Anne's Arts & Activities Blog

The 2018 edition of the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford’s award-winning literary magazine will feature online components, such as musical compositions or audio renditions of performance poems. The staff of Baily’s Beads will unveil this year’s issue at the Annual Literary Magazine Celebration at 7:30 p.m. Jan. 24 in the Mukaiyama University Room of the Frame-Westerberg Commons at Pitt-Bradford. Edited by three writing majors, Isaac Payne, a sophomore from Kane, Jayden Pire, a senior from Oswayo, and Shahada Thomas, a sophomore from Chester, the 2018 volume incorporates a variety of work. That work included an immersion journalism piece, a play, a screenplay, poetry, literary fiction and genre fiction. Readers will also be able to use web links or QR codes to hear original musical compositions and performance poetry read by the artist. In addition, the issue contains original digital photography and winners of a Seven Word Contest, for which a...

A writing student at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford has recently been recognized and published online. Isaac Payne, a sophomore English and writing major from Kane, attended the Alpha Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Writing Workshop in Greensburg in August. During the 11 days that he was there, he met with critically acclaimed speculative fiction authors Tamora Pierce, Alyssa Wong, Daniel Jose Older, E. C. Myers, and worked with other staff members invested in the field. The purpose of this workshop was to develop writing skills for improving speculative short stories, and to gain feedback from peers and staff. Payne used the knowledge gained at Alpha in order to earn an Honorable Mention in the 2017 Writer’s of the Future Award for his short story “The Pursuit of Luck,” which also appears in the 2018 edition of Baily’s Beads. He also has flash fiction forthcoming from The Corvid Review. “Isaac is an inventive writer with impressive initiative,” said D...

Dinner theater is returning to Bradford. Enchante Cabaret will perform its romantic comedy "Journeys" February 7 at Beefeater's. Doors open at 5 p.m. Dinner will be served at 6 p.m. and the show starts and 7 p.m. Tickets are $49.95 and only 100 are available.

Chautauqua Institution today announced the establishment of a new literary prize. The Chautauqua Janus Prize will be awarded for the first time in 2018, celebrating an emerging writer’s single work of short fiction or nonfiction for daring formal and aesthetic innovations that upset and reorder readers’ imaginations, historical narratives, and literary conventions. In addition to receiving a $2,500 award, the winner will give a lecture on the grounds during the summer season and appear in a forthcoming issue of the literary journal Chautauqua. The prize is funded by a generous donation from Chautauquans Barbara and Twig Branch. Named for Janus, the Roman god who looks to both the past and the future, the prize will honor writing with a command of craft that renovates understandings of both. The 2018 winner will be selected by guest judge Kazim Ali, author of a forthcoming book of poems, Inquisition, and a forthcoming hybrid memoir, Silver Road: Essays, Maps & Calligraphies. An as...