BACK AT THE PARKSIDE LOUNGE!

Featuring Pete Dolack and Amy Small-McKinney

Hosted by Jerry T. Johnson

Plus open mic

21+

$3 suggested donation. Two drink min, alcoholic or non.

Pete Dolack is an activist, photographer, poet and writer who wishes he could keep all those balls in the air but, alas, keeps dropping some of them. When he is wearing his poet’s hat, he is the author of the chapbook And Now A Word From Our Sponsors, and writes about space, time, travel and the sad state of the world through satire. Pete’s poetry has been published in 36 publications, including Poetrybay, Sensitive Skin, Will Work For Peace anthology, Blue Collar Review, Lummox, Appleseeds anthology and Tribes, the magazine of Gathering of a Tribes. He is also a former non-fiction editor for the online literary publication Mad Hatter’s Review. When he is wearing a different hat, Pete writes the Systemic Disorder blog, and is the author of the book It's Not Over: Learning From the Socialist Experiment and the forthcoming book What Do We Need Bosses For? from Autonomedia.

Amy Small-McKinney’s third and newest chapbook, One Day I Am A Field, was written during Covid and her husband’s illness and dying (Glass Lyre Press, 2022). For the 2020 virtual Association of Writers & Writing Programs, she co-moderated an interactive discussion, Writing Through Grief & Loss: The Intersection of Social and Personal Grief During Covid.  Her second full-length book of poems, Walking Towards Cranes, won the Kithara Book Prize (Glass Lyre Press, 2016). Her poems have appeared in numerous journals, including American Poetry Review, Baltimore Review, Comstock Review, Indianapolis Review, and Pedestal Magazine, among others, and is forthcoming in The Banyan Review.  Her poems have also been translated into Korean and Romanian, and her book reviews have appeared in journals, such as Prairie Schooner and Matter.  Small-McKinney resides in Philadelphia.  She has taught at conferences, community workshops, and with independent students.