Book award
Pitt–Greensburg faculty member Newman wins Pushcart Prize
Dave Newman, assistant professor of creative & professional writing at Pitt–Greensburg, was awarded a Pushcart Prize this summer for his story, “The Last Things That Happened Before I Became A Med Tech.”
The Pushcart Prize, an American literary prize published by Pushcart Press, honors the best poetry, short fiction, essays or literary whatnot published by small presses during the previous year. Approximately 8,000 editors from around the world are allowed to submit up to six pieces for consideration.
Earlier in the year, Newman won the Rattle Readers’ Choice Award for his poem, “I’m Trying to Lead This Old-Timey Veteran.” He also was one of 10 finalists out of 5,169 submissions for the Rattle Poetry Prize.
“At Pitt-Greensburg, we are very proud of Professor Newman’s many literary contributions,” said Robert Gregerson, president of the campus. “Receiving the Pushcart Prize and Rattle Readers’ Choice Award in the same year is an amazing recognition of the quality and impact of his work. Our students are very fortunate to learn from such an accomplished writer.”
Newman is a 1993 graduate of Pitt–Greensburg and the recipient of the 2024 Pitt-Greensburg Alumnus of Distinction Award. He serves as advisor to the Pendulum Literary Magazine and the Creative Writing Club on campus, and runs the Voices reading series and the Pitt-Greensburg Writers Festival.
Newman is a resident of Trafford, with his wife, the writer and fellow Pitt-Greensburg faculty member Lori Jakiela.
Book events
Book Talk: Brenda Tate on her memoir “Journal of a Black Woman in Blue: Navigating Abuse, Addiction, Racism and Sobriety”
4-5:30 p.m. Sept. 30, 340 Hillman Library, Archives & Special Collections Instruction Room, Third Floor
A deeply personal and inspiring story of struggle with abuse, addiction and racism, while serving 40 years as a police officer, and ultimately overcoming life’s hardships to succeed and lead. Brenda Tate’s inspirational new memoir, “Journal of a Black Woman in Blue, Navigating Abuse, Addiction, Racism and Sobriety” weaves a narrative of hope and perseverance for anyone who has faced life altering situations in their own lives that led them down an unintended road of emotional pain and suffering.
Her personal journal is a painfully honest account of the struggles she faced as a child and young woman, enduring rape, molestations, and abuse-traumas that led her on a path of self-destruction until she was able to face it head-on. She served 40 years as a police officer in Pittsburgh, even though she was heavily addicted to drugs and alcohol for 20 of those years.
“My message is that if I can turn my life around with the proper support, anyone else can too. It was a raw and personal decision to write this book and reveal the secrets I held deep inside for decades,” Tate says.
“Making Otherwise: Artists’ Books and Embodied Composition”
12:30-2 p.m. Oct. 2, Humanities Center, 602 Cathedral of Learning
Humanities Center Graduate Fellow Sojin Cho’s current project explores how artists’ books — multimedia works integrating text, image, and physical form — deepen our understanding of writing as corporeal and performative. Through ethnographic fieldwork, classroom-based bookmaking and object analysis, the project interrogates normative academic writing that privileges homogeneous notions of clarity and coherence. Drawing from writing studies, performance studies, and visual arts, this project positions the page as a “stage” where diverse expressive modalities converge, offering multiple entry points for minoritized writers navigating linguistic and cultural margins. This transdisciplinary approach proposes a grounded, embodied practice of composition that cultivates new forms of agency and access. Respondents include JS Wu and Caro Pirri from English. This event will be hybrid, so you can attend it either in person or via Zoom. Precirculated material for this colloquium will be available here about two weeks prior and up to the event.
Upcoming book
“August Wilson’s American Century: Life as Art” by Laurence A. Glasco, Pitt professor emeritus of history, University of Pittsburgh Press, on sale Feb. 10, 2026.
In “August Wilson's American Century: Life as Art,” Laurence Glasco, a historian of Black life in Pittsburgh, draws on Wilson’s early poetry, archival material, and original interviews with family members, neighbors, and friends to show how the city and its residents shaped the playwright and his work. Although Wilson eventually left his hometown, the people and places of Pittsburgh remained with him, shining through in a body of work that brought the struggles and triumphs of the Black experience to a wide audience and changed American theater for the better. Glasco is the author of five books, including “August Wilson: Pittsburgh Places in His Life and Plays.”