CONTRIBUTORS, Vol. I

Amber Dawn is the author of five books and the editor of three anthologies. She currently teaches creative writing at Douglas College, as well as guest mentors at several community-driven spaces by and for sex workers. Website: http://www.amberdawnwrites.com/

Michelle Alfano is the author of The Unfinished Dollhouse: A Memoir of Gender and Identity, selected as a Globe & Mail Top 100 Book, and the F.G. Bressani Award winning novel Made up of Arias. She is currently at work on her new novel Julia at the Wedding.  

Michela Baldo is a lecturer in Translation Studies at the University of Birmingham. One strand of her research revolves around Italian-Canadian writing, especially queer writing, and its translation into Italian. She is the author of Italian-Canadian Narratives of Return (2019). Another strand of her research concerns the role of translation in Italian queer feminist activism.

Elena Basile grew up in Bari, Italy, in a hybrid Italian-English family and has lived in Toronto since 1996. She teaches Literature, Translation and Queer studies at the University of Toronto and York University. Her poetry is featured in the documentary Three Women: Adapting Lives Adopting Lines (Adriana Monti, 2010).

Tina Biello was born in a small logging town, in BC, to immigrant parents from Casacalenda, Italy. She is an actor, poet and playwright. She has published three full length collections of poetry and was Poet Laureate of Nanaimo (2017-2020). She lives on Vancouver Island. Website: https://www.tinabiello.com/

Domenico A. Beneventi is Professor of Literature at Université de Sherbrooke. He is co-editor of Contested Spaces, Counter-narratives, and Culture from Below in Canada and Quebec (UTP, 2019) and La lutte pour l’espace : ville, performance, et culture d’en bas (PUM, 2017). He is director of the Équipe de recherche en études queer au Québec.

Anthony Bonato is a gay man and award-winning mathematician. In addition to his four mathematics books, his debut novel Patterns appears in 2022. Bonato is currently full Professor in the Department of Mathematics at Ryerson University. He’s served on several national research committees and recently co-chaired the first-ever LGBTQ+Math Day.

John Calabro was born in Sicily, lived in France and later came to Canada. John is an educator and published author. He has published, Bellecour, The Cousin, and An Imperfect Man (the last two were translated in French and published in Quebec, with Le Cousin being shortlisted for a GG).

Anna Camilleri has been working with performance, image, and text for over 25 years, with professional credits including book works, performance, and public artworks and installations. Camilleri is founding artistic co-director of multi-disciplinary arts organization ReDefine Arts (Est. in 2005 as Red Dress Productions). 

Frank Canino’s plays have been read,  workshopped and staged in Toronto, and across Canada and the United States including  Off-Off-Broadway.  He co-wrote the award-winning film, Looking for Angelina in addition to other film scripts.  He has also worked as a director, actor and stage manager in Canada and the United States. 

Licia Canton is the director of Creative Spaces: Queer and Italian Canadian (2021) and editor-in-chief of Accenti Magazine. She is the author of The Pink House and Other Stories (2018). For her work in culture, she received the Italy in the World Prize (2018). She holds a Ph.D. from Université de Montréal. 

Jessica Carpinone is a baker by trade and has owned and operated a bread bakery and café since 2013. She has turned to writing at every stage of life as a means of self-discovery and expression. She lives in Ottawa, on unceded Algonquin Territory, with her partner and cat.

Rachele Clemente is a queer Veneta graphic designer and occasional writer who is dedicated to intersectional social justice movement work in Tkaronto and beyond. She can most often be found working on her book which may or may not ever get published or curled up by her stereo.

Paul Coccia is the author of Cub, The Player, and coauthor with Eric Walters of the upcoming On The Line. He has a specialist in English Literature and an MFA in Creative Writing. He’s often found baking in his Toronto kitchen with his nephew and three dogs.

Liana Cusmano – writer, filmmaker, spoken word artist – works in English, French, Italian. Liana is the 2018 and 2019 Montreal Slam Champion, and author of the novel Catch & Release (2022). They wrote (and directed) Matters of Great Unimportance (2018) and La Femme Finale (2016), screened at the Cannes Film Festival.

Luis De Filippis is a Canadian-Italian trans femme filmmaker whose work celebrates otherness and employs a fierce female gaze. Their short, For Nonna Anna, won the Special Jury Prize at Sundance. Currently they are in post-production on a documentary, Mother’s Day, and are developing a fiction feature, Something You Said Last Night. 

Anthony DeFoe is an independent screenwriter who has produced a web pilot and is currently in the process of producing his first short. Thanks to his Italian immigrant grandparents his life as always been full of the food, music and traditions of southern Italy. Something he is extremely grateful for.

Vanessa Di Gregorio is a nonbinary multimedia artist & writer based on the unceded territory of Tiohtià:ke. Their work focuses on transnationalism, historical revisionism and the personal, and the inconsistencies of memory. They hold a BFA in Film Production from Concordia University. They are also the co-founder of Canadian-Italians Against Oppression (C.I.A.O.).  

Christopher DiRaddo is the author of the novels The Family Way and The Geography of Pluto. He lives in Montreal where he is the founder and host of the Violet Hour reading series and book club. Website: https://christopherdiraddo.com/

Nikki Donadio is a queer writer of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. Her work has appeared in Gertrude, Ghost City Press, Soliloquies Anthology, Plenitude and others. She holds a Master of Arts degree in Creative Writing and lives in Newmarket, Ontario. 

