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, a Sons of Italy National Book Club Selection and included on Library Journal's "First Novels: Fall Firsts" notable list. 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 have appeared in literary journals and 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 Her unpublished poetry collection Oxygen for Two was a first runner-up in the Bordighera Poetry Prize judged by Donna Masini.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 New Hunger for Old: 100 Years of Italian American Poetry, Teaching Italian American Literature, Film, and Popular Culture, Sweet Lemons 2: International Writings with a Sicilian Accent, Tell: An Anthology of Expository Narrative, 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, most recently 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.