The Pitt-Greensburg Alumni Association (PGAA) will present its 2024 Alumnus of Distinction award to Dave Newman ’93 at the Alumni Celebration Dinner to be held Saturday, Sept. 28, (cocktails: 5:30 p.m./dinner: 6 p.m.) at the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg. Registration for the dinner, part of the Blue & Gold Celebration: Homecoming & Families Weekend 2024, is available here.
The PGAA Alumnus of Distinction Award acknowledges excellence among alumni of Pitt-Greensburg. Candidates are evaluated on their outstanding level of professional achievement, service to the community, service to the University of Pittsburgh, special recognition or honors, and any other special efforts or success. It is the highest honor the PGAA gives an individual alumnus/alumna annually.
“I'm really honored,” said Newman of the award. “Pitt-Greensburg people go out into the world and do great stuff. One alumnus, Austin Davis, is the lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania. Another alumnus, Justin Merriman, is a brilliant photographer, whose work I constantly follow. I'm proud to have graduated from here and feel even better about coming back to teach.”
"As the Pitt Greensburg Alumni Association President, it is my honor to be part of a university that produces the level of impressive distinction, volunteers, and leadership among our winners," said Michel Keller.
Newman graduated from Pitt-Greensburg in 1993 with a BA in English Writing. He went on to pursue an MSW and an MFA from the University of Pittsburgh.
“Pitt-Greensburg was such a good experience for me. I'm the first person in my family to graduate college so I was clueless to the whole process,” he explained. “I'd attended a couple of community colleges and a state school before I transferred to Pitt (Pittsburgh campus), where I was just overwhelmed by the class sizes. I wasn't sure I was smart, didn't know what I wanted to major in, and didn't know how to participate in auditorium classes with 300 people. At Pitt-Greensburg, the class sizes were manageable, and the professors were really supportive and encouraging. Suddenly, I was hanging out in cool professors' offices after classes and talking books. They recommended I read amazing writers like Baudelaire and Dostoevsky, and I was blown away that they thought I could read writers from around the world. It was thrilling to be treated like a writer or just a student with some brain power.”
That mentoring and personalized academic attention helped develop Newman’s innate talent and ability, contributing to his successful career as an author and professor. Winner of numerous awards, including the Andre Dubus Novella Prize, he lives in Trafford, PA, the last town in the Electric Valley, with his wife, the writer Lori Jakiela.
His career illustrates a perfect blending of his two degrees. After a decade of working in medical research, he currently teaches in the Creative and Professional Writing Program at the University of Pittsburgh-Greensburg, his alma mater. His passion for writing and helping others to pursue their passion for writing underlies all that he does.
The list of Newman’s work (poems, anthologies, magazine articles, panels, etc.) fills six-typed pages of his curricula vitae, a testament to his prolific writing career. While too many to list here, the key highlights are that he is the author of nine books, including How to Live Like Li Po in Pittsburgh: essays from a writing life (J.New Books, 2024) and the story collection She Throws Herself Forward to Stop the Fall (Roadside Press, 2024). His collection The Slaughterhouse Poems (White Gorilla Press, 2013) was named one of the best books of the year by L Magazine. His poems, essays, and stories have appeared in magazines and journals around the world, including Ambit (U.K.), Tears In The Fence (U.K.), Gulf Stream, Belt, and the legendary Nerve Cowboy. He appeared in the PBS documentary narrated by Rick Sebak about Pittsburgh writers.
Service to the Community
In 2023, Newman revived the James Wright Poetry Festival, which honors James Wright, the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet of the Rust Belt. Newman describes it as a national event, but its focus is on the local community—working-class Pittsburgh, Appalachia, the Rust Belt.
Newman also is instrumental in service to veterans. Before joining Pitt-Greensburg's faculty, he worked at the Pittsburgh VA Medical Center, helping veterans who suffered long-term injuries. He also serves as a volunteer workshop leader for Veterans Write, a free community writing workshop for veterans and their families based in White Oak, PA.
His greatest passion, in addition to his own exploration of working-class topics and characters in his work, is to help working-class writers through workshops and mentoring. He has guided many Pittsburgh writers to book-length publications, including Sarah Shotland (JUNKETTE), Richard Gegick (GREASY HANDSHAKES), Vessa Yankevitch (BRONZER ALERT), and more.
Newman’s ongoing service to the literary community through book reviewing, free editing services, community programming, and outreach illustrates his devotion to anyone who needs help, anywhere, any time.
Service to Pitt-Greensburg
The proliferation of Pitt-Greensburg students having their work published in national literary publications is just one example of the guidance and mentoring provided by Newman as a faculty member in Pitt-Greensburg’s Creative & Professional Writing (C&PW) program. In 2021-2022, he was hired as a temporary faculty member and helped to revitalize the C&PW program. In addition to mentoring young writers, he serves as advisor to the Pendulum Literary Magazine and the Creative Writing Club. In fall 2024, Newman joined the Pitt-Greensburg faculty as a full-time, tenure-track assistant professor.
He has spearheaded many projects, including the Pitt-Greensburg Poetry Garden (part of Pitt’s Year of Emotional Well-Being), the Literary Publishing Class, which publishes chapbook-length books by award-winning national poets and writers, the Voices reading series, which highlights a diverse group of poets and writers, and the newly-invigorated Pitt-Greensburg Writers Festival, which brings nationally acclaimed writers to campus for a weeklong celebration of writers and writing. The Writers Festival also provides an opportunity for student-writers to read their polished work in a public venue and in the company of these nationally acclaimed writers. Newman encourages and facilitates his students’ participation in the vibrant Pittsburgh literary community, too.
“Everyone who attends college now, especially kids who attend a branch campus, wants a good job, which is completely understandable,” noted Newman. “I didn't go to college to be a writer or to make art—I barely knew what those things were when I was a student—but Pitt-Greensburg ended up being this place where you could get a genuine liberal arts degree and take that to the world and use it. I ended up being a social worker and being employed by the VA, which was such a great experience, and all the books I read it Pitt-Greensburg, and the compassion and empathy I learned from reading, helped me to better care for people. Books are instruction manuals. They tell you what to do and what not to do. I learned that at Pitt-Greensburg.”
About Pitt-Greensburg:
Founded in 1963, the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg is a publicly assisted, four-year, liberal arts college in southwestern Pennsylvania. Pitt-Greensburg offers 31 baccalaureate degree programs, including new majors in data analytics, nursing, and healthcare management, as well as 31 minors and four certificate programs. With nearly 1,400 students, more than 10,000 alumni, and faculty and staff numbering 260, Pitt-Greensburg provides a vibrant, diverse community that is a dynamic model of a 21st-century liberal arts education. As part of the University of Pittsburgh system, Pitt-Greensburg offers the resources of a world-renowned university combined with the individualized and immersive experiences of a small liberal arts college. Creativity and an entrepreneurial spirit permeate the campus and extend into its many collaborative projects with the Westmoreland County community. Nestled in Pennsylvania’s beautiful Laurel Highlands, the campus is surrounded by the region’s outdoor recreation venues and rich history. It is a five-minute drive from uptown Greensburg and less than an hour’s drive from Pittsburgh.