John Paul News

The T.J. Martell Foundation for Leukemia, Cancer and AIDS Research has announced Ben Harper as presenter for Will Botwin who will receive the Visionary Leadership Award at this year's highly anticipated T.J. Martell Foundation 39th New York Honors Gala to be held at Cipriani in New York tonight, October 21, 2014. The foundation has also announced that Chayanne will present the Lifetime Music Industry Achievement Award to Afo Verde.

The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra will feature renowned violinist Nicola Benedetti in "Isle of the Dead," a BNY Mellon Grand Classics subscription weekend on October 31-November 2.

Music has the power to touch the human spirit, transcending time, place, boundaries and language and spurring understanding and connection. The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and Music Director Manfred Honeck are deeply committed to music's ability to promote and spread a spiritual and universal message, and to that end invite the public to two free "Music for the Spirit" concerts on Thursday, November 20 at 7:30 p.m. in Westminster Presbyterian Church in Upper St. Clair and on Saturday, November 22 at 8 p.m. at Cardinal Wuerl North Catholic High School in Cranberry.

PITTSBURGH - Guest conductor Lucas Richman leads the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra Student Chorale in a concert that soars with good and evil during the opening weekend of the 2014-2015 PNC Pops season this weekend, October 17-19 at Heinz Hall.

Pittsburgh Symphony President and Chief Executive Officer, James A. Wilkinson, has announced that he will retire during 2015. The symphony will launch an immediate search for his successor, and Wilkinson will remain in the position until that person is hired. Once a successor has been named, Wilkinson will become Senior Vice Chair of the Board of Trustees.

PITTSBURGH – The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra's Principal Flute Lorna McGhee headlines “Divine Travel,“ part of the BNY Mellon Grand Classics series, on October 24 and 26 at Heinz Hall. Guest conductor Yan Pascal Tortelier returns to lead the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra in excerpts from Grieg's “Peer Gynt,” written for Henrik Ibsen's 1867 play of the same name. It recounts the downfall and subsequent redemption of a Norwegian peasant anti-hero. McGhee will shine in Nielsen's Flute Concerto, which was last heard by Pittsburgh Symphony audiences in 1987. Sibelius' romantic Symphony No. 5, which was the composer's response to popular musical modernism of the time, closes the program.

Rock legends Fleetwood Mac, who performed two sold-out shows at NYC's Madison Square Garden earlier this week, have confirmed they will be adding at least 28 more dates to their already scheduled 40-city ON WITH THE SHOW tour.

The prestigious Galleria Ca' d'Oro, a Rome, Italy landmark, has opened their doors in the Chelsea section of New York City in partnership with fine art photographer, curator and collector Giada Baselice. This is Ca' d'Oro's second U.S. location after opening in Miami four years ago.

The T.J. Martell Foundation for Leukemia, Cancer and AIDS Research has announced Ben Harper as presenter for Will Botwin who will receive the Visionary Leadership Award at this year's highly anticipated T.J. Martell Foundation 39th New York Honors Gala to be held at Cipriani in New York on Tuesday, October 21, 2014. The foundation has also announced that Chayanne will present the Lifetime Music Industry Achievement Award to Afo Verde.

Book Production Guide, 4th Edition (Paperback: $10, ISBN: 978-1-937536-25-1; Smashwords Edition: Free, ISBN: 978-1-310227-87-5; LCCN: 2012907287, 138pp, 6X9″, October 2014, 4th Edition): Explains all of the steps involved in creating a book with the Anaphora Literary Press. It is designed as a tool for editorial, marketing and design interns of the press. It can also be used by publishing industry professionals who are working for other publishing houses, want to start their own press or want to self-publish their book. This book can be a great tool in editing, marketing and design college classes. The fourth edition of the Guide includes more detailed design and marketing advice, and a long section with marketing lists of book reviewers, libraries, and bookstores that hold readings. You'll also find instructions for making YouTube book trailers and Smashwords E-Books. Authors shouldn't set out on new book production and marketing ventures without reviewing the helpful information provided. Anna Faktorovich is the Director and Founder of the Anaphora Literary Press. Previously, she taught college English for three years at the Edinboro University of Pennsylvania and the Middle Georgia State College. She has a Ph.D. in English Literature and Criticism. She published two academic books: "Rebellion as Genre in the Novels of Scott, Dickens and Stevenson" (McFarland, 2013) and "The Formulas of Popular Fiction: Elements of Fantasy, Science Fiction, Romance, Religious and Mystery Novels" (McFarland, 2014). Her other publications include: two poetry collections: "Improvisational Arguments" (Fomite Press, 2011) and "Battle for Athens" (Anaphora, 2012), historical novels: "The Romances of George Sand" (Anaphora, 2014) and the forthcoming, "The Battle for Democracy" (Anaphora, 2015), fantasy novellas: "The Great Love of Queen Margaret, the Vampire" (Grim's Labyrinth, 2014) and "The Campaigns against the Olden: Kindoms of Laruta" (Grim's Labyrinth, 2014), an illustrated children's book, The Sloths and I (Anaphora, 2013), and the "Book Production Guide" (Anaphora, 2014). She has been editing and writing for the independent, tri-annual Pennsylvania Literary Journal since 2009. The Anaphora Literary Press was started as an academic press with the publication of the Pennsylvania Literary Journal (PLJ) in 2009. In the Winter of 2010, Anaphora began accepting book-length submissions. Anaphora has now published over 90 creative and non-fiction books. John Paul Jaramillo's collection of short stories received an honorable mention for the Latino Literacy Now's Mariposa Award Best First Fiction Book Award. Professors have taught from a few Anaphora books. Many Anaphora writers have scheduled readings at major bookstores. Anaphora books have also had several articles published about them in regional newspapers. PLJ has featured interviews with best-selling writers like Larry Niven, and Cinda Williams Chima, as well as interviews with the winners of the Sundance and Brooklyn Film festivals.

