capabilities.

In Barnett’s session, we will explore everyday ordinary objects through epistolary writing to discover their capability for relationship building. In Friend’s session, he will build off the letter form of poetry to choose celebrity/public figures to address through poems, and in the process address ourselves through the form. In each session, the aim will be to find which elements of storytelling our poetics amplify most, and what about our own nature is most amplified as well.

Cameron Barnett holds an MFA from the University of Pittsburgh, where he was poetry editor for Hot Metal Bridge, and co-coordinator of Pitt’s Speakeasy Reading Series. He teaches at Falk Laboratory School, is an associate poetry editor for Pittsburgh Poetry Review, and his debut collection, "The Drowning Boy's Guide to Water", was recently published through Autumn House Press.

Malcolm Friend is a poet originally from the Rainier Beach neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. He received his BA from Vanderbilt University, and his MFA from the University of Pittsburgh. He is the author of the chapbook "mxd kd mixtape" (Glass Poetry, 2017), and has received awards and fellowships from organizations including CantoMundo, VONA/Voices of Our Nations, Backbone Press, the Center for African American Poetry & Poetics, and the University of Memphis. His manuscript "Our Bruises Kept Singing Purple" won the 2017 Hillary Gravendyk Prize, and will be published in 2018 by Inlandia Books. His work has been featured or is forthcoming in publications including "La Respuesta" magazine, "Vinyl", Word Riot, "The Acentos Review", and "Pretty Owl Poetry".

For more details about this event and others visit the Writers' Café website. 

Questions, contact Barbara Edelman or Sarah Leavens, the Writers' Café coordinators, via email or at 412-624-6556.