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The Association of Italian-Canadian Writers is a Canadian organization established in 1986 to promote the publications of Italian-Canadian authors.
The Association of Italian-Canadian Writers (AICW) was founded in September, 1986, in Vancouver during a conference of Italian-Canadian authors at the Italian Cultural Centre. The founding members included: Antonio D'Alfonso, Pier Giorgio Di Cicco, Dino Minni, Mary di Michele, Dore Michelut, Genni Gunn, Pasquale Verdicchio, Marco Micone, Fulvio Caccia, and Joseph Pivato. From the beginning it included authors writing in English, French or Italian and some Italian dialects. (Pivato)
At this founding meeting Joseph Pivato was selected to be president of AICW (1986-1990) and was the editor of the AICW Newsletter from 1986 to 1996, and 2003-5, an important function since the AICW has members scattered across Canada and beyond. The newsletter was trilingual to reflect the working languages for the authors. (Canton)
Since 1986, the AICW has held biennial conferences in a different city: Toronto (1988), Ottawa (1990), Montreal (1992), Winnipeg (1994), Toronto-Woodbridge (1996), Vancouver (1998), Montreal (2000), Toronto (2002), Udine, Italy (2004), Vancouver (2006), Toronto (2008), Atri, Italy (2010), Halifax (2012), Montreal (2014), and Padula, Italy (2016).
The proceedings of the 1986 founding conference were published as Writers in Transition (1990), edited by C. Dino Minni and Anna Foschi Ciampolini (Loriggio). The 2000 Montreal conference proceedings appeared as The Dynamics of Cultural Exchange (2002), ed. Licia Canton. And the 2004 Udine conference proceedings were published as Shaping History: L'Identita Italo-Canadese nel Canada Anglofono (2005) eds. Anna Pia De Luca & Alessandra Ferraro. The 2012 Halifax conference and the 2014 Montreal conference papers were gathered in Writing Cultural Difference (2015), eds. Giulia De Gasperi, Maria Cristina Seccia, Licia Canton, and Michael Mirolla. (Guernica website)
Other important publications include: Contrasts: Comparative Essays on Italian-Canadian Writing (1985 & 1991) ed. Joseph Pivato (Bonanno), which became a seminal work promoting ethnic minority writing in Canada (Padolsky).
Pivato also published, Echo: Essays on Other Literatures (1994 & 2003)(Palmateer) and edited, The Anthology of Italian-Canadian Writing (1998) (Wilke). In order to promote the literary work of Italian-Canadian authors Pivato published the following monographs: F.G. Paci: Essays on His Works (2003)(Zucchero), Mary di Michele: Essays on Her Works (2007) (Querengesser), and Pier Giorgio DiCicco: Essays on His Works (2011).
George Elliott Clarke, is a Canadian poet, playwright and literary critic who served as the Poet Laureate of Toronto from 2012 to 2015 and as the 2016–2017 Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate. His work is known largely for its use of a vast range of literary and artistic traditions, its lush physicality and its bold political substance. One of Canada's most illustrious poets, Clarke is also known for chronicling the experience and history of the Black Canadian communities of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, creating a cultural geography that he has coined "Africadia".
Mary di Michele is an Italian-Canadian poet and author. She is a professor at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec where she teaches in creative writing.
Italian Canadians comprise Canadians who have full or partial Italian heritage and Italians who migrated from Italy or reside in Canada. According to the 2021 Census of Canada, 1,546,390 Canadians claimed full or partial Italian ancestry. They comprise a subgroup of Southern European Canadians which is a further subgroup of European Canadians. The census enumerates the entire Canadian population, which consists of Canadian citizens, landed immigrants and non-permanent residents and their families living with them in Canada. Residing mainly in central urban industrial metropolitan areas, Italian Canadians are the seventh largest self-identified ethnic group in Canada behind French, English, Irish, Scottish, German and Chinese Canadians.
Pier Giorgio Di Cicco was an Italian-Canadian poet. In 2005 he became the second Poet Laureate of Toronto.
Friulianliterature is the literature of the autonomous Italian region of Friuli, written in the local Friulian language.
Carmine Starnino is a Canadian poet, essayist, educator and editor.
Bruce William Powe, commonly known as B. W. Powe, is a Canadian poet, novelist, essayist, philosopher, and teacher.
François-Joseph Bressani, (Francesco-Giuseppe),, was an Italian-born Jesuit priest who served as a missionary in New France between 1642 and 1650. At one point, he was captured by the Mohawk people and ritually tortured. Because of failing health, he returned to Italy, serving the church there.
