Monday, November 14, 2022 at 5:30-6:30 pm 

The Milk of Almonds: Italian American Women Writers on Food and Culture, edited by Louise DeSalvo and Edvige Giunta

Hosted by Kailee Morel 

          In 2002 The Feminist Press published The Milk of Almonds: Italian American Women Writers on Food and Culture, an anthology of memoir, fiction, and poetry by fifty-four writers. Editors Louise DeSalvo and Edvige Giunta aimed at subverting the conventional narrative of food, gender, and ethnicity. The anthology included established and emerging authors, including many authors who had not yet published a book. Twenty years later, one of the editors and several of the contributors come together to reflect on the cultural significance of this groundbreaking anthology and the community it helped to forge.

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Thursday, March 16, 2023, at 11:30 am EST via Zoom

Hosted by Edvige Giunta and Jenniffer Marchan 

Annie Schneiderman Valliere, born in Washington, D.C., is a Maine-based retired social worker and a great-niece of Rose Schneiderman. She has spent more than a decade researching and writing a biography of Rose. Annie was awarded the Eichleberger-Linzer Grant from the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library in Hyde Park, New York. She has traveled from Maine to Washington—including a visit to the Roosevelt House in New York—to deliver captivating, multi-media talks on Rose and the Triangle Fire, including presentations about Rose at the conference “Frances Perkins and Progressive and New Deal Eras” in 2009 at the University of Southern Maine and at the 2019 Maine Suffrage Centennial. In 2021, she presented Rose and the Triangle Fire, at a meeting of Local One of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE). In 2022, she spoke at Vassar College along with descendants of Harriet Stanton Blatch and Inez Milholland Boissevaine, at a dedication of a historical marker commemorating the “Suffrage in the cemetery” rally in 1908, as a part of the National Votes for Women Trail. She has written articles on Schneiderman, the Uprising of the 20,000, and the Triangle fire for the Oxford Encyclopedia of American Business, Labor, and Economic History (2013). In 2015, she published the article “Rose Schneiderman” on her great-aunt’s suffrage activism for the Turning Point Suffragist Memorial Association.

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Wednesday, April 19, 2023 at 2 pm EST via Zoom 

Hosted by Edvige Giunta and Khadija Diop 

A classic of Italian feminist mafia literature about a gender-bending mafiosa and the writer who becomes obsessed with telling her story Sicily, 1980s: When she was just eight years old, Tina watched as her father, a member of Cosa Nostra, was murdered in cold blood. Now a teenager, she terrorizes her hometown of Gela, having made it her mission to join the mafia, an organization traditionally forbidden to women as made members. Nicknamed ’a masculidda, or “the tomboy,” Tina has taken charge of her own gang, and is notorious for her cruelty and reckless disregard for societal expectations. When a news article is published about Tina’s latest crimes, a teacher living in Rome feels compelled to write a novel about her—even though it means returning to her native Sicily to gather material. She and Tina circle around each other in a dangerous dance of obsession and violence until their first, and last, explosive meeting.This groundbreaking exploration of gender identity and clear-eyed presentation of an unseen side of the mafia is a landmark literary achievement by one of Italy’s feminist icons. 

Maria Rosa Cutrufelli was born in Messina, Sicily and raised shuttling back and forth between Sicily and Bologna; she now resides in Rome. A major figure in Italian feminist movements, she boasts a long, prolific career as a journalist, cultural critic, and novelist. After earning her degree in Literature from the University of Bologna, she founded and edited the journal Tuttestorie. She also authored several works of travel literature, largely devoted to Africa, where she lived for three years. Her works have been translated into some twenty languages. 

Robin Pickering-Iazzi is Professor of Italian and Comparative Literature at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Among her published works in translation are the novel Suspicion by Laura Grimaldi, Unspeakable Women: Selected Short Stories Written by Italian Women during Fascism, and the acclaimed Mafia and Outlaw Stories from Italian Life and Literature.

