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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20260819T190000
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SUMMARY:Holly by grace (ge) gilbert (with Daniel McCarty & Lisa Summe)
DESCRIPTION:We are thrilled to celebrate local poet\, artist\, and educator\, grace (ge) gilbert\, and their debut\, Holly! Holly is a work of art\, assembling hybrid collage\, poetry\, and memoir. We are thrilled to host a special and dynamic event in celebration of this project. grace will be joined by opening reader\, Daniel McCarty\, and will be in conversation with local poet and editor\, Lisa Summe. \ngrace (ge) gilbert’s Holly merges poetry\, memoir\, and visual art in an effort to recreate the author’s grandmother\, who was murdered in her home in 1976\, and to make sense of their ensuing relationship with their father\, who found his mother’s body when he was eleven years old. Having never been told explicitly by their parents about her murder\, gilbert pieces together her grandmother’s story through fragments\, ephemera\, history\, and the imaginary\, looking past the spectacle of the murdered woman and into the things that come\, like ripples\, after. \nDANIEL MCCARTY is an undergraduate student at Pitt studying biology\, with plans to pursue a career in healthcare. Outside of his major\, he enjoys writing and learning Spanish and playing banjo\, fiddle\, and singing in the Pitt Bluegrass Ensemble. Around Pittsburgh\, Daniel is active in the bluegrass and old-time scene\, and volunteers with the organization Prevention Point Pittsburgh. You can often find him riding his bike to work and school\, hiking\, and reading. \nLISA SUMME is the author of Tell Me Twice (YesYes Books\, 2027) and Say It Hurts (YesYes Books\, 2021). She earned a BA and MA in literature at the University of Cincinnati\, and an MFA in poetry from Virginia Tech. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Bat City Review\, Foglifter\, Muzzle\, Salamander\, Salt Hill\, Underblong\, West Branch\, and elsewhere. She is currently associate poetry editor for Brink. You can find her running\, playing baseball\, or eating vegan pastries in Pittsburgh\, PA\, or at lisasumme.com. \ngrace (ge) gilbert (they/them) is a poet\, writer\, and collage artist. they received their MFA in poetry from the University of Pittsburgh in 2022\, where they now teach. they are the author of Holly (YesYes Books\, 2026)\, a hybrid image and text book about the 1976 murder of their paternal grandmother\, as well as three chapbooks. Recent work can be found in the Kenyon Review\, the Iowa Review\, the 2023 Best of the Net Anthology\, Pleiades\, the Indiana Review\, Ninth Letter\, Adroit Journal\, and elsewhere. They teach hybrid collage and poetics courses at Brooklyn Poets\, Minnesota Center for Book Arts\, and other institutions. They are passionate about making the hybrid arts accessible to all. \nSign up for the livestream!
URL:https://qburgh.com/event/holly-by-grace-ge-gilbert-with-daniel-mccarty-lisa-summe/
LOCATION:White Whale Books & Coffee\, 4754 Liberty Avenue\, Pittsburgh\, PA\, 15224\, United States
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/webp:https://qburgh.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/grace-ge-gilbert-holly-aug-14.webp
ORGANIZER;CN="White Whale Books & Coffee":MAILTO:info@whitewhalebookstore.com
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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20260908T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20260908T203000
DTSTAMP:20260720T231705Z
CREATED:20260720T231705Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260720T231705Z
UID:10023190-1788894000-1788899400@qburgh.com
SUMMARY:I Have a Thing for Flowers by Alysia Li Ying Sawchyn (in convo with Diana Khoi Nguyen)
DESCRIPTION:We are grateful to host regional writer Alysia Li Ying Sawchyn at the Whale to celebrate her new essay collection\, I Have a Thing for Flowers! Structured like an herbarium\, each essay pairs a flower with a person from Sawchyn’s life to compose a delightful blend of botanical research and intimate meditations on love. Alysia Li Ying Sawchyn will be joined in conversation by local poet\, multimedia artist\, and educator\, Diana Khoi Nguyen. \nSix months before her wedding\, Alysia Li Ying Sawchyn’s fiancé broke off their engagement. Stunned\, reeling\, and newly uninsured\, Alysia married her friend Sarah in an arrangement that secured them both free health insurance. They moved in together in the midst of the pandemic\, and\, with time and while tending a garden\, their marriage of convenience grew into a marriage of love. \nIn science\, art\, and mythology\, we cannot help but to see flowers as metaphors for the fleeting nature of youth\, vitality\, and love. It’s easy to casually admire something beautiful\, but it takes a discerning eye to appreciate the effort that went into nourishing and tending to that beauty. In both gardening and relationships\, one cannot expect to fill your garden with flowers if you are unwilling—or unable—to put in the work they need to thrive. In I Have This Thing For Flowers\, Sawchyn does just that\, likening the many flowers she has grown in her gardens to a range of relationships and moments of her life\, reflecting on topics from motherhood to perfumery to scientific illustration. \nCataloguing many of the great romances and loves of her life like an herbarium of flowers preserved from the garden\, Sawchyn examines the kinds of love that can’t be explained. \nDIANA KHOI NGUYEN is the author of Root Fractures and Ghost Of\, a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the 2019 Kate Tufts Discovery Award. She is a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship\, and her video work has been exhibited at Miller ICA. A Kundiman and MacDowell fellow\, Nguyen teaches creative writing in the MFA programs at Randolph College and the University of Pittsburgh. \nALYSIA LI YING SAWCHYN teaches in the Creative Writing Program at Bucknell University. Her essay collection A Fish Growing Lungs was a finalist for The Believer Book Awards\, and her second book\, I Have This Thing for Flowers\, is forthcoming from Flatiron Books. Formerly the editor-in-chief of The Rumpus\, she has received fellowships from The Kenyon Review Writers Workshop and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. \nSign up for the livestream!
