February Reading

 

Michelle Alfano is a co-organizer of the (Not So) Nice Italian Girls & Friends Reading Series and a Co-Editor with Descant. Her novella Made Up of Arias (Blaurock Press) won the 2010 Bressani Prize for Short Fiction. Her short story “Opera”, on which her novella is based, was a finalist for a Journey Prize anthology. Her fiction and non-fiction work has been widely published in major literary publications. She was recently featured in the documentary Saturnia featured on OMNI-TV and at the Moving Images Film Festival. She is currently at work at a new novel entitled Vita’s Prospects.

Nancy Bullis hosts HOWL, CIUT 89.5FM which airs every other Tuesday evening at 10pm. She is the author of a novella Henry (Lyrical Myrical Press), a full-length poetry book The Eel Ladder (WatershedBooks), a chapbook Leather Lattice and a spoken word performer.

Norman Cristofoli has published seven chapbooks of poetry and prose and produced two CD’s of poetry/musical collaborations. He is also the publisher of the Labour of Love literary magazine. Norman would rather sit in the back row of the balcony, as far away from the spotlight as possible, and believes bios should be buried with the artist.

Sheila Stewart has two collections of poetry, The Shape of a Throat (Signature Editions, 2012) and A Hat to Stop a Train (Wolsak and Wynn, 2003), now in its second printing. She co-edited The Art of Poetic Inquiry with Suzanne Thomas and Ardra L. Cole (Backalong Books, 2012). Sheila’s poetry has been recognized by several awards, including the gritLIT competition and the Pottersfield Portfolio Short Poem Contest. Formerly a community- based adult literacy worker, Sheila is using poetic inquiry in her Ph.D. at OISE, University of Toronto. 

And as emcee ...

Giovanna Riccio was born in Calabria and immigrated to Canada as a child. Her poems have appeared in newspapers, magazines, journals and anthologies. Her work has been translated into Romanian and a number of her poems are being translated into Italian for an upcoming anthology to be published in Italy. She is the author of Vittorio (Lyricalmyrical Press) and Strong Bread (Quattro Books).