Serena Todesco is a literary translator, and a scholar of contemporary Italian literature. She has dedicated a number of academic articles to the themes of South, historical memory, identity, and motherhood in the novels of Italian contemporary women writers (Elena Ferrante, Anna Maria Ortese, Maria Rosa Cutrufelli, Nadia Terranova, Maria Attanasio, Giuliana Saladino, Maria Occhipinti, Viola Di Grado, Slavenka Drakulić). Sicilian women’s historical fiction is at the center of Tracce a margine. Scritture a firma femminile nella narrativa storica siciliana contemporanea (Pungitopo 2017), while in 2021 came out Campo a due. Dialogo con Maria Rosa Cutrufelli (Giulio Perrone Editore), an exchange on feminisms and writings in the Italian South. She lives between Sicily and Zagreb (Croatia).

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The Exchange Place Alliance is presenting a fabulous opportunity for NJCU students, alumni, staff, and faculty to submit their original quotes, lines of poetry, or lyrics to be featured on benches along the Exchange Place waterfront walkway.

The word length is not to exceed 150 characters.

Themes: Submissions should refer to the waterfront setting, for example, river, sky, weather, and views.

Please submit the following to deirdre@exchangeplacealliance.com:

ROUND 1: INITIAL SUBMISSION 

• Bio and website
• Up to 3 quotes/lines of poetry/lyrics with a maximum length of 150 characters  

Please note: Deadline for submission is October 1, 2021 at 5 p.m. 

NOTIFICATION & FINAL SUBMISSION 

• Writers will be notified on November 1, 2021 or before
• Writers to supply promotional headshot photo for press

DATES OF DISPLAY

• Benches will be available to view January 19, 2022

Benches are on display in the Exchange Place Alliance S.I.D. (Special Improvement District, photo above, see the map).

Learn more about the Exchange Place Alliance.

Hosted by Edvige Giunta and Donia Ayoub
With special guest Deborah DeSalvo

Monday, September 27, 1:00 p.m.

Join us for a Virtual reading of work from Louise DeSalvo.

Reading in English:

Donia Ayoub, Emily Bass, Nancy Caronia, Angel Eduardo, Jonathan Freeman-Coppadge, Christine Grimaldi, Benjamin Hagen, Sangamithra Iyer, Annie Lanzillotto, and Julija Sukys

Readings in Italian translation:

Caterina Romeo, translator of Vertigo

and the writers of Le Ortique - Viviana Fiorentino, Alessandra Trevisan, Chiara Pini, and Valentina Di Cesare

For information, please contact egiunta@njcu.edu
https://leortique.wordpress.com/manifesto/

Monday, November 29, 1:00 P.M.
Virtual Event

A conversation with the editors, writers, and the subjects of the portraits.

Mario Badagliacca & Derek Duncan

Jacopo Colombini, Claudia Giunta, Edvige Giunta, and Georgia Wall

Hosted by Edvige Giunta and Marie Garcia

Italy is Out is the fruit of the collaboration between Mario Badagliacca, the established documentary photographer, and the research team of 'Transnationalizing Modern Languages: Mobility, Identity and Translation in Modern Italian Cultures' (2014-16). This ARHC-funded project explored the implications of Italian migration in a global perspective tracing cultural transformations across borders, generations, and language. 

For information contact egiunta@njcu.edu

Italy Is Out can be ordered HERE

Hosted by Edvige Giunta and Kailee Morel

Tuesday, January 25 at 5:30pm EST
Free Virtual Event

Maria Mazziotti Gillan is winner of the 2014 George Garrett Award for Outstanding Community Service in Literature from AWP, the 2011 Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award from Poets & Writers, and the 2008 American Book Award for her book, All That Lies Between Us. She is the Founder/Executive Director of the Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College, editor of the Paterson Literary Review, and Professor Emerita in creative writing at Binghamton University—SUNY. She has published 23 books, including her latest book, When the Stars Were Visible (Stephen F. Austin University Press, 2021). Visit her website at www.mariagillan.com.