Radical Agrarian Economics: Wendell Berry and Beyond: ($20, ISBN: 978-1-937536-91-6, LCCN: 2014917270, 180pp, 6X9″, 7 photos, bibliography, index, Forthcoming: January 30, 2015): This is a comparative study of Wendell Berry's theory of New Agrarian economics in contrast with other agrarian proposals, as well as communist, capitalist and feudal economic theories. The argument for an agrarian world has both similarities and sharp contrasts with Marxist communism, industrial capitalism, and classic feudalism. Agrarianism can be seen more clearly when it is contrasted and shown as having existed in parallel with each of these stages of economic world development. As the world quickly grows in the direction of overpopulation and pollution, a re-evaluation is needed of the previously used sustainability methods that have kept humanity in balance with the earth for millennia. As resources continue to become scarcer, those who can support themselves independently from mass-agricultural ventures might have a survival advantage. And this advantage should be explored before the world reaches a catastrophic phase. As the American farming population shrinks further below one percent of the overall population, this is a crucial moment to consider if agrarianism and agriculture itself should retain a central role in American political theory or if it should fade into the past. Anna Faktorovich is the Director and Founder of the Anaphora Literary Press. Previously, she taught college English for three years at the Edinboro University of Pennsylvania and the Middle Georgia State College. She has a Ph.D. in English Literature and Criticism. She published two academic books: "Rebellion as Genre in the Novels of Scott, Dickens and Stevenson (McFarland, 2013) and The Formulas of Popular Fiction: Elements of Fantasy," "Science Fiction, Romance, Religious and Mystery Novels" (McFarland, 2014). Her other publications include: two poetry collections: Improvisational Arguments (Fomite Press, 2011) and Battle for Athens (Anaphora, 2012), historical novels: "The Romances of George Sand" (Anaphora, 2014) and the forthcoming, "The Battle for Democracy" (Anaphora, 2015), fantasy novellas: "The Great Love of Queen Margaret, the Vampire (Grim's Labyrinth, 2014) and The Campaigns against the Olden: Kindoms of Laruta" (Grim's Labyrinth, 2014), an illustrated children's book, "The Sloths and I" (Anaphora, 2013), and the "Book Production Guide" (Anaphora, 2014). She has been editing and writing for the independent, tri-annual Pennsylvania Literary Journal since 2009. The Anaphora Literary Press was started as an academic press with the publication of the Pennsylvania Literary Journal (PLJ) in 2009. In the Winter of 2010, Anaphora began accepting book-length submissions. Anaphora has now published over 90 creative and non-fiction books. John Paul Jaramillo's collection of short stories received an honorable mention for the Latino Literacy Now's Mariposa Award Best First Fiction Book Award. Professors have taught from a few Anaphora books. Many Anaphora writers have scheduled readings at major bookstores. Anaphora books have also had several articles published about them in regional newspapers. PLJ has featured interviews with best-selling writers like Larry Niven, and Cinda Williams Chima, as well as interviews with the winners of the Sundance and Brooklyn Film festivals.

