Santi Buscemi: The son of immigrants from Agrigento, Sicily, teaches English at Middlesex County College in Edison, NJ.  He has translated several works of the 19th-century Sicilian realist, Luigi Capuana, a friend of Giovanni Verga and the theorist for the school of verismo.

Buscemi has also translated Il Marchese di Roccaverdina, Capuana’s masterpiece (pending publication) as well as several of his Sicilian plays, including The Interrogation from which he will read.
    Presenting with Buscemi is Dr. William Da Rienzo, president of Da Rienzo Associates,, who teaches at Rider College and The Fashion Institute of Technology, and who has published By George, a biography of George Washington.   
    Buscemi’s Sicilian Tales, a translation of Capuana’s C’era Una Volta was published by Dante University of America Press in 2009; a bilingual edition that comprises 20 fairytales with an introduction to Sicilian literature.
Chiara Montalto: A Brooklyn native is an actress and a writer.  Based on her experiences living in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, her solo play, A Brooklyn Love Story: Emergency Used Candles, was a sell-out at Emerging Artists Theatre’s One Woman Standing Festival, in 2010. Developed with Theresa Gambacorta, it was subsequently produced at the Cherry Lane Theatre, by the Barefoot Theatre Company.  Currently directed by General Hospital star Ronnie Marmo, Montalto is in pre-production for a run at Theatre 68 in Los Angeles. On stage in New York, Montalto has appeared in Does a Tiger Wear A Necktie?, La Giara,  and The 40th Anniversary Production of Landford Wilson’s Balm in Gilead.
Visit http://www.chiaramontalto.com/
    The reading takes place Saturday, February 11, 2011, 5:45 p.m. to 7:45 p.m., at the Cornelia St. Café, 29 Cornelia Street, NYC, (212-989-9319). The evening starts with Open Mic readings of five minutes each. 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