Bios of hosts

Edvige Giunta is a Professor English at NJCU. She has published several books, including Writing with an Accent: Contemporary Italian American Women Authors and the coedited anthologies The Milk of Almonds: Italian American Women Writers on Food and Culture and Personal Effects: Essays on Teaching, Memoir, and Culture in the Work of Louise DeSalvo. Her coedited anthology Talking to the Girls: Intimate and Political Essays on the Triangle Fire will be published in 2022 by New Village Press.

Kailee Morel is a student at New Jersey City University where she majors in English with a concentration in Creative Writing. She lives in Secaucus, New Jersey. Her passion for reading and writing has flourished over the course of her undergraduate career, but her love for both started when she was in elementary school. She is currently interning as an Assistant Editor with Memoir Magazine and hopes to work in publishing while continuing to write.

The NJCU Center for the Arts
and
The NJCU English Department Student Events and Publications Committee
present

Hosted by Edvige Giunta, Peggy Jackson, and Kailee Morel

Tuesday, 15 February 2022 at 7:00 pm EST
Free Virtual Event

Join the eighth annual 100-word reading marathon and the third to be held virtually. Share your words about love, in all its forms and manifestations, at a gathering that fosters connection and solidarity among different writers, communities, cities, and countries. Bring 100-word pieces you have written about love--intimate, visceral, honest. Everyone will share three pieces during the first round. Subsequent 100-word pieces can be shared after all writers have shared their first pieces. Multi-lingual work is welcomed and encouraged!

The NJCU Center for the Arts
and
The NJCU English Department Student Events and Publications Committee
present

A Conversation About Food, Family, Inheritance, Memory & the Power of Stories
with Gail Reitano and Michelle Reale

Hosted by Edvige Giunta and Marie Garcia

Thursday, April 14, 2022 at 5:30pm EST
Free Virtual Event

Gail Reitano grew up in the southern New Jersey Pine Barrens. She graduated from Rutgers University and lived in London for twelve years before moving to the San Francisco Bay Area. Her fiction, memoir, and personal essays have appeared in Glimmer Train, Catamaran Literary Reader, and Ovunque Siamo among others, and have been featured on public radio in the Bay Area. Italian Love Cake is her first novel.

Michelle Reale is a professor at Arcadia University and teaches in their MFA program. She is the author of seven monographs in her field of academic librarianship and the author of twelve volumes of poetry, the latest, Blood Memory: Prose Poems (Idea Press, 2021) and Confini: Poems of Refugees in Sicily (Cervena Barva Press, 2021). Her interests are narrative inheritance, Italian American families, inherited trauma and secrets within families, to name a few.

For information on this event, contact egiunta@njcu.edu

Join us for a stellar reading and workshop with author and educator J.M. Kelly.  James will read excerpts from his latest book in the Bobby Holmes series for young adults: Monster on the Moors, discuss his creative process with NJCU Director of the Center for the Arts, Stephanie Chaiken, and present a workshop for middle and high school ages about the process of writing a book. A video of this event can be found on our Digital Content page

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June 27, 2:00 PM
Virtual Event

NJCU Center for the Arts presents An Afternoon with the Pandemic Baseball Book Club. Join us for an amazing program featuring readings and a discussion with five baseball writers, led by Ralph Carhart - author of The Hall Ball. Joining Ralph will be Jason Turbow - author of They Bled Blue, Anika Orrock - author of The Incredible Women of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, Eric Nusbaum - author of Stealing Home, and Brad Balukjian - author of The Wax Pack.

A video of this event can be found on our Digital Content page

The Hall Ball: One Fan's Journey to Unite Cooperstown Immortals with a Single Baseball is the story of a quixotic journey across the United States and beyond. The Goal? To bring a single baseball to every member of the Hall of Fame, both living and dead.

They Bled Blue details the Los Angeles Dodgers' championship 1981 season, complete with a mid-season player strike, a storied lineup at the end of its tether, and the uniquely meteoric rise of a rookie named Fernando Valenzuela.

The Incredible Women of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League is a fully illustrated history of America's first and, so far, only women's professional baseball league (1943-1954), as told by those who know it best: the players.

