Calabro, John

John Calabro was born in Sicily, grew up in France and came to Canada as a teen-ager. John is an educator, publisher, cultural entrepreneur, and author. He has published three novellas, Bellecour, The Cousin, and An Imperfect Man, short stories and articles. He was president and co-publisher of Quattro Books. He was president of AASC, producers of Inspire, Toronto International Book Fair. He was the vice-president of AMIA, producers of Prism Prize, a music video award show. Retired, he now continues to write and enjoys spending time with his grandchildren. John is fluent in English, French and Italian.

Canton, Licia

Licia Canton has published 12 books, including The Pink House and Other Stories (2018), Almond Wine and Fertility (2008), Vino alla mandorla e fertilità (2015). As editor-in-chief of Accenti Magazine, she organizes the “Capture an Italian Moment” photo contest. Her most recent project is the documentary Creative Spaces: Queer and Italian Canadian. She is an Honorary Fellow in Translation (2018-21) at the University of Hull. In 2019, she was Visiting Professor and Writer-in-Residence at the University of Calabria. She is past-president of the AICW. For her work in culture, she received the Premio Italia nel Mondo (2018). She holds a Ph.D. from Univeristé de Montréal.

Concilio, Carmen

Carmen Concilio is Associate Professor of English and Anglophone Literatures at the University of Torino and holds a Ph.D in English Studies from the University of Pisa. She is editor and co-editor of various scholarly works: Word and Image in Literature and the Visual Arts (2016) and Imagining Ageing: Representations of Age and Ageing in Anglophone Literatures (2018). She is a scholar in Canadian Literature and has contributed to various Italian-Canadian publications. Her main field of research and expertise is Literature and the Arts, and the Environmental Humanities.

Dagnino, Arianna

Arianna Dagnino is a Canadian writer, lecturer and literary translator of Italian origin. She has published books – both in Italian and English – of fiction and creative nonfiction, as well as on the impact of digital technologies and global mobility. Among them, The Afrikaner. A Novel (Guernica, 2019), Transcultural Writers and Novels in the Age of Global Mobility (Purdue UP, 2015), and Jesus Christ Cyberstar. At the Origins of the Internet (Ipoc, 2009). Together with her colleague Dr. Ernest Mathijs, she has also completed the screenplay based on her novel The Afrikaner. Arianna teaches Italian Studies, Creative Writing and Film Adaptation as a Sessional Lecturer at the University of British Columbia.

Patriarca, Gianna

Gianna is an award-winning author of eight books of poetry, a children’s book and a collection of short fiction. Her work is extensively anthologized, adapted for Canada Stage and CBC radio drama. Her books appear on the course list of numerous universities in Canada, USA and Italy and is featured in numerous documentaries. Italian Women and Other Tragedies is in its fourth printing and has been translated into Italian. Her collection of short fiction All My Fallen Angelas (Inanna, 2016) will soon be translated into Italian. Forthcoming with Inanna: To the men who write good bye letters (2020) and a Selected and New Works, This Way Home (2021). Gianna is currently working on her novel The Sicilian’s Bride.

Pietropaolo, Vincenzo

Born in Italy (1951), Vincenzo Pietropaolo is a photographer and writer who began his artistic career by documenting the Italian immigrant community in Canada. He has distinguished himself as a photographic bookmaker, exploring social justice issues and combining photographs with his own original writing. He has published over a dozen books, including Not Paved With Gold (Italian immigrants), Harvest Pilgrims (migrant farm workers), and Invisible No More (intellectual disabilities). In 2020, he published Where Angels Come to Earth: An Evocation of the Italian Piazza (with Mark Frutkin). In May 2021, he will publish Toronto: 50 Years of Photographs, a humanistic chronicle of his adopted city. Pietropaolo has been in over 100 solo or curated exhibitions internationally, including a permanent exhibition in the Canadian Museum for Human Rights.

Pivato, Joseph

Joseph Pivato is Professor Emeritus of Literary Studies at Athabasca University where he taught courses in comparative literature that included Italian-Canadian authors. His M.A. and Ph.D. are in Comparative Literature. He was born in Italy. In 1985 he edited Contrasts: Comparative Essays on Italian-Canadian Writing, the first critical analysis of this emerging literature. He has published Echo: Essays on Other Literatures (1994), The Anthology of Italian-Canadian Writing (1998) and books on George Elliott Clarke, Sheila Watson, Mary di Michele, Caterina Edwards, F.G. Paci, Pier Giorgio Di Cicco and other authors. He is the founding president of the Association of Italian-Canadian Writers, 1986.

Seccia, Maria Cristina

Dr Maria Cristina Seccia is a Research Fellow at the Università degli Studi di Udine where she is currently working on the research project ‘(Self-)Translating the Mother in Italian-Canadian Women’s Writing.’ She has researched on the Italian translation of Italian-Canadian literature since 2009 in different UK institutions and she has been the AICW president since 2016.