Sarah Peduzzi

By Sarah Peduzzi

On Saturday, September 25th, I attended Pittsburgh’s Small Press Festival for what turned out to be a surprisingly fun and informative day. At the event I learned that not only does Pittsburgh have tons of burgeoning and impressive talent, but there are some really cool places within the three rivers to showcase that talent.

The day started with my good friend and me getting horribly lost in the backstreets of Pittsburgh. How did this happened? I don’t know. But it seems that no matter if I am going for a two minute drive or a twenty minute drive, I always take a small, unplanned “detour”. The thing about being lost in Pittsburgh is that every side street, every one-way lane curse, looks the same. After about fifteen minutes of panicked driving we found our way to the AIR studio on Foreland Street located in the North Shore.

To say that the festival was packed would be a gross overstatement. To say that it was pleasantly full, well, that we can work with. The AIR studio is three levels, and every nook and cranny was filled with booths of books, fliers, bookmarks and pins, comics, and the talented artists behind every word and swish of the paint brush. There were poets, YA authors, non-fiction addicts and the regular plethora of well-inked college students with Vonnegut in one hand and a coffee in the other. There were even a few professors I recognized and smartly-dressed older couples who wanted to know what this was all about.

I took advantage of the letter pressing workshops that they had running all day. They used work from local artists to show us how to make a press, on organic recycled paper of course. I have a great piece at home now, with a picture of the Pittsburgh skyline and a poem. Another workshop offered a lesson in screen printing. The end result of the process was a great poster, which we could take home, that had an intricate web of connected words that described art and community.

Later that night there were readings by local artists at Remedy Bar. Unfortunately, I couldn’t attend, but my friend did. She raved about the relaxed atmosphere, the wonderful food and drink and the great pieces that were read aloud. It seemed to be the perfect way to end the day.

In short, it was pretty awesome. It’s nice to know that there is a community of people within your reach who all share the same passion for literature and the arts. It is also refreshing to know that that community is not just college students. It can be your college professor who taught non-fiction, but is also a poet at heart. Or that neighbor that never seemed to have returned that book you lent him. It is even that older couple that you saw in the grocery store. Fortunately, there were people expected and unexpected at Pittsburgh’s Small Press Festival.

By Sarah Benjamin

On first learning about the new social networking site, Twitter, I laughed. Who would possibly want to read posts written by other people about seemingly insignificant occurrences in their life? And better yet, who would take the time to post what they had for breakfast or why they hate wide ruled paper? I, for one, thought it might be the biggest colossal waste of time ever invented.

Ever a moderate, I signed up anyways, just to prove a point. I figured I had nothing to lose. I needed some sort of experience with this infamous application in order to lend some justification to my raves. So I made a username and a cute little page. I haughtily scrolled up and down the site, watching as tweets flew in. Some were as I predicted. But others were actually worth reading. It was crazily addictive. I turned to my page, ready to post something equally cool.
Five minutes later, I still didn’t know what to post. I wasn’t witty enough, wise enough, or interesting enough that I felt that any of my posts would be relevant.

But I began posting anyways, the first thing that came to my mind. There was a certain sense of validation, of importance, as I clicked “tweet!” on my screen. And there it went, my little message shooting across the technological atmosphere, colliding with the tweets of others. Others who were witty, wise, and interesting. Somehow, in that moment of imagined shoulder rubbing, I felt smarter. I felt like I was making some sort of impact. I was following big companies, making new friends, and finding people with similar interests.

Don’t get me wrong, I still don’t think I have become smarter, more funny or more interesting, per say, but I was pleasantly surprised at how neat of a tool Twitter turned out to be. I was soon finding other things on the internet worth looking at – articles, blogs, freebies – that I didn’t know existed. As I “followed” other people, they began to follow me. Me?

Twitter can easily go both ways though – a gateway or a black hole. It opens the doors to other people, other ideas, and even a few free books. It also seems to suck your time, attention, and maybe some of your life, into a virtual abyss from which only an Office Space-esque computer-mob-hit will free you from. My experience so far has been pretty good, though I still get annoyed when people post about their lunches, their crazy parties, or other inane things…but I do get a good laugh when Conan O’Brian posts something, or when Flashlight Worthy Reads gives a good recommendation I will give the book a second look. So I guess I’ll be here, carefully walking the edge between the gate or black hole, letting my tweets launch into the universe.

If you want to continue this talk, you can contact Sarah at sbenjamin@internationalbookmangament.com …or on Twitter: sbenji496