Grammy Award-winning artist, Academy Award nominee, and two-time International Poetry Forum alum Judy Collins will return to Pittsburgh on May 31, 2025, for a free reading at the fourth annual Greater Pittsburgh Festival of Books. Sponsored by the International Poetry Forum and hosted at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh (Oakland), this headlining Festival program celebrates Collins’ new poetry collection, Sometimes It’s Heaven: Poems of Love, Loss, and Redemption. Event time TBA; sign up for our newsletter to be the first to hear about tickets.
Collins first participated in the International Poetry Forum during its inaugural season in 1966 and returned for second event in 1969. Dr. Samuel Hazo, founder of the International Poetry Forum, welcomed Collins as the first of many musicians to present at the Pittsburgh-based poetry series.
Collins rose to prominence in the 1960s as a major voice in American music. Her 55-album career includes a stunning rendition of Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now” from her landmark 1967 album, Wildflowers, which was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. Collins’ dreamy version of “Send in the Clowns”—a ballad written by Stephen Sondheim for the Broadway musical A Little Night Music—won “Song of the Year” at the 1975 Grammy Awards. She has achieved numerous top-ten hits, as well as gold- and platinum-selling albums. In 2008, contemporary and classic artists such as Rufus Wainwright, Shawn Colvin, Dolly Parton, Joan Baez, and Leonard Cohen honored her legacy with the album Born to the Breed: A Tribute to Judy Collins.
Collins is the author of several books, including the powerful Sanity & Grace and her extraordinary memoir, Sweet Judy Blue Eyes: My Life in Music. In her 2017 Cravings, she offers a candid account of her harrowing struggle with compulsive overeating, and the journey that led her to a solution.
As a social activist, Collins supports UNICEF and numerous other causes. She is the director (along with Jill Godmillow) of Portrait of a Woman, an Academy Award-nominated film about Antonia Brico, the first woman to conduct major symphonies around the world—and Collins' classical piano teacher during her youth.
Learn more about Judy Collins’ life and work on her website.
