Events

The Greater Pittsburgh Festival of Books presents Poetry Allowed

Join us for an all day live poetry reading event, sponsored by Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures.

Registration is free, stay all day or pop in the tent to listen to as many poets as you’d like!

Saturday, May 14, 2022
10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Bakery Square, 6425 Penn Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15206

Poets include:

• Daniel Borzutzky
• Paola Corso
• Veronica Corpuz
• Toi Derricotte
• Lynn Emanuel
• Celeste Gainey
• Bri Griffith
• Karen Howard
• Carly Inghram
• Michelle Gil-Montero
• Danielle Orbisie-Orlu
• Bonita Lee Penn
• Judith R. Robinson
• Kayla Sargeson
• Michael Simms
• Cameron Barnett
• Michael Wurster
• Robert Walicki
• Elizabeth Hoover
• Madwomen in the Attic
• Soledad Caballero
• Angele Ellis
• Don Wentworth
• Lori Jakiela
• Aurielle Marie

Find other events on the Greater Pittsburgh Festival of Books website featuring Billy Porter, beloved local authors, and more.

Susan Choi / Monday, September 14, 2020 Trust Exercise
The author of five novels, Susan Choi won the 2019 National Book Award for Trust Exercise, an ingenious meditation on fiction and truth, friendships and loyalties, the capacities of adolescents, and the powers of adults.

Terry Tempest Williams / Monday, October 12, 2020 Erosion: Essays of Undoing
Terry Tempest Williams has been called “a citizen writer,” a writer who speaks out eloquently on behalf of an ethical stance toward life. Erosion: Essays of Undoing, explores the forms of erosion we face: of democracy, science, compassion, and trust.

Laila Lalami / Monday, October 26, 2020 Conditional Citizens
Prize-winning novelist (The Moors Account, The Other Americans) Laila Lalami’s new book, Conditional Citizens, is a brilliantly argued and deeply personal work of non-fiction—a sobering investigation on the place of nonwhites in American culture.

Lily King / Monday, November 16, 2020 Writers & Lovers
Following her beloved, prize-winning novel, Euphoria, Lily King brings us Writers & Lovers, a masterful portrait of an artist as a young woman praised as “a story where absence is a constant presence, stitched with humor, determination and hope.”

Brian Greene / Monday, November 23, 2020 Until the End of Time
World-renowned physicist and award-winning, bestselling author Brian Greene writes to help us understand our Elegant Universe. Until the End of Time is a captivating exploration of the cosmos and our quest to find meaning in this vast expanse.

Ta-Nehisi Coates / Monday, December 7, 2020 The Water Dancer
An essential voice of our times, National Book Award-winning author of Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates has produced The Water Dancer, his bold debut novel about a magical gift, a devastating loss, and an underground war for freedom.

David Treuer / Monday, January 18, 2021 The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee
Anthropologist and author David Treuer combines history, reporting, and memoir to create the National Book Award Finalist, New York Times bestseller, and multiple Best Books of 2019 list-maker, The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present.

Karen Russell / Monday, February 22, 2021 Orange World
Karen Russel is a Pulitzer Prize Finalist and author of the New York Times bestsellers Swamplandia!, Vampires in the Lemon Grove, and Orange World—a stunning collection that showcases her extraordinary gifts of language and imagination.

Ocean Vuong / Monday, March 22, 2021 On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
Ocean Vuong is an award-winning poet and the author of the critically acclaimed, bestselling novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, a work hailed as an “expansive and introspective, fragmented and dreamlike” coming of age story.

Bernardine Evaristo / Monday, April 5, 2021 Girl, Woman, Other
With Girl, Woman, Other, Bernardine Evaristo became the first Black woman to win the Booker Prize for Fiction. The novel is a magnificent portrayal of the intersections of identity, across generations, in a group of Black British women.

The 2020/21 Ten Evenings series is presented by Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures, in association with Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh and the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh. This is the 30th season of Pittsburgh’s literary lecture series. All programs are presented on Monday evenings at 7:30 pm in Oakland’s historic Carnegie Music Hall.

Subscriptions for the 2020/21 Ten Evenings season will be available in May and single tickets go on sale July 6. More information is available by visiting pittsburghlectures.org or emailing info@pittsburghlectures.org.

Dear Friends,

When our survey asked for three adjectives that best describe the Ten Evenings lectures, the top responses were informative, interesting, and entertaining, followed by inspiring, enlightening, stimulating, educational, thought-provoking, engaging, and enjoyable. Other responses included insightful, surprising, motivating, eye-opening, timely, challenging, funny, and fun.

It is my privilege to present you with this year’s slate of critically acclaimed authors. Their poignant, relevant, deeply researched, and beautifully crafted works are bringing each one of them to the fore of the national and international cultural and literary arena.

We launch the season with literary icon Joyce Carol Oates, who returns to our stage for the first time since 1992. One of the world’s most eminent authors, she addresses themes in her work that include racism, classism, and sexual–political power dynamics.

Mexican–U.S. immigration is addressed in both fiction and nonfiction by Luis Alberto Urrea (The House of Broken Angels and The Devil’s Highway) and Valeria Luiselli (Tell Me How It Ends and her forthcoming Lost Children Archive).

Jill Lepore provides an investigation of our divided nation (These Truths), while the timely topic of Russia and Putin are discussed by journalist Masha Gessen (The Future is History). Katherine Boo humanizes inequality in Mumbai, India (Behind the Beautiful Forevers) while her current focus is poverty in Washington, D.C. Tayari Jones takes on questions of race, class, and incarceration in a fictional love story (An American Marriage) while Ottessa Moshfegh reveals a young woman’s shocking approach to mental health (My Year of Rest and Relaxation).

The war in Yemen, immigration, coffee, and entrepreneurism comprise the tale told by Dave Eggers who will appear with the subject of his book (The Monk of Mokha), Mokhtar Alkhanshali. And we’ll end our season with Min Jin Lee and her page-turning family saga (Pachinko), which portrays the lasting impact of Japanese colonialism and the long, vexed history of discrimination against Koreans in Japan.

There is certainly much to learn, contemplate, discuss, and be inspired by. Thank you for joining the Ten Evenings community of readers, writers, listeners, and thinkers as we engage with these important writers of our time.

Stephanie Flom

Executive Director