Media Release
Local “Books and Biscotti” Event to Showcase
Award-winning Poets/Authors during National Poetry Month Celebration
Bright’s Grove, Ontario: April 3, 2013: Three well-known Italian
Canadian poets from Toronto as well as two award-winning poets from Lambton
County will present new work as part of a National Poetry Month celebration
planned for “Books and Biscotti”, Sunday, April 14, from 2 to 4 p.m. at the
Dante Club, 1330 London Road (side entrance hall) in Sarnia.
Guest readers include: Toronto publisher
and Guernica Editions co-owner Michael Mirolla, poet/author/performer/artist Sonia
Di Placido and Len Gasparini, a 2010 winner of the NOW Open Poetry Stage event plus local
poets Debbie Okun Hill, an Ontario Arts Council Writers’ Reserve recipient and first
prize winner of the 2013 Sarnia-Lambton Alzheimer Society’s “Forget Me Not” poetry
contest and Lynn Tait, first prize winner of The Ontario Poetry Society 2012
Arborealis Contest. Four of the featured poets are members of the League of
Canadian Poets, a professional organization for established and emerging poets.
Several
books are expected to be launched in this free community presentation hosted by
the Dante Club in conjunction with the Italo-Canadian Cultural Club/Laziali di
Sarnia and the Association of Italian Canadian Writers (AICW).
“Each year, we try to introduce new
Italian Canadian writers to our local community,” said Venera Fazio, one of the
co-organizers for the annual event. “This year, we are thrilled to spotlight
several writers from Guernica Editions, a Toronto press that deals in one way or another with
the pleasurable understanding of different cultures. Since 1978, this press has published
over three hundred titles and five hundred authors from around the world.”
Mirolla, the editor-in-chief, will be
reading from his new collection of short stories: The Giulio Metaphysics III
as well as promoting his Bressani
Prize winning novel Berlin, his
poetry collection Light and Time and his short story collection The
Formal Logic of Emotion (translated into Italian as La logical formal
dell emotion).
Di Placido will be
reading from Exaltation in Cadmium Red, a body of poems that “revels in this fanatical, fantastic
colour to express the heights and depths of passion – engaging in meditations
on prayer, spirituality, feminism, and the breadth of existence in a
post-colonial, trans-national and transsexual age.”
Gasparini will
be reading new poems from a forthcoming book titled Mirror
Image.
According to
co-organizer Delia De Santis, the Sunday event also represents the Sarnia launch of EnCompass 1 (Beret Days Press): a poetry
anthology featuring the work of Tait, Okun Hill and three other Canadian poets:
Bernice Lever (British Columbia), Jan Wood (Saskatchewan) and Josie Di
Sciascio-Andrews (Ontario). Okun Hill and Tait will read their award-winning
work as well as several selections from the anthology.
The afternoon will be emceed by Luisa
Zoncheddu Solinas.
AICW is a national organization that
brings together a community of writers, critics, academics, and other artists
who promote Italian-Canadian literature and culture.
For more information or to
set up a media interview contact:
Delia De Santis 519-869-6852 deliadesantis@yahoo.com
A short bio of the participants has
been attached. Photos available upon request.
Books
and Biscotti National Poetry Month Event -- April
14, 2013
SPOTLIGHT READERS/PERFORMERS IN
ALPHABETICAL ORDER
Sonia Di Placido is a poet, writer, performer, and
artist currently completing the Creative Writing, Optional Residency, MFA
Program with the University of British Columbia. She is a graduate of the Ryerson University
Theatre School
and holds an honours BA in Humanities from York University.
Sonia has worked as a Supernumerary with the Canadian Opera Company, is a
member of the Association of Italian Canadian Writers and the League of
Canadian Poets. She has published profile pieces and creative non-fiction with Tandem News, poems in literary journals
in Canadian and International anthologies.
Len Gasparini is the author of numerous books and
chapbooks of poetry, five short-story collections, including The Snows of
Yesteryear (Guernica, 2011), two children’s books, a work of non-fiction,
and a one-act play. In 1990, he was awarded the F.G. Bressani Literary Prize
for poetry. In 2010, he won the NOW Open Poetry Stage event. He lives in
Toronto.
Debbie
Okun Hill is President
of The Ontario Poetry Society, a co-host of Sarnia’s Spoken Word event and a
recent Ontario Arts Council Writers’ Reserve grant recipient. Her poems have
been published in Descant, Existere, Vallum, and The Windsor Review in
Canada plus Mobius, The Binnacle and
Still Point Arts Quarterly in the United States. She has read her
work throughout Ontario including the Fringe Stage of the 2011 Eden Mills
Writers’ Festival and during the 2012 PoeTrain Express/Spring Pulse Poetry
Festival in Cobalt. Black Moss Press will publish her first full collection in
the Fall 2013.
Novelist, short story writer, poet and playwright, Michael Mirolla’s publications include a punk-inspired novella, The
Ballad of Martin B.; two novels: Berlin (a Bressani Prize winner),
and The Facility, which features among other things a string of
cloned Mussolinis; three short story collections: The Formal Logic of
Emotion (translated into Italian as La logica formale delle emozioni),
Hothouse Loves & Other Tales and The Giulio
Metaphysics III; and two collections of poetry: Light and Time,
and the English-Italian bilingual Interstellar Distances –
Distanze Interstellari. A poetry collection, The House on 14th
Avenue, is scheduled for Fall 2013 from Signature Editions, and a short
story collection, Lessons In Relationship Dyads, is scheduled
with Red Hen Press in the U.S.
His short story, “A Theory of Discontinuous Existence,” was selected for The
Journey Prize Anthology, while another short story, “The Sand Flea,” was
nominated for the Pushcart Prize. A poem, “Blind Alley,” was shortlisted for
the Winston Collins/Descant Prize for the Best Canadian Poem in 2007. Along
with partner Connie McParland, Michael runs Guernica Editions publishing house.
Lynn Tait is an
award-winning poet/photographer residing in Sarnia, Ontario. Her poems have
appeared in numerous American and Canadian magazines including The Windsor Review, Quills, Contemporary
Verse 2, Feathertale Review, and in over 60 anthologies including two
previous Arborealis anthologies. She
is a member of the League of Canadian Poets, The Ontario Poetry Society, and
two local writing groups Writers in Transition and After Hours Poets.
