Licia Canton
LICIA CANTON’S poems and stories have appeared in English, French, Chinese, Italian and Venetian dialect.
She is the author of The Pink House and Other Stories (2018) and Almond Wine and Fertility (2008), published in Italy as Vino alla mandorla e fertilità (2015). She is the editor of Here & Now: An Anthology of Queer Italian-Canadian Writing (2021) and director of the documentary film Creative Spaces: Queer and Italian Canadian (2021). She is Emilio Goggio Research Fellow (2021-2022) in Italian-Canadian Studies at the University of Toronto. Licia Canton was Honorary Fellow in Translation (2018-2021) at the University of Hull, U.K., Visiting Professor and Writer-in-Residence at the University of Calabria (2019). The founding editor-in-chief of Accenti Magazine, Licia Canton is the recipient of the Italy in the World Prize (2018) for her work in culture.
She is currently president of the Association of Italian-Canadian Writers (AICW). She holds a Ph.D. from Université de Montréal and an M.A. from McGill University.
in her words
selected works
HERE & NOW: AN ANTHOLOGY OF QUEER ITALIAN-CANADIAN WRITING
Here and Now: An Anthology of Queer Italian-Canadian Writing is the most comprehensive volume yet of queer Italian-Canadian writing, and a milestone in Italian-Canadian studies and Canadian literature.
THE PINK HOUSE
The Pink House, Licia Canton’s much anticipated second collection of short fiction, like her first, Almond Wine and Fertility, delves into the lives of ordinary people who must contend with extraordinary situations.
ALMOND WINE AND FERTILITY
Almond Wine and Fertility, a lyrical and moving collection, showcases Licia Canton’s ability to craft entire worlds out of just a few pages. This new edition of Almond Wine and Fertility includes a foreword by literary critic Joseph Pivato.
Caterina Edwards
Caterina Edwards was born in Britain to an English father and an Italian or more exactly, an Istro-Venetian mother. By the time Caterina was two, she was serving as her mother’s interpreter. The family immigrated to Canada in 1956 and settled in Alberta. Caterina grew up in Calgary, but spent most summers in Venice, visiting relatives. These frequent trips, which continued after she married Sicilian-born Marco LoVerso, and the juxtaposition of the Italian and Canadian cultures have shaped her concerns as a writer. She often returns to the themes of immigration and identity, the collision of multiple selves and cultures, private memories and public history, here and there.
Caterina’s last novel, The Sicilian Wife, was named a Best Book by the National Post who described it as “a masterful tale of family, murder, and the inescapable pull of the past.” The literary noir received rave reviews in Canada, the U.S. and Sicily; a French edition, L’Epouse Sicilienne, was published in 2019.
Caterina began writing her previous book, Finding Rosa: A Mother with Alzheimer’s/ A Daughter in Search of the Past as a record of her experience caring for her mother during the last years of her life. It became a work of creative nonfiction that included history, memoir, biography, and travel writing. It won the Writer’s Guild of Alberta Award for Nonfiction, the Bressani prize, and was shortlisted for the City of Edmonton Book Prize. The Italian edition, Riscoprendo mia madre: Una figlia alla ricerca del passato, was published by Les Flâneur Edizioni in the spring of 2021 to much acclaim.
Caterina has also published the novel, The Lion’s Mouth, a book of novellas, Whiter Shade of Pale/Becoming Emma, and a collection of short stories, The Island of the Nightingales, which won the WGA Short Fiction Award. Her play, which was produced professionally in Edmonton as Terra Straniera and published by Guernica Editions as Homeground, was shortlisted for the WGA Drama Award. Her radio drama, The Great Antonio, was twice broadcast on CBC’s Sunday Showcase and chosen to represent Canada in an international competition.
Caterina Edwards: Essays on Her work (edited by Joseph Pivato) was the first book in Guernica Editions’ Series on Canadian Writers. Caterina taught creative writing and Canadian literature at the university level and was three times a writer-in-residence.
In 2016, Caterina was honoured with an induction into the City of Edmonton’s Arts & Culture Wall of Fame.
in her words
selected works
Finding Rosa: A Mother with Alzheimer’s/ A Daughter in Search of the Past
When her mother, Rosa, begins to show signs of Alzheimer’s, Caterina Edwards embarks on a complex journey—all at once geographical, intellectual, and emotional—that turns out to be a journey in search of the past and of home.
As Rosa loses her memory and her sense of herself, Edwards travels to Istria, now part of Croatia, to get at the truth of her mother’s past. There she discovers the suppressed history of Istria—the ethnic cleansing of her mother’s people—and uncovers Rosa’s personal losses—her family’s exile, her father’s mysterious death, and the roots of her own sense of never belonging.