Stealing Home: Los Angeles, the Dodgers, and the Lives Caught in Between reveals the messy, dramatic truth behind a great American civic drama: the construction of Dodger Stadium. It's a story of grand visions, evil schemes, Manifest Destiny, and the mystic power of baseball; and ultimately the story of a family caught within the grasp of it all.

The Wax Pack is the story of one man's quest to track down all the players in a single pack of 1986 baseball cards on an 11,341-mile road trip to answer the question, 'is there life after baseball?

Writer-Director Nancy Savoca’s debut film, TRUE LOVE, won the Grand Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for a Spirit Award for Best Director. Savoca co-wrote all 3 segments of HBO’s IF THESE WALLS COULD TALK, with Demi Moore, Sissy Spacek and Cher, and directed the segments starring Moore and Spacek. The film won multiple Emmy and Golden Globe nominations and a Women In Film Lucy Award for the show’s creation. Her documentary of the one-woman show, RENO-REBEL WITHOUT A PAUSE (UNRESTRAINED REFLECTIONS ON SEPT. 11TH), premiered September 11, 2002 at the Toronto Film Festival and was awarded the Prize for Peace & Liberty by the City of Florence, Italy.

A video of this event can be found on our Digital Content page

Presented by:

The English Department Student Events and Publications Committee

at New Jersey City University

Virtual Event
Tuesday, October 13, 11:30-12:30 pm
Free with RSVP

In 2018 Rashad Wright became Poet Laureate of Jersey City at age 24, the first poet to receive the title since 2004. He graduated from New Jersey City University, where he studied creative writing and was involved in the Peers Educating Peers (PEP) program as a certified peer educator. Wright, who has been Grandslam Champion of Jersey City Slam twice, has participated and been recognized in many local and national slam competitions. At the 2018 Individual Poetry Slam in San Diego, California, Rashad placed 20th in the country. He is the author of Romeo’s Whiskey, a book of poems for which reg e gaines wrote the foreword. He is in residence at Mana Contemporary, where he is actively involved in hosting poetry events.

A video of this event can be found on our Digital Content page

Presented by: The English Department Student Events and Publications Committee at New Jersey City University

Thursday, October 29, 12:00-1:00 pm

Nancy Caronia is Associate Professor in the Department of English at West Virginia University. A Pushcart Prize-nominated author, Caronia has published her creative work in The Milk of Almonds: Italian American Women on Food and Culture, Don't Tell Mama!: The Penguin Book of Italian American Writing, and many journals including, Ovunque Siamo, New Delta Review, Lowestoft Chronicles, and BioStories. With Edvige Giunta, she co-edited Personal Effects: Memoir, Teaching, and Culture in the Work of Louise DeSalvo (Fordham University Press 2015, paperback 2019). She also wrote the introduction for the reprint of DeSalvo's Casting Office (Bordighera Press 2014). She is at work on a volume about American dime novels' discriminatory characterizations of Italian immigrants and Italian Americans at the turn of the twentieth century entitled "Dime Novels: Racialization and Erasure." She also is writing a memoir focused on issues of dementia and aging.

For information please contact egiunta@njcu.edu

A video of this event can be found on our Digital Content page

Interviewed by Jayne Freeman 
Thursday, November 5 at 8pm 

In March, when Ann E. Wallace and her daughter were among the first Jersey City residents to become sick with COVID-19, Wallace immediately began chronicling their experience. Nearly eight months later, Wallace, a long-hauler, has amassed a large body of work, ranging from poetry to op-ed pieces, and has gained national attention. Join us for a conversation between Jayne Freeman and Wallace about writing through COVID. 

Ann E. Wallace, PhD, Associate Professor of English at NJCU, is writing poetry and essays as she recovers from long-haul COVID at home in Jersey City. Her poetry collection, Counting by Sevens, is available from Main Street Rag (2019), and she has recently published work in USA Today, Huffington Post, Crack the Spine, Stirring,Clementine Unbound and many other journals. 

Presented by: The English Department Student Events and Publications Committee and

the Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies at New Jersey City University

Thursday, November 19, 1:00 - 2:00 P.M.

