Fellinopolis – New Documentary Pays Tribute to Federico Fellini
Cinema

Fellinopolis – New Documentary Pays Tribute to Federico Fellini

The year 2020 marked the 100th anniversary of the birth…

Ottawa’s Little Italy Revives Street Art As It Revives Itself
Heritage, Places

Ottawa’s Little Italy Revives Street Art As It Revives Itself

Ottawa’s Preston Street developed its Italian-Canadian identity well before the…

Be Careful What You Wish For
Essay, Pandemic

Be Careful What You Wish For

My husband and I waited for 2020 to arrive with a lot of plans and expectations in mind. It was the year he would finally retire from 38 years of ministry in the United Church of Canada, a lifetime of dedication to other people. I counted the days until I would have him all to myself. People wondered how he would cope with the empty days, or how I would manage having him home all…

Blog Post: Nothing not found.

Blog Post: Nothing not found.

IN MEMORIAM: Remembering Len Gasparini

IN MEMORIAM: Remembering Len Gasparini

Curated by George Elliott Clarke When poet Leonard Gasparini passed away in October 2022, aged 81, lost was one of…

Another Timeless Italian Tradition

Another Timeless Italian Tradition

It may have been a spoonful of sugar for the family, yet it always left a bitter taste on my…

The House

The House

I’ve never visited Grace Street, but draft an image from my mother’s stories. The brick is brownish-yellow; a leafless skeleton…

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Stranger in a Strange Land … or How I learned to Love the Hyphen

Stranger in a Strange Land … or How I learned to Love the Hyphen

Culture is a system of values – economic values, aesthetic values, moral values etc – to want to preserve it…

Finding All the Movements of Life: The Art of Sandro Martini

Finding All the Movements of Life: The Art of Sandro Martini

Someone once said that all writers and artists, famous or not, share the same pain and the same dreams. They…

When Fiorello La Guardia Came to Ottawa

When Fiorello La Guardia Came to Ottawa

Fiorello La Guardia, the larger-than-life mayor of New York City, was the big draw at the Third National Conference of…

Ottawa’s “Village”

Ottawa’s “Village”

Cars, trucks, and heavy transports bustle down the busy thoroughfare known as Preston Street. A vital link between the city…

Ottawa’s Little Italy Revives Street Art As It Revives Itself

Ottawa’s Little Italy Revives Street Art As It Revives Itself

Ottawa’s Preston Street developed its Italian-Canadian identity well before the 1950s, when the bulk of Italian immigration began. More importantly,…

Calabria in Mind

Calabria in Mind

Intellectuals, too, take vacations, and they generally don’t look askance to venues off the beaten track. This is what Margherita…

IN MEMORIAM: Remembering Len Gasparini

IN MEMORIAM: Remembering Len Gasparini

Curated by George Elliott Clarke When poet Leonard Gasparini passed away in October 2022, aged 81, lost was one of…

IN MEMORIAM: Remembering Luciano Iacobelli

IN MEMORIAM: Remembering Luciano Iacobelli

Luciano Iacobelli passed away on August 30, 2022, after a long illness that eroded his body, but not his spirit.…

At a Loss – The Science and Art of Being a Hairstylist

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…

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When Fiorello La Guardia Came to Ottawa

When Fiorello La Guardia Came to Ottawa

Fiorello La Guardia, the larger-than-life mayor of New York City, was the big draw at the Third National Conference of…

The Downfall of Emilio Picariello

The Downfall of Emilio Picariello

While the earliest wave of Italian immigration to Alberta between 1896 and 1914 largely comprised labourers, there were skilled individuals…

Jim Crow and Italian Immigrants in the American West

Jim Crow and Italian Immigrants in the American West

The 1920s saw the revival of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) in the West, especially in Colorado and Oregon, with…

In Conversation with Robert Marra

In Conversation with Robert Marra

Born in Toronto, visual artist Robert Marra studied and created ceramic arts while living in Italy in the 1980s. He…

Glenn Carley on His “Urban Opera” Il Vagabondo

Glenn Carley on His “Urban Opera” Il Vagabondo

In his new book, Il Vagabondo: An Urban Opera (Guernica 2021), Glenn Carley introduces a new avant-garde genre – literature…

In Conversation with Genni Gunn, Author of Permanent Tourists

In Conversation with Genni Gunn, Author of Permanent Tourists

Genni Gunn is the author of twelve books, including three novels, three short fiction collections, two poetry collections, a collection…

Dining With the Gods – A Travel Essay

Dining With the Gods – A Travel Essay

After almost half a century living in Toronto’s Little Italy, I make a return journey to the place where I…

More Precious than Diamonds

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

Italian San Francisco

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

Exposing the Soft Underbelly of the Legal System: A Review of Darlene Madott’s Winners and Losers

Exposing the Soft Underbelly of the Legal System: A Review of Darlene Madott’s Winners and Losers

I approached Winners and Losers, Darlene Madott’s latest literary offering, with high expectations. Her last book, Dying Times, was a…

Poetry with Purpose: A Review of George Elliott Clarke’s J’Accuse

Poetry with Purpose: A Review of George Elliott Clarke’s J’Accuse

In his latest book, J’Accuse, Poems Versus (Exile Editions, 2021) George Elliott Clarke pulls out all the stops and delivers…

Review of Italian Immigration in the American West – 1870-1940, by Kenneth Scambray

Review of Italian Immigration in the American West – 1870-1940, by Kenneth Scambray

Among the features of Prof Kenneth Scambray’s new book, Italian Immigration in the American West – 1870-1940, (University of Nevada…

Under the Shadow of Mortality: Review of Dying Times by Darlene Madott

Under the Shadow of Mortality: Review of Dying Times by Darlene Madott

Darlene Madott’s latest book of fiction, her eighth, might be titled Dying Times (Exile Editions, 2021), but it’s really all…

Stranger in a Strange Land … or How I learned to Love the Hyphen

Stranger in a Strange Land … or How I learned to Love the Hyphen

Culture is a system of values – economic values, aesthetic values, moral values etc – to want to preserve it…

Another Timeless Italian Tradition

Another Timeless Italian Tradition

It may have been a spoonful of sugar for the family, yet it always left a bitter taste on my…

If Only We Knew

If Only We Knew

My father-in-law was a contadino from Castropigano. He was brilliant. He had a grade five education. He possessed the patience…

Rinasheremo

Rinasheremo

Love given wholeheartedly, inclusively and unconditionally is inexhaustible. – Anonymous The first time I acknowledged it out loud, I was…

The Drama of Caravaggio

The Drama of Caravaggio

An 11-year-old boy is walking on the edge of a forest near his uncle’s farm in the Lombardy region of…

Reflections on Timeless Rhythms in David Bellusci’s Age of Innocence

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

Marinella

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

Caterina Edwards on the French Translation of Her Novel, The Sicilian Wife

Caterina Edwards on the French Translation of Her Novel, The Sicilian Wife

Caterina Edwards immigrated to Edmonton at age eight with her British father and Venetian mother. The Edmonton author was the…

Italian-Canadian Writers Gather in Torino for Biennial Conference

Italian-Canadian Writers Gather in Torino for Biennial Conference

The Association of Italian-Canadian Writers (AICW) held its biennial conference at the University of Torino, in Torino, Italy, from September…

2021 Accenti Contests – Winners Announced

2021 Accenti Contests – Winners Announced

  Montreal, May 16, 2021 – We are pleased to report the names of the winners of the 2021 Accenti…

Creative Spaces: Queer and Italian-Canadian

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

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…