Of Paola Corso’s  latest book, Catina’s Haircut, Gioia Timpanelli writes: "Here are important stories of loss and retrieval in an Italian family.

We become witnesses to the courageous and undeniably Italian struggle of the last century's immigrants and consequently to that constant spark of human spirit in all people." Catina’s Haircut: A Novel in Stories was recently a Sons of Italy National Book Club selection and on the Library Journal's  Fall Firsts Recommended List.
Corso was born in the Pittsburgh area where her Southern Italian immigrant family found work in the steel mill. The author of Giovanna’s 86 Circles And Other Stories, she is a John Gardner Fiction Book Award Finalist, and of her first book of poems, Death by Renaissance, the Indiana Review notes "Few books address the anxiety of moving between classes and the assimilation of second-generation immigrants with such urgency and poetic capability.”      New poetry collections -- The Laundress Catches Her Breath and Once I Was Told the Air Was Not for Breathing are forthcoming in 2012. Corso's work has received the Sherwood Anderson Fiction Award and a New York Foundation for the Arts Poetry Fellowship. She lives in Brooklyn and is a writer-in-residence in Western Connecticut State University’s MFA program. Visit www.paolacorso.com

Lisa Marie Basile is the author of A Decent Voodoo, forthcoming from Cervena Barva Press; her chapbook White Spiders was published last year (Gold Wake Press).  Basile’s work has appeared in several literary journals, including Feile-Festa, elimae, Moon Milk Review, The Foundling Review and others. Editor of Caper Literary Journal, a monthly journal of prose, art and poetry, and edited the anthology Vwa: Poems For Haiti, a project dedicated to literature related to the Earthquake in Haiti.
    Currently she is an MFA candidate at The New School, is interning with PEN American Center's Prison Writing Program and is a member of the arts organization, The Poetry Brothel under the stage name Luna Liprari. Visit www.lisamariebasile.com; or www.ifinfinity.blogspot.com

    The reading takes place Saturday, January 8, 2011, 5:45 p.m. to 7:45 p.m., at the Cornelia St. Café, 29 Cornelia Street, NYC, (212-989-9319); www.corneliastreetcafe.com. The evening starts with Open Mic readings of five minutes each. IAWA is a 501(3)©not-for-profit corporation. Since 1991, the organization has given voice to writers through its Open Reading series at Cornelia St. Café every month. For membership information, visit www.iawa.net