Free with RSVP

Krystal Sital is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir Secrets We Kept: Three Women of Trinidad. Her essay, “Undocumented Lovers in America”, was featured in the anthology A Map Is Only One Story: Twenty Writers on Immigration, Family, and the Meaning of Home and another essay “Feminist Role Model” was featured in the anthology Fury: Women’s Lived Experiences in the Trump Era. A PEN America Literary Award finalist and Hertog Fellow, her work has appeared in The New York Times, Elle, Salon, Catapult, LitHub, and elsewhere. Krystal was born in the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago and moved to the United States in 1999. She now lives in New Jersey with her partner and their three tiny humans.

For information please contact egiunta@njcu.edu

A video of this event can be found on our Digital Content page

Presented by: The English Department Student Events and Publications Committee
& The Center for the Arts at New Jersey City University

Tuesday, November 24, 5:30 - 6:30 p.m.
Free with RSVP

Join us for a discussion with three talented writers / NJCU Graduates, Chloe DeFilippis, Angel Eduardo, Natasha Persaud. This discussion will be moderated by Edvige Giunta. A video of this event can be found on our Digital Content page

Chloe DeFilippis is an Account Specialist for NPD BookScan, the gold standard in POS (point-of-sale) tracking for the publishing market. Previously, she held sales positions at Simon & Schuster and Phaidon. Her writing has appeared in Ovunque Siamo, River Teeth, Vending Machine Press, and more.

Angel Eduardo is a staff writer for Idealist.org. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from CUNY Hunter College. He has published in Areo Magazine, The Ocean State Review, and The Caribbean Writer, and other publications. He is working on a book-length memoir, “Echoes.” See his work at angeleduardo.com.

Natasha Persaud has an MFA from Hunter College, CUNY, where she received the Hertog Fellowship. Her writing has appeared in Gay Magazine and The Caribbean Writer. She has taught memoir at The Creative Writers Circle of New Jersey. She is pursuing a Master’s in Counseling at NJCU and working on a memoir about growing up in the tenements of Georgetown, Guyana.

For information contact: egiunta@njcu.edu

Moderated by Edvige Giunta, Rosa Garcia, and Donia Ayoub

Presented by: The NJCU Center for the Arts, and The English Department Student Events and Publications Committee at New Jersey City University

Thursday, February 11, 6:00 - 8:00 p.m.

As the second 100-word reading marathon to be held digitally, this gathering wants to foster connection and solidarity among different writers, communities, cities, and countries. While the Covid-19 global pandemic continues to rage, other events have dominated our lives, sometimes in inspiring ways and at other times terrifying ways: the Black Lives Matter demonstrations over the killing of George Floyd and other Black people; the 2020 elections; the historic election of Kamala Harris; the Capitol riots; the second impeachment of Trump; and more. Whether or not any of these events are central to your writing, share 100 words you have written during these times. Make it intimate, visceral, honest. Please bring a maximum of three 100-word pieces. Everyone will share one piece during the first round. Subsequent 100-word pieces can be shared after all writers have shared their first piece. Multi-lingual work is welcomed and encouraged!

For information contact egiunta@njcu.edu 

A video of this event can be found on our Digital Content page

Saturday, February 20, 2:00 p.m.
Virtual Event

with Jacqueline Ellis, Mary Giaimo, Joanna Clapps Herman, and Tracy Mann

Moderated by Edvige Giunta and Peggy Jackson

Presented by: The NJCU English Department Student Events and Publications Committee and the NJCU Center for the Arts

Tuesday, February 23, 6:30-7:30 pm
Virtual Event
 

Jacqueline Ellis is a Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at New Jersey City University. She is the author of Silent Witnesses: Representations of Working-Class Women in the United States (U of Wisconsin P), and the co-editor of Transformations: The Journal of Inclusive Scholarship and Pedagogy. Her articles and creative writing have appeared in WSQ, Feminist Review, History of Photography, and Mutha Magazine. She is working on a creative nonfiction book, Palindrome: A Multiracial Family History.

