Literary Pittsburgh

Though she lives and writes in Brooklyn, Paola Corso’s books are set in her native Pittsburgh area. She’s proud to be included on The Pennsylvania Center for the Book’s Literary and Cultural Heritage Map of Pennsylvania. Look for her listing and biography.

“Much as William Carlos Williams did with his home town of Paterson, so has Paola Corso begun the creation of a fictional version of Pittsburgh, one poem and short story at a time.”
—The Pennsylvania Center for the Book

You can take the poet out of any of 'the Pittsburgh river towns,' but you can’t take the town out of the poet. Paola Corso re-creates it for readers.”
—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“Corso literally brings us magic. She does for Pittsburgh what W.P. Kinsella did for baseball in the movie Field of Dreams.”
—WPSU TV fm BookMark

“Readers should hope Corso will continue to delight us with stories of our region.”
—Pittsburgh Magazine

About adopting Paola’s books for classroom use, here’s what one Pittsburgh professor and author had to say:

“I taught Paola Corso's surreal, humorous, and moving collection Giovanna's 86 Circles to a group of undergraduates at the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg, where the majority of students hail from southwestern PA. What a treat the book was to use. The students immediately identified with the places, characters, and conflicts of Paola's people. These are pieces capturing and celebrating working-class Italian Americans from the Pittsburgh area. Moreover, my students saw an example of a writer from our region who has successfully given the world a vision of the small towns and families of this region. So the book was not only instructive, it was also inspirational.”

Stephen Murabito
Associate Professor of English,University of Pittsburgh-Greensburg
Author of The Oswego Fugues, The Communion of Asiago, Lowering the Body