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Author Biography
 Paola
(P.J.) Corso is an award-winning fiction writer, poet, and essayist. Her honors
include a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship in poetry and the Sherwood
Anderson Fiction Award as well as The
Jerome Lowell DeJur Award for
Creative Writing and The Alice and Irwin Stark Short Fiction Prize from The City
College of New York where she earned her master's degree in creative writing.
She is the author most recently of Catina's
Haircut: A Novel in Stories.
Her
short story collection Giovanna's 86 Circles
was named a "Best Short Stories of 2005" Selection in the Montserrat Review, a
John Gardner Fiction Book Award Finalist, and on the Pennsylvania School
Librarians Association's "Top 40 Young Adult Fiction Titles List." She is also
the author of two collections of poems, Death by
Renaissance and
A Proper Burial, set in her native
Pittsburgh
where her Italian
immigrant grandfather and father worked in the steel mill.
She is co-editor
along with Dr. Nandita Ghosh of a special issue
Politics of Water: A Confluence of
Women's Voices in International Feminist Journal of Politics published by Routledge Press.
Paola Corso's poetry collections The Laundress Catches Her Breath and
Once I Was Told the Air Was Not for Breathing are forthcoming in 2012
with CavanKerry Press and the University of Wisconsin's Parallel Press.
Her unpublished poetry collection Oxygen for Two was a first runner-up in the
Bordighera
Poetry Prize
judged by Donna Masini.
Her fiction, poetry,
and essays have appeared in anthologies such as Days I
Moved Through Ordinary Sound: The Teachers of WritersCorps in Poetry and Prose,
Wild Dreams: The Best of Italian Americana, Foods of Affection, The Best Travel
Writing of 2006, Chance of a Ghost, Getting By: Narratives of
Working Lives, O Taste and See: Food Poems, Sudden Stories,
and the anthology 30 Days in Italy.
Other publication credits include Writer's Digest, The Writer,
The Progressive,
USA TODAY, The Christian
Science Monitor, U.S Catholic, Feminist Studies, Women's
Studies Quarterly, Italian Americana, Voices in Italian Americana,
Women's Review of Books, Subtropics, Sentence:
a journal of prose poetics, Beloit Poetry Journal, The New Delta Review, Connecticut Review,
Western Pennsylvania History, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and The
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Paola Corso has read her work at such venues across the country as The New York
Public Library, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, the Calandra Institute for
Italian American Studies, the American Labor Museum, the Heinz Regional History
Center of Western Pennsylvania, The International Student and Scholar Institute
at Northeastern University, International Women's Day/Women at Work at Montclair
State University, Bookwoman, and the National Organization of Italian American
Women, New Jersey Association of School Librarians, Keystone State Reading
Association, Chatham College, Pennsylvania Council for the Teachers of English
Conference, The Water Institute at Oregon State University, Barnes & Noble
Educator's Week, PEN American Writing Institute, SUNY Stony Brook, and
Philadelphia Writers House.
She has
presented workshops and participated in author panel discussions at conferences
of Associated Writing Programs, the Center for Working Class Studies,
Pennsylvania School Librarian Association, American Italian Historical
Association, Gemini Ink, PennWriters, Ligonier Valley Writers, and The Writers
Center.
She has taught writing
in the community with the National Endowment for the Arts WritersCorps
administered by the Bronx Council on the Arts and the National Writers Union New
York Local, and at the university level, currently as a writer-in-residence in
Western
Connecticut
State
University's
Low-Residency MFA Program in Creative and Professional Writing.
Paola earned her bachelor's degree from
Boston
College, a
master's in creative writing from The City College of New York–City University
of New York, and a master's in public administration from
San Francisco
State
University. A native
of
Pittsburgh, she now
lives in Brooklyn
with playwright Michael Winks and sons
Giona and Mario.
For more
about Paola Corso's fiction and poetry, read her columns on the
Other Works
page and
an
Interview.
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