Mary Giaimo’s poetry and criticism have appeared in Barrow Street, Interim, The Journal, VIA: Voices in Italian Americana, The Ocean State Review, ItalianAmericanWriters.com, Poetry in Performance, American Book Review, Newtown Literary, Ovunque Siamo, and in the anthology New Hungers for Old: One Hundred Years of Italian American Poetry. She is an editor at Barrow Street Press and teaches English literature and writing at La Scuola d’Italia, a dual-language Italian/English school in Manhattan.

When I am Italian: Quando sono italiana, (2019) Joanna Clapps Herman’s most recent book, explores the question of whether it’s possible to be Italian if you weren’t born in Italy. Other books include a collection of fiction, No Longer and Not Yet (2014), and her memoir, The Anarchist Bastard (2011). She also co-edited two anthologies; Wild Dreams (2008) and Our Roots Are Deep with Passion (2006). She has recently had 18 prose poems accepted for publication. Her website, a literary, cultural, culinary site is at joannaclappsherman.com

Tracy Mann is a contributor to the John F. Kennedy, Jr. anthology “250 Ways to Make America Better”. She has written lyrics for Grammy Award-winning albums by the Manhattan Transfer and Sarah Vaughan and been a scriptwriter for the children’s television series “My Little Pony.” Her writing has appeared in The Lindenwood Review, Sunspot Lit, Adelaide Magazine, Earth Island Journal, and the Sarah Lawrence Writing Institute Journal. She is currently at work on a memoir about Brazil.

For information contact egiunta@njcu.edu

Presented by: The NJCU Center for the Arts, and The English Department Student Events and Publications Committee at New Jersey City University

Thursday, February 25, 1:00 - 2:00 p.m.
Virtual Event

Mike Fiorito is the author of Call Me Guido, Freud’s Haberdashery Habits and Hallucinating Huxley. His latest book, Falling from Trees, has just been released. He is an Associate Editor for Mad Swirl Magazine and a regular contributor to The Red Hook Star Revue.  Mike is currently working on a novel.

For information contact egiunta@njcu.edu

A video of this event can be found on our Digital Content page

Presented by: The NJCU Center for the Arts, and The English Department Student Events and Publications Committee at New Jersey City University

March 2, 2021, 5:30 - 6:30 p.m.
Virtual Event

Marianne Leone is an actress, screenwriter and essayist. Her essays have appeared in the Boston Globe, Post Road, Bark Magazine, Coastal Living, Solstice, and WBUR’s Cognoscenti blog. She is the author of two memoirs, Jesse (Simon & Schuster) and Ma Speaks Up (Beacon Press.) She had a recurring role on HBO's The Sopranos as Joanne Moltisanti, Christopher's mother. She has also appeared in films by Nancy Savoca, David O. Russell, Larry David, John Sayles, and Martin Scorsese. Jesse is published in Italy by Nutrimenti.

For information contact egiunta@njcu.edu

A video of this event can be found on our Digital Content page

Presented by: The NJCU Center for the Arts, and The English Department Student Events and Publications Committee at New Jersey City University

Thursday, March 18, 11:30 - 12:30 p.m.
Virtual Event

Annie Rachele Lanzillotto is an author, poet, performance-artist, actor, director, songwriter, and activist who has promoted audience participation in hundreds of performances everywhere from the Arthur Avenue Retail Market to the Guggenheim Museum.  While sheltering-in-place alone, Lanzillotto embarked on a solo decameron - to tell one hundred original stories -- in her podcast "Annie's Story Cave."  Lanzillotto’s books include: Hard Candy: Caregiving, Mourning, and Stage Light, Pitch Roll Yaw, L Is for Lion: an italian bronx butch freedom memoir (finalist for the LAMBDA Literary Award), and Schistsong. Lanzillotto was on the founding board of the Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition. Visit:  annielanzillotto.com, and StreetCryInc.org.

