Fred Shaw

Professor Shaw’s first collection of poetry, Scraping Away (CavanKerry Press, 2020) focuses on the lives of service industry workers.  Joshua Martin, writing in The Kenyon Review, describes the book as a “gritty, hard-nosed look at his life and the lives of restaurant workers, Shaw posits a way towards cultural harmony. It is through food, that great cultural unifier.”

Professor Shaw’s poetry has been published in publications like Permafrost, The Briar Cliff Review, Fourth River, Vox Populi, 86 Logic and Poet Lore, as well as featured on the podcast, Well-Versed. In 2020, he was named as Finalist for Emerging Poet Laureate of Allegheny County. His poem, “Fulcrum,” was commissioned by the Westmoreland County Museum of American Art for its Public Poetry project, Bridging the Gap.  His poem, “Scraping Away,” was chosen in 2017 as part of the PA Public Poetry Project.  His poem, “Argot,” was featured in the full-length documentary, Eating & Working & Eating & Working. He also founded and curates PQ Poem, an online poetry feature for Pittsburgh Quarterly Magazine.

Professor Shaw has been a book reviewer and critic since 2010, writing for publications such as Pittsburgh City Paper, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and Pittsburgh Quarterly Magazine, where he’s lead reviewer. In 2022, he led a panel discussion on the role of the book review in literature for the Writer’s Conference of Northern Appalachia at Duquesne University.  He also conducted a lecture on contemporary working-class poets of Western PA and has read his work at the New York Poetry Festival on Governor’s Island.  He performs locally with the jazz-poetry group, The Stepping Stones.