When: Friday, July 12
Where: University of Pittsburgh School of Education, 5601 Wesley W. Posvar Hall, 230 S. Bouquet, Pittsburgh, PA 15260
Time: 9:30 a.m.

In this keynote address, we will explore the dynamic interplay between race, language, writing, and justice. Focusing on the lived experiences of African American Language (AAL) speakers, the talk will explore the historical and contemporary educational injustices rooted in AAL discrimination (Hankerson, 2023). We will analyze how these systemic issues impact the educational opportunities, outcomes, and overall well-being of AAL speakers. Through this exploration, this talk aims to illuminate pathways toward promoting racial and linguistic equity and justice in U.S. writing classrooms. 

This talk is part of the Assembly for Teachers of English Grammar (ATEG) Annual Conference.

When: Monday, July 15
Where: Center for Urban Education, 4303 Wesley W. Posvar Hall, 230 S. Bouquet, Pittsburgh, PA 15260
Time: 11:30 a.m. - 1 p.m. (lunch is included)

About the Workshop:
This engaging and intensive workshop introduces the art of flash fiction—a form of storytelling that is flexible, compact, and powerful, much like a gymnast in mid-air. This workshop will help you master the techniques needed to craft compelling narratives in a limited space. 

About the Facilitator:
As a language arts teacher in the Pittsburgh Public Schools, Walt Peterson was nominated to become an artist and writer in the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts program. He started his teaching/writing career in Teacher Corps in West Virginia and, during his tenure with the PPS, he became a Fellow of the National Writing Project through the University of Pittsburgh and the Western Pennsylvania Writing Project, then an artist with the PCA. 

His teaching is grounded in the Writing Process, Writing Across the Curriculum, and now the Common Core standards. His students, even before the National Writing Project experience, published their work on the classroom level and beyond. He has edited numerous anthologies for students both young and adult. 

His own writing merited the Acorn-Rukeyser Poetry Prize in 1998 for In the Waiting Room of the Speedy Muffler King. He also won the Gribble Press Award for the short fiction collection Depth-of-Field, about which the nationally known fiction writer Stuart Dybek commented, "I like them all. There's a surprise in each (story) like the little metafiction move in Music,' the way history enters memory in the last piece (What He Remembers'), etc. And the sentence writing sings." 

Other collections of poetry include Rebuilding the Porch (Nightshade Press, 1990) and Image/Song (Seton Hill University, 1994). He has also collaborated with sculptor James Shipman. 

Walt is currently a consultant for the Western Pennsylvania Writing Project and the International Poetry Forum. He frequently does volunteer work and enjoys restoring rusty British sports cars and sailing. He has helped raise two sons, Kevin and Eric. 

When: Monday, July 22
Where: Center for Urban Education, 4303 Wesley W. Posvar Hall, 230 S. Bouquet, Pittsburgh, PA 15260
Time: 11:30 a.m. - 1 p.m. (lunch is included)

About the Workshop:
The renowned poet Audre Lorde would ask her students to list one hundred words to describe the paper clip, an exercise in attention and imagination. We are going to read poems in which an object is centered and consider the many tools that writers use to bring objects to life. We’ll think about the ways that objects capture our attention and imagination especially, it would seem, objects that have become obsolete or no longer of any practical purpose or value. For example, do you notice how many writers have a fascination with the typewriter, particularly, the old manual kind? Have you noticed the bric-a-brac variety that appear on writers’ bookcases or desks? Many writers collect typewriters enamored by their history and cultural significance. We’ll also try a draft of our own that focuses on an object that we identify, perhaps an everyday object that we enliven.

About the Facilitator:
Doralee Brooks holds an MEd from the University of Pittsburgh and an MFA from Carlow University. She is Professor Emerita of Developmental Studies at the Community College of Allegheny County. In 1995, Doralee became a fellow of the Western Pennsylvania Writing Project, a national writing project for teachers of kindergarten through college who endorse the practice of writing instruction in every discipline. In 1997, she led a community group for girls in Homestead who called themselves The Spice Writers. In 1997 and 1999, Doralee received fellowships to Cave Canem. Currently, Doralee facilitates writing workshops in poetry at Carlow University, and her poems have appeared in several journals including Voices from the Attic, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, Uppagus, Dos Passos Review, and Paterson Literary Review. Her chapbook, “When I Hold You Up to the Light,” won the 2019 Cathy Smith Bowers Poetry Prize sponsored by Main Street Rag. Doralee is City of Asylum’s Poet Laureate of Allegheny County, 2022-2024.

When: Monday, July 29
Where: Center for Urban Education, 4303 Wesley W. Posvar Hall, 230 S. Bouquet, Pittsburgh, PA 15260
Time: 11:30 a.m. - 1 p.m. (lunch is included)

About the Workshop:
This generative workshop for all experience levels will focus on guided freewriting, games, and chance encounters with words to develop drafts of new poems, whether you are a novice to poetry or a teacher of poetry. These exercises will allow you to find fresh and unexpected ways to jumpstart your poem-making. They may even inspire you to take home and share with friends or students, or perhaps start a workshop of your own.

About the Facilitator:
Editor-in-chief of Rogue Agent, a journal of embodied poetry and art, Jill Khoury earned her Masters of Fine Arts from The Ohio State University. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in numerous journals, including Inter|rupture, RHINO, Bone Bouquet, diode, Posit, DATABLEED, Deaf Poets' Society, and Copper Nickel. She has been nominated several times for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Split This Rock picked her poem "Certain Seams" as a third place winner in their 2013 poetry contest, judged by Mark Doty. She works with the Western PA Writing Project as a teacher in the Young Writer's Institute, and also reads audio for Wordgathering: A Journal of Disability Poetry and Literature. She teaches in university, high school, and enrichment environments, and is especially interested in conducting workshops on poetry & the body and disability poetics. Her first full-length volume of poetry, Suites for the Modern Dancer, is available from Sundress Publications, and she has a chapbook Chance Operations, a surrealist take on living with chronic pain, from Paper Nautilus. Her manuscript earthwork won the Gatewood Prize from Switchback Books and was published in February 2024 (order here).