For information contact egiunta@njcu.edu

A video of this event can be found on our Digital Content page

Hosted by Edvige Giunta
Thursday, March 25, 11:30 A.M.
Virtual Event

On March 25, 1911, 146 workers died in a fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City. Most of the workers who died were Eastern European Jewish and Southern Italian women and girls. The youngest were fourteen. In the aftermath of this event, many important legal and social changes were made to create a safer workplace. This panel, moderated by Professor Giunta--who in 2016 created, and teaches, the first course in the US devoted entirely to the Triangle fire--addresses the question of the relevance of the fire in the contemporary world, and specifically to a new generation. One hundred and ten years from the fire and a year before the dedication of the Triangle Fire Memorial, the panelists will explore the ways in which the fire has spoken to them and inspired creative and activist work. 

Moderated by Edvige Giunta and Meili Ellis-Tingle

Presented by: The NJCU Center for the Arts, and The English Department Student Events and Publications Committee at New Jersey City University

Tuesday March 30 11:30-12:30pm
Virtual Event

Phyllis Capello is the author of Packs Small Plays Big, a collection of poems published in 2018. She is a New York Foundation for the Arts fiction fellow and a winner of an Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award. Her work appears in The Dream Book, From the Margin, The Milk of Almonds, The Voices We Carry, Embroidered Stories and other anthologies. She works as a musician/clown, entertaining children, families, & older adults in hospitals with Healthy Humor Inc. Phyllis also teaches poetry to students in schools and libraries all over NYC with Community-Word Project.

For information contact egiunta@njcu.edu

A video of this event can be found on our Digital Content page

 Author of Black is the Body: Stories from My Grandmother’s Time, My Mother’s Time, and Mine

Moderated by Edvige Giunta and Meili Ellis-Tingle

Presented by: The NJCU Center for the Arts, and The English Department Student Events and Publications Committee at New Jersey City University

Tuesday, April 20, 6:00 p.m.
Virtual Event

Emily Bernard is the author of Black is the Body: Stories from My Mother's Time and Mine, which was named one of the best books of 2019 by Kirkus Reviews and National Public Radio. Black is the Body won the 2020 Los Angeles Times Christopher Isherwood Prize for autobiographical prose. Emily’s previous works include: Remember Me to Harlem: The Letters of Langston Hughes and Carl Van Vechten, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year; and Some of My Best Friends: Writings on Interracial Friendship, which was chosen by the New York Public Library as a Book for the Teen Age; and, with Deborah Willis, Michelle Obama: The First Lady in Photographs, which received a 2010 NAACP Image Award. Her work has appeared in: O the Oprah Magazine, Harper’s, The New Republic, newyorker.com, Best American Essays, Best African American Essays, and Best of Creative Nonfiction. She has received fellowships from the Alphonse A. Fletcher Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the MacDowell Colony, the Vermont Arts Council, and the W. E. B. DuBois Institute at Harvard University. Emily was the James Weldon Johnson Senior Research Fellow in African American Studies at Yale University. She is the Julian Lindsay Green and Gold Professor of English at the University of Vermont, and a 2020 Andrew Carnegie Fellow. Emily lives in South Burlington, Vermont with her husband and twin daughters.

For information contact egiunta@njcu.edu

A video of this event can be found on our Digital Content page

Moderated by Edvige Giunta and Peggy Jackson

Presented by: The NJCU Center for the Arts, and The English Department Student Events and Publications Committee at New Jersey City University

Tuesday, April 27, 1:00 p.m.

When I am Italian: quando sono italiana, (2019), Joanna Clapps Herman’s most recent publication, explores the question of whether it’s possible to be Italian if you weren’t born in Italy. Her fiction collection No Longer and Not Yet (2014), is about the intimacies of everyday life on The Upper West Side of Manhattan. A memoir, The Anarchist Bastard (2011) which begins, “I often say that I was born in 1944 but raised in the 15th Century because although I was born in Waterbury, CT, in a New England factory town, in post-WWII, I grew up in a large southern Italian family where the rules were absolute, and customs antiquated.” She is co-editor of two anthologies Wild Dreams (2008) and Our Roots Are Deep with Passion (2006). She has published widely in literary journals as a poet, a fiction writer and an essayist.

For information contact egiunta@njcu.edu