Jeff Oaks Named Managing Director
We are pleased to announce that we hired Jeff Oaks to be the Managing Director of The Pittsburgh Contemporary Writers' Series. This past season the Series sponsored readings by novelists John Edgar Wideman and Lee Smith, nonfiction writers Alex Kotlowitz and Susan Sheehan, and poets Tony Hoagland, Carl Philips, and Dean Young. An audience of two thousand from the University and communities from around the city attended these readings which were covered by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Tribune Review, In Pittsburgh, City Paper, The Pitt News and WQED. Each writer participated in Q and A with both the graduate students and the undergraduates. More than a hundred undergraduates met John Wideman for an informal Q and A in Frick Fine Arts Auditorium. The Writers' Series also co-sponsored readings by the Israeli poet, Linda Zisquit, alumni, Gerald Stern and Li Young Lee, and noted African-American poet, Sonia Sanchez. In 1999 we sponsored a panel on publishing first books which included, in addition to Ed Ochester from the University of Pittsburgh Press and Sharon Dilworth from CMU Press, Jill Bialosky, senior editor at WW Norton, and literary agent, Andrew Blauner. In 2000, we sponsored a panel on publishing in literary magazines. Among the magazines whose editors participated: Zoetrope, The American Poetry Review, Creative Nonfiction and Seneca Review.