Thursday, May 15, 2014

Celebrate Italian Heritage Month ...



Michelle Alfano is Founder of the (Not So) Nice Italian Girls & Friends Reading Series and an Associate Editor-in-Chief 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 Made Up of Arias 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 Make Me Do Anything You Want. 

Elena Basile is a teacher, researcher, poet and translator committed to exploring how desire is released in the spaces between languages and bodies in movement. She teaches in the Sexual Diversity Studies Programme at UofT and collaborates regularly with artists and academics in Italy, Canada and in France. Her work in English was recently recorded in a CD collection of Poetry Readings published by the Frank Iacobucci Centre for Italian Canadian Studies at UofT in 2012.  English extracts from the artist book Per Tanto Volando were recorded for the occasion. Part of her work as a literary translator and poet has been recorded in the documentary Three Women: Adapting Lives Adopting Lines. 

Domenico Capilongo lives in Toronto. He teaches creative writing and karate. He has had work published in many literary magazines including Descant and Filling Station. His first book of poetry, I thought elvis was Italian was short-listed for the 2010 Bressani Literary Prize.  His second book of jazz-inspired poetry, hold the note, published by Quattro Books, was long-listed for the 2010 ReLit Award. His first book of short stories, Subtitles, published by Guernica Editions was short listed for the 2013 ReLit Award. He is working on new book of poems about the way we communicate, a book of short stories about teaching and a children’s book about a boy who doesn’t like kissing his bisnonna. 

Rocco de Giacomo is a widely published poet whose work has appeared in literary journals in Canada, Australia, England, Hong Kong and the US. His work has recently been accepted for publication in Prairie Fire and The Fiddlehead, and his forthcoming collection, Every Night of Our Lives, will be published with Guernica Editions. 

Chris D'Iorio wishes you all the best. He concentrates on things until words form, but questions that process. Toronto, where he lives, is also where many of you live. It's been a long time since he won anything, so we won't go into that. Quattro Books was very kind to him a few years ago and published a book of poetry called Without Blue. His day job often involves suits. 

Sonia Di Placido is a poet, playwright and writer. She is a graduate of Ryerson Theatre School, Acting Ryerson University (1996) and an Hons. B.A. (Humanities) graduate of York University (2006). Sonia is a member of The League of Canadian Poets and the Association of Italian-Canadian Writers. She has been in various anthologies and journals such as Toronto Quarterly, Carousel & The Puritan Magazine. Her first book of poetry Exaltation in Cadmium Red, Guernica Editions launched in Autumn of 2012. 

Eufemia Fantetti is a graduate of The Writer’s Studio at SFU and the University of Guelph’s M.F.A. in Creative Writing. Her short story collection A Recipe for Disaster & Other Unlikely Tales, was recently short-listed for the 2013 Danuta Gleed Literary Award.

Toronto freelance writer Terri Favro is the author of The Proxy Bride and co-creator of Bella comics. She’s this year’s winner of the Accenti Magazine Award and was shortlisted for the 2013 CBC Literary Prize in Creative Non-Fiction and the Broken Pencil Indie Writers Death Match. An excerpt from her novel-in-progress, “Sputnik’s Daughter”, will appear in the upcoming ‘Geek Girls’ issue of ROOM Magazine. 

Claudio Gaudio is a Toronto based writer born in Calabria.  “Texas” a novel published by Quattro Books, has been translated, in part, by Francesco Loriggio to be included in an anthology of Italian Canadian writers in Calabria, by Rubbettino Editore.  and is currently being translated into Spanish for publication in Mexico. His work has also appeared in ELQ (Exile Literary Quarterly),  Rampike literary magazine and Geist.   He is currently working on his second novel "I'll Be".

The author of a clutch of novels, a novella, and short story and poetry collections, Michael Mirolla describes his writing as a mix of magic realism, surrealism, speculative fiction and meta-fiction. His latest, The Giulio Metaphysics III, a novel/linked short story collection, features a character named “Giulio” who battles for freedom from his own creator. A short story collection, Lessons in Relationship Dyads, is scheduled for Fall 2015. 

Jenny Sampirisi is the author of poetry collection Croak (Coach House Books, 2011). It's about frogs and girls fusing together. It's about a lot of other things too. She is also the author of the novel is/was (Insomniac Press), a book about the public and private complexities of violence. She is the recipient of the K.M. Hunter Artist Award for Literature. Most of the time she's teaching literature courses at Ryerson University where she is an instructor in the innovative bridging program, Spanning the Gaps: Access to Education. She is currently working on a collection of poems titled What it Resembles is Slightly Too Marvelous.