Matthew Fox grew up in Ontario before moving to Montreal and New York, where he received his MFA from The New School. He’s the author of the short story collection Cities of Weather. He now lives in Berlin, where he’s writing the novel from which “Toronto 1937” is excerpted.

Paolo Frascà (he/they/lui) was born in Calabria and moved to Tkaronto (Toronto) as a teenager. At the University of Toronto, he teaches in the Department of Italian Studies, is affiliated with the Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies, and runs various initiatives at the Frank Iacobucci Centre for Italian-Canadian Studies.

Phoebe Fregoli is an artist who loves to read and reread books. They are currently working on Bright Wave, a bilingual lyrical essay on identity, love, loss, language and miscommunication. 

Steve Galluccio’s play Mambo Italiano (2002) was turned into a movie, and sold in more than fifty-three countries. He is also known for the Gemini award-winning TV series Ciao Bella and the movies Funkytown (2011) and Little Italy (2018). In 2012, Galluccio released Montréal à la Galluccio.

Alessandro Giardino (Ph.D. McGill) is Associate Professor of Italian & Francophone Studies, and Chair of World Languages, Cultures, and Media at Saint Lawrence University (N.Y.). He has published two academic books, and contributed to several international volumes and journals. His first novel is forthcoming. 

Elio Iannacci is a writer, poet and arts reporter for Maclean’s. He writes for The Globe and MailThe Hollywood Reporter and The Toronto Review of Books. His award-winning profiles include Sophia Loren, Barbra Streisand, Lady Gaga, Joni Mitchell and Beyoncé. He was a juror for the Dayne Ogilvie Prize, dedicated to LGBTQ+ authors.

Erica Lenti is a Toronto-based writer and editor. She is the senior editor, politics and identities, at Xtra, Canada’s largest LGBTQ2S+ magazine. Her work has appeared in The WalrusThe Globe and MailMaclean’s and elsewhere. She lives with her partner, Arielle, and her one-eyed dog, Belle. Website: http://ericalenti.com/

Ariana Magliocco is a queer Italian-Canadian living on the traditional territory of the Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nation, the Anishinabek Nation, the Huron-Wendat, and the Métis Nation. She loves storytelling, and has her Sicilian and Laziale nonni to thank for that.

Violet Mayhew is a second-generation Italian-Canadian of Calabrese and Abruzzese descent. She has a Bachelor of Arts with a major in Psychology. She lives with her wife, Tao, and their two cats, Rosemary and Nessie. In her free time, she likes to read and paint.

Steff Juniper Mendolia (they/she) is a non-binary trans, neurodivergent, performance artist, gender and disability activist, and third-generation white settler of Southern Italian descent residing in cabbagetown, Tkaronto. They are working on a PhD in gender studies at York University. They are a lover of poetry, queer theory, and outdoor leadership and education.

Monica Meneghetti’s memoir, What the Mouth Wants was a Lambda Literary Award finalist and Bi Book Award winner. Her translation of Simone Moro’s Italian memoir, The Call of the Ice was a Banff Mountain Book Award finalist. Her translation of MP Boisvert’s The Fifth: A Love(s) Story was released in 2021. Website: https://monicameneghetti.wordpress.com/

Anna Nobile is a freelance writer and editor whose nonfiction and creative short fiction has been published in numerous newspapers, magazines, journals and anthologies. She lives, works, and plays in the traditional territory of the shíshálh people of British Columbia.

Gianna Patriarca is an award-winning author of 11 books, poetry, children’s literature and a collection of short fiction.  Her work is extensively anthologized, adapted for Canada Stage, CBC radio drama and documentaries.  Her work is on the course list of universities in Canada, USA and Italy.

Anthony Portulese is described by friends as “The Melancholic One” and by family as “The Artsy Fartsy,” the subjects of life that put some to sleep are the ones that keep Anthony up at night. A student of science, art, and law, he still has no idea what he’s doing half the time.  

Jeremy R Saunders is a queer Italian Canadian from Victoria, BC.  They graduated from the University of Victoria with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing in 2015, then moved to Dublin. They are now working as an Academic Coordinator, teaching English, and writing poetry.

Luca Cara Seccafien is an artist, writer, and community organizer living on the stolen ancestral territories of the Squamish, Musqueam, and Tsleil-Waututh people. Luca works with sequential and print based art forms as well as drawing. Their semi-autobiographical work is influenced by living in a queer, ill, femme body. Website: https://luca.caraseccafien.com/

Jonathan Settembri is a Greek/Italian-Canadian social worker in Barrie, Ontario. He has a BA (Human Rights and Equity Studies) and BSW from York University, and an MSW from Lakehead University. His research is on migration and intergenerational trauma. Since 2020, he has been active with the group “Italian-Canadians for Black Lives.”

CJ Volpe is a genderqueer individual who lives in Southern Ontario. CJ is dedicated to supporting 2SLGBTQQIA+ communities both in their professional life and volunteer work. In 2019 CJ received a YMCA Peace Medal for this reason. CJ is a “yogi,” and lives with their partner, two cats and 130-pound mastiff.

Daniel Zomparelli has published Davie Street Translations, and Rom Com co-written with Dina Del Bucchia. His collection of short stories Everything Is Awful and You’re a Terrible Person was nominated for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize and won the ReLit Short Fiction Award. Website: https://danielzomparelli.com/