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The expression “don’t lie or your nose will grow” became a common saying after Walt Disney released the film “Pinocchio” in 1940. Pinocchio was a popular series written by Carlo Collodi that first appeared on July 7, 1881, in the Italian Giornale dei Bambini (Children’s Magazine). The story was titled “Le avventure di Pinocchio: storia di un buratt...

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Unless you’ve been living on the moon, you must have heard of My Brilliant Friend, the series of four books by the utterly talented–and mysterious!–Italian writer Elena Ferrante. I still recall the moment I bumped into the first volume of the quartet a few years ago. I was looking for a present for my mother, and the book cover caught my attention....

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I’ve always considered myself Sicilian more than American. Growing up in Baltimore in the mid-20th century, that old world setting blended slowly into modern society. Timeworn traditions crashed into the space age of plastic, planned obsolescence. Nothing lasted. Throw it out. Buy now, pay later, the layaway plans of consumer heaven. A place where...

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Longtime residents may remember the Gemello Winery on El Camino near Rengstorff in Mountain View. Kevin Ferguson’s grandfather, Mario Gemello, retired in 1982, but his cousins the Obesters maintained it for another 10 years. Mario passed away in 2005, but Grandma Kay celebrated her 100th birthday last June. Kevin is taking that outline of his famil...

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When: Thu, June 2, 2022 from 6:30 PM to 7:30 PM EDT - Where: I AM Books, 124 Salem Street, Boston, MA 02113 The Italian Prisoner is an engrossing tale of wartime love, family secrets, and a young woman’s struggle to chart her own course at an inflection point in American history. This debut work of inspired by a true but little-known story involvin...

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When: 6 -7 - 8 June, 2022 from 10AM to 6PM - For the FULL PROGRAM please click HERE This initiative is aimed at the public of readers and the international publishing world (publishing houses, literary agencies, editors, translators) and it is promoted by the Italian Cultural Institute in New York directed by Fabio Finotti, with the collaboration o...

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Neeli Cherkovski, the prolific poet (most lately of ABCs and Hang On to the Yangtze River) and biographer of Charles Bukowski, first wrote a biography of Lawrence Ferlinghetti in 1979. This recently released expanded edition of Ferlinghetti, A Life includes a new foreword, epilogue and afterword, each of them alight with moving, intimate stories. I...

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When Michael Cimino died in 2016, I expressed an ardent wish to read a well-researched and sympathetic biography of him. Here it is: Charles Elton’s “Cimino: The Deer Hunter, Heaven’s Gate, and the Price of a Vision” is as engaging, as fascinating, as revelatory, and as melancholy as one might expect. The book, which was published in March by Abram...

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When: Friday, June 03, 2022 From 6:00 pm To 8:00 pm - Where: Istituto Italiano di Cultura - NY - Entrance : Free Italian sculptor Eliseo Mattiacci (1940–2019) is known for his contributions to the Arte Povera and Minimalism movements in postwar Italy. This lavishly illustrated publication is the first to focus on Mattiacci's years in Rome from the...

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My Family and the Mob: An Evening with Russell Shorto. Thursday, June 9, 2022 • 7 - 8:30 p.m. Senator John Heinz History Center | 1212 Smallman Street, Pittsburgh, PA. Register HERE. Join New York Times best-selling author Russell Shorto at the History Center for an evening of revelations drawn from his recently published book, “Smalltime: A Story...

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