URL:https://qburgh.com/event/i-have-a-thing-for-flowers-by-alysia-li-ying-sawchyn-in-convo-with-diana-khoi-nguyen/
LOCATION:White Whale Books & Coffee\, 4754 Liberty Avenue\, Pittsburgh\, PA\, 15224\, United States
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/webp:https://qburgh.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/i-have-this-thing-with-flowers-sept-8.webp
ORGANIZER;CN="White Whale Books & Coffee":MAILTO:info@whitewhalebookstore.com
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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20260924T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20260924T193000
DTSTAMP:20260720T231916Z
CREATED:20260720T231807Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260720T231916Z
UID:10023191-1790272800-1790278200@qburgh.com
SUMMARY:Pod Picks Book Club: Ramona's Pick: Unprecedented Times
DESCRIPTION:Pod Picks Book Club is White Whale staff picks and a community book club combined! \n\n\n\n\nIt’s the powerful forces of White Whale staff picks and a community book club combined: the Pod Picks Book Club! Each month (usually on the last Thursday)\, a different bookseller gets to pick a book for the club to read\, and they’ll host the meeting\, too. Book club picks will be 10% off 30 days in advance of the meeting day\, to give you time to read it. And plan on grabbing a drink and a snack from the café when you come to the meeting! \nRamona’s pick: Unprecedented Times by Malavika Kannan \nRAMONA (they/them) is a semi-recent transplant to Pittsburgh from Austin\, Texas. They love film photography\, bad movies\, high camp\, general kitsch\, and miniature versions of things. They are a brothmonger loyalist and a generally sentimental guy. Ramona can be found consuming beautiful translated fiction\, absurdist short story collections\, and devastating essay collections. \n𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝\nOne of Ms. Magazine and Debutiful’s Most Anticipated Debut Books of the Year \nOne of LGBTQ Read’s Most Anticipated LGBTQ+ Fiction Books \nOne of Debutiful’s Most Anticipated Debut Books of the Year \n“Unprecedented Times made me laugh\, cry\, and rage—often within the same paragraph . . . Kannan’s voice is hilarious and generous\, and her incisive portrayal of navigating college as a second-generation immigrant kept me up late into the night. I absolutely could not put this book down.” —Lamya H\, award-winning author of Hijab Butch Blues \nMalavika Kannan establishes herself as an inimitable voice of Gen Z in this piercing coming-of-age debut novel. \nWhich comes first: experience or narrative? Rishi thinks she knows the answer as she arrives on campus for her first year at Stanford. A burnt-out youth climate activist\, she used to want to save the world\, but now she just wants to have gay sex. Her plan is set—she’s going to leave behind the strict trappings of her Indian American childhood in Florida\, study literature\, experiment with love\, and write all about it. Within a few months\, she makes her first best friend\, falls in love with her situationship\, and promptly gets her heart broken. \nWhat is not a part of Rishi’s plan is the onset of the COVID pandemic. As the outside world becomes a terrifying place\, she increasingly finds solace in the friendships she’s made. Instead of virtual college\, however\, Rishi and her classmates join a farm collective\, where their political discussions and growing disillusionment collide with sexual tension and responsibility. It’s only when those relationships start fracturing under the stress of careless decisions\, unrequited crushes\, jealousies\, and\, yes\, unprecedented times\, that Rishi begins to question her own story. \nUnprecedented Times captures the beauty\, humor\, pain\, and straight-up chaos that exist in relationships between best friends and lovers\, mothers and daughters\, and between storytellers and themselves. Malavika Kannan’s fresh\, arresting novel is a testament to the power of self-narrative for Gen Z American women: of writing oneself into existence where no previous script exists.
URL:https://qburgh.com/event/pod-picks-book-club-ramonas-pick-unprecedented-times/
LOCATION:White Whale Books & Coffee\, 4754 Liberty Avenue\, Pittsburgh\, PA\, 15224\, United States
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/webp:https://qburgh.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/pod-picks-sept-24.webp
ORGANIZER;CN="White Whale Books & Coffee":MAILTO:info@whitewhalebookstore.com
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