During the four years that Edwards cares for her mother, she must also deal with her mother’s confusion, hostility, paranoia, and fear, as well as her own physical and emotional exhaustion. Through this journey, Edwards braves an area of darkness with and for her mother and finally comes to know who her mother was.
The Sicilian Wife
The Sicilian Wife is both a literary novel and a mystery. Fulvia, the Mafia Princess, must be a dutiful daughter or the family will be dishonoured. Though she eventually escapes and makes a new life in Canada, she is betrayed and then her husband is murdered on the Sicilian coast.
The police Chief investigating the case is Marisa, who faces a station house of skeptical men as well as confronting Fulvia’s uncle, the boss of bosses.
The Lion’s Mouth
In this eloquent novel, an Italian/Canadian woman named Bianca tells the story of her beloved cousin, Marco, whose life is disintegrating along with his city–Venice, Italy. As she tries to make sense of her cousin’s breakdown, Bianca recounts her own history and reflects on her immigrant and Canadian experiences, coming to terms with her dual cultures. The novel is multifaceted as a thriller, study of social mores in Italy and Canada, portrait of Venice, and self-reflexive account.
Genni Gunn
Born in Trieste, Italy, Genni Gunn came to Canada as a child in 1960.
Genni Gunn is an author, musician and translator. She has published thirteen books: three novels – Solitaria (translated into Italian and Dutch), Tracing Iris (translated into Italian; and made into a film, The Riverbank), and Thrice Upon a Time (finalist for the Commonwealth Prize); three short story collections – Permanent Tourists, Hungers and On the Road; three poetry collections— the recent Accidents, Faceless and Mating in Captivity — and a collection of personal essays, TRACKS: Journeys in Time and Place. As well, she has translated from Italian three collections of poems by two renowned Italian authors: Devour Me Too and Traveling in the Gait of a Fox by Dacia Maraini, and Text Me by Corrado Calabrò. Gunn’s books have been translated into Italian and Dutch, and her opera libretto, Alternate Visions, was produced by Chants Libres (music by John Oliver).
Her books have been finalists for The Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for novel Thrice Upon a Time, The Gerald Lampert Poetry Award for Mating in Captivity, The John Glassco Translation Prize for Devour Me Too, The Premio Internazionale Diego Valeri for Literary Translation for Traveling in the Gait of a Fox, The Giller Prize for her novel Solitaria., and the ReLit Award for Permanent Tourists. Her travel essay “Birth Stones” about Matera is nominated for Best American Travel Writing 2021. She lives in Vancouver, and is at work on a new novel set in Italy.
in her words
selected works
Accidents
In Accidents, her third collection of poems, Genni Gunn takes us on a roller coaster ride through past and present in different continents, to explore the various upheavals that alter our lives. She recalls her birthplace in Trieste, where she attempts to unravel the mysterious lives of her parents; Vancouver, with its urban alienation and attraction; and to Burma, where disruptions are a way of life under the Generals. Along the way, she treats us to a sardonic and sometimes appalling history of masks, and of spontaneous combustion.
Poem by poem, Gunn examines the emotional, political, and geological upheaval that inevitably shape us as family members, as lovers, and as citizens, and the humble talismans we carry as reminders of the past. Heartbreak and humour leaven and disrupt these poems in equal measure, as does love.
Solitaria
Solitaria is Gunn’s third novel, and was nominated for the Giller Prize in 2011. Set against the countryside of Italy’s Adriatic coast, Solitaria is a tale of longing and family honour, told from two points of view: Piera’s and David’s. With the unravelling of their stories, we glimpse a woman’s growing awareness of her own capacity for self-delusion, and of the consequences of her actions on others, and a young man’s awakening to the depth of his roots.
“A riveting tale of sacrifice and obligation, of vision and revision, of vengeance, betrayal, and ultimately, redemption. Through the brilliantly quixotic voice of Piera, Gunn enlivens the Italy of the 1940s and deftly draws us into the complex, compelling story of la Solitaria. With a filmmaker’s eye for sharp shifts in point of view and a master storyteller’s ear for spoken and unspoken truths, Gunn keeps us wondering to the very end, Who in this family can we believe?”
Permanent Tourists
In eight intersecting stories that range from a suicide pact on the tourist beaches of Mexico to Angkor Wat, a stone museum in Italy, and the Thai fleshpots that conceal a lost father, Genni Gunn charts the blank spaces in human relationships: silences between loved ones, dark histories neither escaped nor forgotten, moral dilemmas that spin on a dime, death that brings no redemption. Delicately rendered, with characters that move restlessly from one landscape to the next, these complex stories look without flinching into the heart of human longing.
