WANA LIVE! Reading Series WANA LIVE!

Amy Clark was born in the heart of the Appalachian mountains of Virginia and teaches at the University of Virginia's College at Wise. She is the 2012 recipient of the Jean Ritchie Fellowship in Appalachian Writing. Her book, TALKING APPALACHIAN details the history and features of Appalachian dialects, as well as pieces by well-known authors about what it means to speak them. She is founder and Director of the Appalachian Writing Project, a non-profit organization for teachers whose mission is to improve the teaching of writing in rural schools. Her articles and essays have appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers.
More info at http://www.amydclark.com

Cat Pleska, author, educator, publisher, and oral historian, holds an MFA in creative nonfiction writing. Her memoir, Riding on Comets was published by West Virginia University Press, 2015. Cat edited three anthologies and her essays have appeared in Still: The Journal, Heartwood Magazine, Change 7 Magazine, and many others.

In honor of baseball season, WANA is featuring a double header tonight!

Cody McDevitt is an investigative reporter based in Pittsburgh. He's written several books, including his most recent, Banished from Johnstown: Racist Backlash in Pennsylvania, which details one of the worst racial injustices in western Pennsylvania history. More than 2,000 Black and Latino people were forced from their homes after a racially charged police shooting. He is currently working on his next book about the history of the abortion rights movement.

Dan Reidmiller is a short-story writer based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. A recent graduate of Chatham University's MFA program, Dan is currently at work on his debut manuscript, tentatively titled, RIVER RATS: AND OTHER SIMERAL'S FERRY TALES. The project is a short-story cycle that intertwines the lives of a range of characters in a small, lower-class Appalachian town called Simeral's Ferry. During the day, Dan works full-time as a Content Writer and Strategist for an international software company, and in his spare time, he volunteers as a member of WANA, where he serves on the advisory board.

Liz Ahl is the author of Beating the Bounds (Hobblebush Books, 2017), as well as several chapbooks of poetry, including A Thirst That’s Partly Mine, winner of the 2008 Slapering Hol Press Chapbook Prize. She lives in Holderness, New Hampshire and teaches writing at Plymouth State University.

Patricia Thrushart has published three books of poetry, Little Girl Against The Wall, Yin and Yang, and Sanctity: Poems from Northern Appalachia. Her work appears regularly in The Watershed Journal, a regional literary magazine of Northwestern Pennsylvania, and on the website North/South Appalachia. Her poems have been published in Tiny Seed, Clarion University’s Tobeco, The Avocet, Still Point Arts Quarterly, The Pittsburgh Post Gazette, Bridge Literary Arts Journal, Feminine Collective, Curating Alexandria, High Shelf Press, and The Northern Appalachia Review. Several of her poems have won awards from both the Pennsylvania Poetry Society and the National Federation of State Poetry Societies. Her first narrative nonfiction book, Cursed: The Life and Tragic Death of Marion Alsobrook Stahlman, will be published in October 2021, by Adelaide Books of New York.

A native of Loretto, Pennsylvania now living in Pittsburgh, Ron Donoughe is best known for his spirited realistic landscape paintings of Western Pennsylvania. He has a B.A. in Art Education from Indiana University of Pennsylvania and has studied at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, California.

Like many painters he has held a variety of odd jobs – landscaper, gravedigger, chicken catcher, art teacher, museum installer, graphic designer, and college instructor.

He works full time now as a professional artist/painter. His work can be found in many corporate and private collections as well as the Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art, The Westmoreland Museum of American Art and The University Museum at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

Ron’s interest in plein art painting led to the formation of The Plein-Air Painters of Western Pennsylvania. The group meets informally to paint Pittsburgh from April through November. In addition, his work has appeared in 12 films which were shot in the Pittsburgh region.