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Open Thread, the non-profit organization that hosted this past weekend's Small Press Festival (SPF) expo at Carnegie Mellon University's Miller Gallery, held a reading which featured three winners of its first-ever Tri-State Chapbook Contest, in partnership with Encyclopedia Destructica.

In Pittsburgh, a city known for balkanization, what with its countless neighborhoods and various parochial idiosyncrasies, the literary scene functions much like a fractal. It is constituted of a culture that encompasses communities of artists, musicians, publishers and writers within communities of artists, musicians, publishers and writers. July 18, 2009, the opening day of the first-ever Pittsburgh Small Press Festival expo at Carnegie Mellon University's Miller Gallery did well to acknowledge the multifaceted nature of the Pittsburgh literary scene while highlighting the unity in diversity that provides a nucleus for an ever-widening cultural circle of artists in the Pittsburgh area.

According to co-directors of Open Thread, Scott Andrew and Adam Atkinson, the Pittsburgh SPF was created specifically to "give authors, bookmakers, editors, and publishers an opportunity to sell their books-and provide Pittsburghers with a chance to more fully experience the region's small press community. Open Thread's mission is to establish frameworks for artistic discovery in Pittsburgh and the surrounding tri-state area."