
In Conversation with Maria Giura, author of Celibate: A Memoir
In Celibate: A Memoir (Apprentice House Press, 2019) Maria Giura…

Faith and Fraternity: Ottawa’s Sant’Antonio da Padova Church
Mythopoeia, or myth making, are narratives that create reliable explanations for ontic stability. They are stories that interplay archetypes and stereotypes, roam between past and present experience, facilitate socialization, actualizes spiritual or non-secular belief systems that, when held by a group of adherents, express traditions that explain man’s place in the universe and relationship with the infinite. The adherence to religious beliefs consolidated, beyond the daily labour, the immigrant dream of success, and notions of…

Artistes was a finalist in the 2020 Accenti “Capture an…

Some people hate Valentine’s Day.…

David Bellusci opens his latest poetry collection, Age of Innocence…

“When I stand before God at the end of my…

When It Is Time
Death begins the way it always does, so many times, with a phone call out of the blue. My wife…

A Crowded Bus on Kennedy Boulevard
La Playa was the beach that Costanza's father frequented as a boy. He had told her stories about spending the…

Keeping Promises
The baby fig tree finally found a home. The scion survived in a flowerpot through the cold and rain of…
Advertisements

Tangueando in Covid Time
In 2004, Antonio Iantorno stood on Viale Monza in Milano, handing out homemade flyers. Greeting strangers with a smile, he…

Antonietta’s Garden
During this extraordinary and unsettling time, I have found my mind wandering to the rituals and activities that give me…

The Importance of Community During the Pandemic
Somehow 2020 is flying by, despite all of the waiting. Time feels broken. Long have we been twiddling our thumbs,…

Why I Sometimes Don’t Wear Shoes
What I’ve Learned From Fishing All Summer Long The other day I visited my neighbours and we played croquet. The…

Calabrese Moon
Some dreams are meant to come true. I am living proof. My teenage years were not the easiest. Nonetheless, I…

Where Angels Come To Earth: An Evocation of the Italian Piazza
Every type of communal life that goes on in the Italian city touches upon the piazza at some point. It…

At a Loss – The Science and Art of Being a Hairstylist
Victor DiBenedetto has spent a lifetime discreetly making his customers look and feel their best. For nearly five decades, the…

But For Now We Stay Home
For our mammas! Francesca LoDico’s radio special, "But For Now We Stay Home,” is about her mamma coping with the…

IN MEMORIAM: The Legacy of Pier Giorgio Di Cicco
Poet and priest Pier Giorgio Di Cicco passed away on December 22, 2019. As a poet and editor, his contributions…

Italy’s Years of Lead
"If you look at events in Italy from the late 1960s to the late 1980s without any context, it would…

A Rusting Freighter Spurred World Attention to a Refugee Crisis
When Saigon was overrun by Communist forces on April 30, 1975, thousands of Vietnamese began a rush for freedom. One…

Blurred Nationalities across the North Atlantic
Long before the mid-nineteenth century, thousands of people were constantly moving between the United States and British North America, and Leghorn,…

In Conversation with Maria Giura, author of Celibate: A Memoir
In Celibate: A Memoir (Apprentice House Press, 2019) Maria Giura recounts the deep crisis and sense of displacement she experienced…

In Conversation with Author Marco Balzano
Award-winning Italian writer Marco Balzano’s most recent novel is Resto qui (2018), translated into English as I'm Staying Here by…

In Conversation with Nino Ricci
Nino Ricci was the featured guest of the third edition of the Librissimi Toronto Italian Book Festival, held online on…

More Precious than Diamonds
Despite my frequent trips to Italy, I consciously decided never to learn the language. With blissful ignorance, I always preferred…

Italian San Francisco
It is impossible to think of San Francisco without its Italian heritage. There are the notables: A.P. Giannini, who founded…

Canadian Problems
It’s a Canadian problem. When you’re overseas, people don’t know what to make of you. You’re not American but you…

The Past Is Not Such a Foreign Country
It was 1811, the year of Napoleon's Comet and the birth of his son. It was a time of a…

Making Sense of a Troubled Life in My Father, Fortune-Tellers & Me by Eufemia Fantetti
Eufemia Fantetti’s most recent book, My Father, Fortune-Tellers & Me: A Memoir (Mother Tongue Publishing, 2019) is a gripping outpouring…

Inside the Noisy Bubble of a Totalitarian State: Possess the Air by Taras Grescoe
Taras Grescoe presents himself as a travel writer who falls for a place and then looks around for a book…

Life, Possibilities, and the Kalahari’s Many Secrets in The Afrikaner by Arianna Dagnino
Arianna Dagnino was born in Genova, Italy. After Moscow, London, and Boston, she worked in South Africa as a foreign…

Love Comes Around
Some people hate Valentine’s Day. They see it coming and they hiss and boo and say that it’s stupid. Even…

Power Failure
When I arrived at university, the first thing I was asked to do was write an English Writing Proficiency Examination,…

The Dim Light of This Christmas
If I had to define Christmastime in one word it would be light. The light that illuminates the streets, that…

Drunk Promises Are Hard to Keep
Beginning is easy. Finishing is hard. I often have grand ideas for a poem that will never be written. Today,…

Reflections on Timeless Rhythms in David Bellusci’s Age of Innocence
David Bellusci opens his latest poetry collection, Age of Innocence (Wipf and Stock, 2020), with a poem that heralds the…

Marinella
An excerpt from the novel The Transaction. De Angelis, an inscrutable northerner, comes to a rural village in Sicily to negotiate…

Translation As Metaphor for Migration
In her Italian-Canadian Narratives of Return. Analysing Cultural Translation in Diasporic Writing (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019, pp. 436) Michela Baldo maps…

Paola Breda on Land of Triumph and Tragedy
Compiled after decades of research by Marino Toppan, Land of Triumph and Tragedy: Voices of the Italian Fallen Workers is…

Creative Spaces: Queer and Italian-Canadian
What does it mean to be queer and Italian-Canadian? And what experiences do queer Italian-Canadians have when their sexual orientation…

2020 Accenti Contests – Winners Announced
Montreal, May 26, 2020 – Publisher Domenic Cusmano and Editor-in-chief Licia Canton are pleased to announce the winners of the 2020…

Italian-Canadian Writers Gather for Conference in Winnipeg
If you could choose a first conference to attend as a speaker, the Biennial Conference of the Association of Italian-Canadian Writers…

Premio Italia nel Mondo 2018
Life and passionate pursuits deserve celebrating. The Premio all’eccellenza del lavoro e alla cultura Italiana nel Mondo, bestowed upon four…