"Business" (a novella) with Allison Pitinii Davis

May 12, 2026
12:00pm - 1:00pm

Writer Allison Pitinii Davis returns to discuss her novella Business, about the nightlife of working-class women on the eve of Youngstown, Ohio’s deindustrialization. When the lives of an auto factory worker and trucking motel innkeeper become entwined after a chance encounter at a nightclub, they become agents in each other’s liberation. Allison says she is especially excited to share this novella with audiences who remember the 1970s nightlife scene in industrial areas. Part of her reading will include sharing music and photos of the actual bands and spaces that inspired the events in the novella, including Left End, a popular Youngstown glam rock band made up of local autoworkers. Her novella is geared towards audiences who value the experiences of women and their labor, working-class nightlife culture, inter-generational family businesses, and local Steel Belt history.

Author bio: Allison Pitinii Davis, PhD, is the author of the poetry collection Line Study of a Motel Clerk (Baobab Press, 2017), a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award and the Ohioana Book Award, Poppy Seeds (Kent State University Press, 2013) winner of the Wick Poetry Chapbook Prize, and Business, a novella in Agency 3: Novellas (Baobab, 2025). Her creative writing and scholarship are forthcoming from or have appeared in Best American Poetry, POETS.org, The Oxford American, The Georgia Review, The New Republic, Studies in Jewish American Literature, and elsewhere. She has received support from the National Endowment for the Arts, Stanford University's Wallace Stegner program, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and elsewhere. She is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Poetry at Ohio State University.​​ Outskirts, her hybrid manuscript exploring global deindustrialization, the 1972 GM Lordstown autostrike, postindustrial motherhood was a finalist for the 2025 National Poetry Series, Helena Whitehill Award, and X.J. Kennedy Prize. Read a selection from the collection at the Oxford American.