Local poet Arlene Weiner will by joined by poet Mike Schneider and fiddler Jan Hamilton to celebrate her new poetry collection, MORE

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The poems in More are variously playful, lyrical, skeptical, sorrowful---never cynical. Whether reading the ingredients on a bread wrapper or contemplating disasters like the collapse of a bridge, Arlene Weiner wants to take in the world.

Arlene Weiner is a longtime resident of Squirrel Hill and is active in Pittsburgh’s poetry community. She is a member of Pittsburgh Poetry Exchange and Squirrel Hill Poetry Workshop. Arlene has been a den mother, a Shakespeare scholar, a cardiology technician, part of a group developing computer-based education, and an editor. Her poems have been published in such journals as Pleiades, Poet Lore, and Paterson Literary Review; and read on Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac.

Mike Schneider began writing during the Vietnam War when, while serving at an air force base in Ohio, he published an anti-war “underground” newspaper. Three times nominated for the Pushcart Prize, his poems appear in many literary journals, several anthologies and three chapbooks. He received the 2012 Editors Award from The Florida Review and the 2016 Robert Phillips Prize from Texas Review Press. The Hungry Hill Writing Group in West Cork, Ireland awarded Schneider second prize in its Poets Meet Politics 2022 International Open. His full-length collection Spring Mills is forthcoming in early 2023.

Jan Hamilton was a classical violinist and psychology grad student at Nashville’s Vanderbilt University and Duquesne University before immersing herself in American, Scots and Irish fiddling. A member of the Run-of-the-Mill String Band before joining the well known, Pittsburgh-based Celtic-fusion band Devilish Merry, Jan has performed in London, England with Jordan’s Dead Roses and throughout Western Pennsylvania for a vast array of community events.