Wednesday, January 1, 2014

So she begins ....


This will be my last post for some time ... as much as I have loved doing the Not So Nice Italian Girls & Friends Reading Series and blog for the last five years, I'd like to move on to a new writing project and I think the series/blog is sapping my creative juices somewhat after some 30+ readings and blog posts.

I will try and dedicate myself to the new project entitled The Unfinished Dollhouse, setting modest goals each day until I complete a first draft.

Until I resume the series and the blog (and I hope to) ... so she begins.

It's all I have to bring today--
This, and my heart beside--
This, and my heart, and all the fields--
And all the meadows wide--
Be sure you count--should I forget
Some one the sum could tell--
This, and my heart, and all the Bees
Which in the Clover dwell.

 It's all I have to bring today ~ Emily Dickinson

Thursday, August 1, 2013

Meet our Readers - Ania Szado



Ania Szado's new novel, Studio Saint-Ex, is a national bestseller in Canada and has sold to five countries to date. Her first novel, Beginning of Was, was regionally shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia, and an AOCA from Ontario College of Art. Ania currently mentors writers one-on-one. She is the 2013 Writer in Residence for Whistler, BC, and will be teaching creative writing at University of Toronto in 2014. Visit her website:  
http://www.aniaszado.com/.
Excerpt from Studio Saint-Ex by Ania Szado
Long after I had exhausted my shallow store of inspiration, Antoine still wrote, oblivious to his setting, to the hard floor under him, to me. I felt I was watching a man possessed by a zealous ghost, so unearthly was his silent intensity.
Then, without warning, an invading imp dislodged the zealot from his head. He turned around to grab at my legs, pulling me onto him as I fought and squealed.
“What have you drawn?” he asked, laughing.
I blushed. “I’ve designed a coat. For your prince.”
“Really? Have you sketched a whole wardrobe for the Little Prince? I will ask my publishers to offer him for sale as a paper doll.”
At first I thought he was serious. Imagine if my work could be produced on the scale of Antoine’s—and with his blessing! But he had made a sound, a truncated laugh that was almost a grunt. He was joking . . . or he wasn’t amused at all.
I said, “Better ask your prince what he thinks of the idea. He’s the one who told me to make him a coat.”
Now Antoine did laugh. He joined me on the sofa. “It’s true that princes can be somewhat demanding.”
“He’s right, though. He’ll be flying very high. Think how cold the air will be up there.”
Antoine nodded. “You have designed for him a very regal coat.”
“It’s not too much like a dressing gown?”
“Not at all.”
“I could put some ermine on the collar.”
“He’s just a child. Ermine is for kings.” He pointed to the prince’s shoulders. “You might add a little something here. Boys like a bit of glittery metal.”
I gave him my pencil, and he added a few quick lines.
I asked, “How about giving him a scepter?”
“What for?”
“To show his royal authority.”
Antoine thought for a moment. “I will write of authority, but not the prince’s. He has so much to learn.” He gestured for me to show him more sketches. “What else?”
“Nothing worth showing.”
“Shall I read to you what I have written so far?”
“I would love it.” I put my sketchbook on the table and leaned against him, studying the drawings that illustrated the text.
He began reading from his manuscript. “‘Once, when I was six years old . . .’”
Antoine read, his voice swelling like a springtime stream brought forth by the life he had created. And what a boy he had made. Antoine’s unruly charm, my blond hair; so curious and touching; so vexing. So lonely and far from home.
Antoine’s child. Yearning grew in me like thirst.
I was so taken with the story that when he broke off, I said, “Don’t stop! It’s not done.”
“I told you so, Mignonne; that is why I came here. I still have much work to do.”
“But I want to hear the rest.”
He chuckled. “Then perhaps you should greet me more warmly next time I show up to write.”
“You’ll come back? You feel productive here?”
“It went very well, compared to my last couple of nights. When I try to work in my apartment, the voice of the city through the windows has a distressing sound. There’s no sense of that here. It is so empty and still.”
“But not entirely quiet.”
“The sounds are different, and the feel. This place was built for hard, honest work. One doesn’t sense the piling up of people in their skyscrapers. There’s dignity in this building’s bones. You must feel the energy put out by buildings; I am sure your father did.”
“I felt it when we went to Bernard Lamotte’s.”
“Le Bocal. Yes. It is a very good place. It is like a little piece of France.”
“Is it? I’ve never been to France.”
The contentment in his expression fell away. “And now you can never see France as it has always been. Soon there may be no France at all. Oh, Mignonne, it breaks my heart to think of what you will never see or feel.”
I rubbed his shoulders. “Lie down.”
He stretched out, and I eased his head to my lap.
He closed his eyes as though to stop tears from escaping into the crow’s-feet wrinkles that radiated toward his temples. “You are kind to me. And I am so alone. There is no one who shares my memories, not a single man left on earth. The men I have flown with, friends I have lived with . . . Guillaumet, Mermoz . . . the entire Casablanca-Dakar team with Aéropostale, every man on the South American route . . . they are all gone. Disappeared with the mail, crushed, some of them melted with their machines. I am the only one still alive, the last who can still give his life to some greater good.” His tone grew ashamed. “And I do nothing; I lie weeping. France is imprisoned and I am of no use.”
“Don’t say that. The tide will turn. You’ll go back to France and see it free.”
“All I need is one signature. But I am shackled by spineless imbeciles who think I am too old to fly. At least I can believe that you feel there is hope. I knew from when I first met you: you are honest. You are not afraid to tell the truth.”
The truth was, I had told him what he wanted to believe. As I touched his lined brow and traced the scar at the edge of his mouth, I prayed he would see his beloved France liberated—but also that he would never fly again. I had never known so abused a body, so anguished a spirit, so vital a mind. So many times he had been flung into the ground. He would rather be dropped by the hand of God than be banished from the skies.
In my lap, Antoine said, “Once, I was lost for four days in the Libyan desert, with my mechanic Prévot. We were desperate for water. I spread out my parachute to try to catch the dew. In the morning, there was nothing; not a single drop. I just stared. I could not even make tears. I remember thinking that even my heart was dried out.”
Moisture beaded on his lashes. They gathered in points like black stars. I touched them gently. “Your heart isn’t dry anymore.”
“But it is cold, like the heart of this city is cold. Talk to me, Mignonne. Make me love life.”