Walloomsac: A Roman Fleuve: ($20, ISBN: 978-1-937536-90-9, LCCN: 2014952145, 176pp, 6X9', October 2014; purchase on: CreateSpace, and Amazon; Kindle Edition: $2.99): If a novel is a work of prose of some length, this is a novel-but different in that it is more like life, which has no plots and does not reward virtue or punish vice, and in which characters appear and then, if the author doesn't kill them off, remain to the end. Life is messier than Tolstoy and Henry James were willing to admit. Here, in David R. Slavitt's farrago, one thing leads to another but without discernible direction until, at the end, there is a kind of resolution, a vision, however unreliable and approximate, of what the life of the speaker has been. It is a deeply thoughtful book but also laugh-out-loud funny. Like life, if we're lucky. David R. Slavitt: educated at Andover, Yale, and Columbia, is the author of more than 115 books-novels, poetry, reportage, and translations. He was the movie reviewer for Newsweek in the sixties and was co-editor of the "Johns Hopkins Complete Roman Drama" as well as the "Penn Complete Greek Drama." Among his recent publications: "The Sonnets and Short Poems of Francesco Petrarch "(2012, Harvard University Press), Civil Wars (2013, Louisiana State University Press), "The Four Other Plays of Sophocles" (2013 Johns Hopkins University Press), and "The Crooning Wind: Three Greenlandic Poets" (New American Press 2013), and "Shiksa" (C&L Press). His version of "The Mahabharata" will be published in the spring by Northwestern University Press. 'David Slavitt has (herein) written a book about or for which it is impossible simply to write a blurb-a word, it might interest you to know, coined in 1907 by Gelett Burgess. (Did you think of a purple cow, just then?) The text itself is indescribably (deliciously?) itself. Like the Waloomsac River, it just keeps rolling along, taking the reader irresponsibly with it-laughing out loud again and again and again; marveling at its rapid wit (white water?), the wide breadths of its erudition, the dangerous shallows of its overt and covert cheekiness; marking the vertiginous depths of its, yes, wisdom. To make a long blurb short, I haven't had this kind of significant fun since I stayed up 'til dawn one night in 1962 breathlessly reading Pale Fire for the very first time.' ?R. H. W. Dillard on Walloomsac: A Week on the River $20, Paperback: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1937536904 $2.99, Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00O4FRIXE The Anaphora Literary Press was started as an academic press with the publication of the Pennsylvania Literary Journal (PLJ) in 2009. In the Winter of 2010, Anaphora began accepting book-length submissions. Anaphora has now published over 90 creative and non-fiction books. John Paul Jaramillo's collection of short stories received an honorable mention for the Latino Literacy Now's Mariposa Award Best First Fiction Book Award. Professors have taught from a few Anaphora books. Many Anaphora writers have scheduled readings at major bookstores. Anaphora books have also had several articles published about them in regional newspapers. PLJ has featured interviews with best-selling writers like Larry Niven, and Cinda Williams Chima, as well as interviews with the winners of the Sundance and Brooklyn Film festivals.

PITTSBURGH - Guest conductor Lucas Richman leads the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra Student Chorale in a concert that soars with good and evil during the opening weekend of the 2014-2015 PNC Pops season on October 17-19 at Heinz Hall.

It's been 50 years since the Beatles changed rock 'n roll forever with their first American TV appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show in February, 1964. Join us for a trip back in time to the 1960s to experience a live performance of Abbey Road, the Beatles' best-selling album of all time. Classic Albums Live will perform The Beatles' Abbey Road at the Center for Performing Arts at Governors State University in University Park on Saturday, October 25 at 8 p.m. One night only.

Well recognised British actor David Suchet is joined by an international cast to bring Roger Crane's mystery, THE LAST CONFESSION, to Australian audiences with the right mix of emotion, passion and humour. Crane explores the sudden death of Pope John Paul I, 33 days after his election in this cleverly constructed play that draws on factual events and challenges beliefs.

Featuring a range of objects created over the past 60 years, the exhibition What Would Mrs. Webb Do? A Founder's Vision celebrates Aileen Osborn Webb, who established the Museum of Arts and Design, then the Museum of Contemporary Crafts, in 1956. On view from today, September 23, 2014, through February 8, 2015, the exhibition explores how Webb, through her advocacy work at MAD and other leading institutions across the country and internationally, championed the skilled maker as integral to America's future.

Halloween comes to Center Stage the entire month of October with YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN.

According to reports, country music legend Garth Brooks just confirmed that he is releasing a new album, set for a November 11, 2014 release.

The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Music Director Manfred Honeck and soloist and YouTube sensation Valentina Lisitsa open the BNY Mellon Grand Classics season with 'Two Trips' this weekend, September 19-21 at Heinz Hall.