Events
When: Saturday, April 19 – 6 to 8 p.m.
Where: I AM Books, 124 Salem St., Boston MA 02113 (Register Here)
Allison Adair and Peter Covino headline this month’s open mic and speaker series by the Italian American Writers’ Association.
When: Thursday, April 24 – 6:30 p.m.
Where: I AM Books, 124 Salem St., Boston MA 02113 (Register Here)
The short story collection, This Darkness Will Never End by Edith Bruck, portrays in colorful detail the lives of poor Hungarian Jews before, during and after World War II, with the Holocaust alternately looming ahead as a fate that can’t be avoided or as the horror that can’t be outrun. The collection, published in English in April by Paul Dry Books (Philadelphia), includes a story that is considered by film scholars to have inspired Robert Benigni’s Oscar-winning movie “Life Is Beautiful.” Bruck, who was born in Hungary in 1931, settled in Italy after the war and has been writing in Italian for more than a half-century. She is the author of two dozen novels, short story collections, books of poetry and works of nonfiction, many of which touch on her survival of the 20th century’s worst atrocity. Through her work, Bruck supplies an answer to a critical question: What can women writers tell us about surviving the Holocaust era? At age 93, Bruck continues to write books. Three of Bruck’s other works have been translated into English, including Lost Bread, which was published by Paul Dry Books in 2023.
When: Thursday, May 1 – 6:30 p.m.
Where: I AM Books, 124 Salem St., Boston MA 02113 (Register Here)
And There Were Red Geraniums Everywhere: Women’s Voices of the Italian Diaspora in North
America
Edited by Valentina Di Cesare, Michela Valmori, Forward by Editors. Afterword by Emanuele
Pettener and Ilaria Serra. Published and translated by Gianluca Salustri / Radici Edizioni.
Anthologies are communities. This book won “La letteratura delle radici” prize for anthologies
in Italy. Now it will be presented for the first time in English. Come to our gathering of Italian
American women writers– Marianne Leone Cooper, Kathryn Curto, Jean Feraca, Joanna
Clapps Herman, Chiara Montalto, and Gail Reitano, who will be reading
from their essays and talking with the audience about what it means to be an Italian
American woman living outside of la madre Italia.