Monday, July 1, 2013

Meet our Readers - Elizabeth Ruth



Welcome to a new feature on the (Not So) Nice Italian Girls & Friends blog! We will be featuring the new work of our featured writers on a rotating basis. This month's selection is Elizabeth Ruth's Matadora. 

Sunrise in late august, wind sweeps through the valley of the Sierra de Grazalema and the morning air shimmers with red dust. Twelve-year-old Luna balances on the edge of the white stone wall that circles the ranch house. She is captivated by the silhouette of a lone Sangre Caste bull on top of the hill, a valiant statue cut from the dawning light. She can’t look away. Already she knows: love is a dark and dangerous animal. For love, you must be prepared to die.

The wind picks up, flattening the skirt of her work dress against her bare legs. She leans into it and its sad lament. Mama, it whispers, washing over her with the inevitability of loss. She scans the dry, yellow hill where the bull swings his head from side to side. She’s wandered the silent cork forest in her rope-soled sandals looking for some evidence of peace but has yet to find the unmarked grave. She’s searched the property each season, dug with bare hands under a common cypress tree. Recently, she searched her own image in Doña García’s ivory hand mirror, hoping to find consolation there. But death offers no consolation to the living; she wants something more.

Teetering, she spreads her arms out like wings. Today she’ll lift her feet from the stony equator, soar with the birds chained so magically to the sky. Today will be the day she doesn’t return to the house. She closes her eyes, face tilted into the rising sun, and prepares to give herself up to flight. With a silver coin squeezed in her palm, she jumps, and for an instant she’s more than the orphaned bastard she was branded at birth, more than a servant; she is one of God’s creatures. She can fly.
Excerpted from Matadora published by Cormorant Books (2013). 

Elizabeth Ruth's first novel, Ten Good Seconds of Silence was a finalist for the Writers' Trust of Canada Fiction Prize, the Amazon.ca Best First Novel Award and the City of Toronto Book Award. Her second novel Smoke, was chosen for the 2007 One Book One Community program. Elizabeth's third novel Matadora, about a female bullfighter in 1930's Spain, was published in Canada in spring 2013. The Globe & Mail said of Matadora: "This searing, sensual novel is an adventure not to be missed." NOW Magazine placed Matadora at #3 on their Must Read Books List. Elizabeth Ruth teaches at the University of Toronto and mentors through the Humber School for Writers.

For more information on Elizabeth's writing and to see a book trailer for Matadora please go to her website www.elizabethruth.com
Follow Elizabeth on Twitter at @ElizabethRuth1
You may purchase her book here.