“The final page of Permanent Tourists closes with an “ocean of ghosts,” an image simultaneously elusive and evocative. This exploration of emotion without the assumption of clear resolution underlines the entirety of Genni Gunn’s third short story collection to a fascinating effect. . .the ephemeral nature of Gunn’s characters and the way readers are asked to become comfortable with the sense of being unmoored creates an almost metatextual element to the stories. The act of reading and feeling detached from the events or characters on the page is, in itself, a form of connection to the themes and ideas so important to this collection.”
Tracing Iris
Solitaria is Gunn’s third novel, and was nominated for the Giller Prize in 2011. Set against the countryside of Italy’s Adriatic coast, Solitaria is a tale of longing and family honour, told from two points of view: Piera’s and David’s. With the unravelling of their stories, we glimpse a woman’s growing awareness of her own capacity for self-delusion, and of the consequences of her actions on others, and a young man’s awakening to the depth of his roots.
“A riveting tale of sacrifice and obligation, of vision and revision, of vengeance, betrayal, and ultimately, redemption. Through the brilliantly quixotic voice of Piera, Gunn enlivens the Italy of the 1940s and deftly draws us into the complex, compelling story of la Solitaria. With a filmmaker’s eye for sharp shifts in point of view and a master storyteller’s ear for spoken and unspoken truths, Gunn keeps us wondering to the very end, Who in this family can we believe?”
Gina Valle
Gina’s parents were born in a small town in Calabria, southern Italy. Before they were 25 years of age, Domenico & Giuseppa moved to Canada and built a new life here. Gina understood the responsibility that came with that decision.
Gina Valle completed her PhD in Education & Multicultural Studies from OISE at the University of Toronto, and went on to found Diversity Matters where she works each day to make Canada a more equitable society. In her writing she captures the essence of the immigrant experience, with The Best of All Worlds for children, Our Grandmothers, Ourselves for the feminist in us and Teachers at their Best for educators. She is the producer and director of the award-winning documentary The Last Rite, and the curator of two exhibits which have travelled widely, Legacies and Horizons. Her fourth book Abécédaire de l’Equité et l’inclusion will be out in 2022.
The Privy Council appointed Dr. Valle on the board of the Canadian Race Relations Foundation, which tackles racism in Canadian society. She is a Director at Villa Charities (VCI), where she is Chair of Culture & Youth and Chair of VCI’s 50th Anniversary Committee, and is on the board of University of Toronto’s College of Electors. Over the last twenty years, Dr. Valle has given back to the Italian-Canadian community with passion, as a member of the Italian Heritage Month committee, educational advisor on “Italian Canadians as Enemy Aliens”, researcher for the Multicultural History Society of Ontario (MHSO) on the life stories of Italian immigrant women, member of the Association of Italian Canadian Writers and contributor to Transformations Canada: The Italian Canadian Experience
In recognition of her work in diversity, Gina received the Ordine al Merito from the National Congress of Italian Canadians and the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal from the office of the Governor General.
The work Gina undertakes in our community, she does so for her parents, Domenico and Giuseppa Valle, as it is her small way of honouring their commitment to come to Canada. And she does it for her sons Gabriele and Alessandro, as it is her way of teaching them about the past, and giving them a strong sense of belonging to a place we all call home.
in her words
selected works
L’Abecedaire de l’equite et de l’inclusion
L’Abecedaire de l’equite et de l’inclusion takes the teacher and student on a journey, from A – Z, presenting engaging activities and critical reflections on equity and inclusion in the classroom, and in society.
Teachers at their best
This book, Teachers At Their Best – Enseignants sous leur meilleur jour in English and French, examines what is happening in pluralist classrooms, and how teachers are engaging with their students – and making a difference.
The powerful vignettes take us into the hearts and minds of exemplary educators, as they share their values, convictions, wisdom and knowledge in the classroom and beyond.
The Best of all worlds
The Best of All Worlds – Le meilleur monde imaginable is a book of 7 original children’s stories written by Canadians in their heritage language (Japanese, Spanish, Russian, Portuguese, Arabic, Italian, and Farsi). Each story is translated into English and French, and is beautifully illustrated.
When children see their heritage language in the pages of a book that is shared at school, in the library, and with friends, then they instinctively understand that their language and culture is important. They feel valued, not only within the confines of the home and family, but within the larger multicultural, multilingual society.
Our Grandmothers, Ourselves
Our Grandmothers, Ourselves: Reflection of Canadian Women is a tribute to our grandmothers and the significant role they have played in shaping who we are. It celebrates the women who have bound us to our cultural and historical roots and honours the power of narrative to promote understanding among people of diverse backgrounds.
In this collection, Canadian women of various cultural, ethnic, and economic backgrounds celebrate the memories of their grandmothers and pay tribute to the significant role they have played in forming their identities.
