2003-2004 Academic Year Program

"Writers Read" Series

A series featuring Italian American writers reading from their works.

Tuesday, September 9, 2003: Mark Rotella on Stolen Figs: And Other Adventures in Calabria.

"Italian Americans of a new generation are discovering their homeland, and they could not ask for a better guide than Mark Rotella."

-- Gay Talese

Wednesday, November 12, 2003: Poets Rosette Capotorto on Bronx Italian and Maria Terrone on The Bodies We Were Loaned.

"Bronx Italian is a dynamic, engaging and at times humorous poetic investigation of identities as poet, mother, family member, life survivor. It is a wonderful contribution to the richness of Italian American literature."

-- Graziella Parati

"Maria Terrone's scrupulously crafted, suavely cadenced poems record telling details of the quotidian world with such vividness that after a while we begin to hear ‘the rush’ of the ‘hidden/city’ of the heart, ‘its roar and raging heat, the wild/dark needed to become human.’ The Bodies We Were Loaned is a triumph of meticulous sorrow."

--Sandra M. Gilbert

Monday, March 15, 2004
Say That To My Face
David Prete

"Only a profound talent can write stories that are at once simple and deep." Darin Strauss

"Prete's complicated affection for neighborhood life-and his ability to produce vivid thumbnail sketches of the kind of men who feel at home in dingy pool halls-gives his debut authority and individuality." Publishers Weekly

Tuesday, May 11, 2004
Death by Renaissance
Paola Corso
2003 Artists' Fellowship recipient of the New York Foundation For the Arts (NYFA)

"Death by Renaissance evokes and invokes a time that is gone and a place that is becoming unrecognizable. Powerful currents run through this book anger, love for a community, commemoration of a way of life. Refusing to be too easily understood, the best of these poems demand and amply repay repeated reading."
Michael Palma
Paola Corso’s presentation is co-sponsored by Artists & Audiences Exchange, a public program of NYFA.

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Refreshments are served at 6:00 PM. Lectures begin at 6:30 PM - Calandra Institute, 25 W. 43rd St. (between 5th & 6th Avenues), 18^th floor, in Manhattan. Call (212) 642-2042 for further information. Seating is limited.