Mary Melfi is a Canadian writer of Italian descent. She is a prolific poet, novelist, and playwright.
Guernica Editions is a Canadian independent publisher established in Montreal, Quebec, in 1978, by Antonio D'Alfonso. Guernica specializes in Canadian literature, poetry, fiction and nonfiction.
The Italian Cultural Centre is located at 3075 Slocan Street, in East Vancouver, Canada, on Slocan Street at Grandview Highway. The centre is noted to host a bar, multiple classrooms and various groups. Anna Foschi Ciampolini, as the coordinator, organized the conference at the centre that founded the Association of Italian-Canadian Writers. At its gate is a welded sculpture called Pagan by Italian sculptor Severino Trinca.
Antonio D'Alfonso is a Canadian writer, editor, publisher, and filmmaker, best known as the founder of Guernica Editions.
Caterina Edwards LoVerso is a Canadian writer and teacher. Edwards was born in Earls Barton, England. Her mother was born in Lussino, Istria, and her father is from a Welsh and English family. Edwards eventually moved to Calgary and later attended the University of Alberta in Edmonton where she earned a B.A. in English. She then went on to complete a Master of Arts in Creative Writing. After attending the University of Alberta, Caterina Edwards married an American student of Sicilian origin, and they later settled in Edmonton to start a family. Shortly after this time, Edwards' published short stories in literary journals, and anthologies, which has continued to this day.
Frank G. Paci is an Italian-Canadian novelist and former teacher who lives in the Toronto area. He has published 13 books under the name F.G. Paci.
William Anselmi is an Italian-born academic and writer. His work has focused on Italian poetry ; Italian Canadian literature and culture; narratives of displacement; the body organic/technological; the Image vs. the Word; media: television, cinema, Italian alternative music; environments of technological communication.
Joseph Pivato is a Canadian writer and academic who first established the critical recognition of Italian-Canadian literature and changed perceptions of Canadian writing. From 1977 to 2015 he was professor of Comparative Literature at Athabasca University, Canada. He is now Professor Emeritus.
Marco Micone is an Italian-Canadian playwright and journalist. He was born in Montelongo, Italy and emigrated to Montreal in 1958.
Kenneth Wayne Norris is a poet, editor and professor of Canadian literature, retired from the University of Maine. He was born in New York City to Leroy and Theresa Norris, attended Stony Brook University for his BA from 1968-1972, and then moved to Montreal to pursue his MA in English at Sir George Williams University. He chose Montreal because “Montreal sound like a magical, mystical place” and because of Leonard Cohen. He “was tired of being an anti-American American in the Nixon era, and coming to Quebec gave [him] a positive agenda, gave [him] something positive to be.” After his graduation in 1975, he spent two years in New York before returning to Montreal for his PhD in English at McGill University, supervised by Louis Dudek, who in 1992 described Norris as "the most important poet writing on the North American continent today". He became particularly interested in Canadian modernist literature, with his thesis entitled “The Role of the Little Magazine in the Development of Modernist and Post-Modernism in Canadian Poetry”.
Lisa Carducci, also Li, Shasha; Li, Sha; 李沙莎; 李莎 is a Canadian writer of Italian descent living in China.
Pasquale Verdicchio is an Italian Canadian poet, critic and translator teaching in the US at UCSD. Born in Naples, Italy, he moved to Vancouver BC in the late 60s. He received his BA from University of Victoria, MA from the University of Alberta, and PhD from the University of California. In the departments of Italian and Comparative Literature, he teaches Italian language, film and literature, and creative writing.
Bonanno, Giovanni. "Italian Made." Canadian Literature 115 (1987) 178-182.
Canton, Licia and Christl Verduyn. "Introduction: Dynamic Cultural Exchange." in The Dynamics of Cultural Exchange. ed. Licia Canton. Montreal: Cusmano Communications, 2002. 13-25.
Loriggio, Francesco. Social Pluralism and Literary History. Toronto: Guernica Editions, 1996. 7-28.
Padolsky, Enoch. "The Place of Italian-Canadian Writing." Journal of Canadian Studies. 21.8 (1986) 138-152.
Palmateer Pennee, Donna. "Inside Diasporas." Canadian Literature. 151 (1996) 185-187.
Pivato, Joseph. "Twenty Years of Change: The Paradox of AICW," Strange Peregrinations: Italian-Canadian Literary Landscapes eds. Delia De Santis, Venera Fazio, Anna Foschi Ciampolini. Toronto: Frank Iacobucci Centre for Italian-Canadian Stuides, 2007.
Querengesser, Neil. "Enlightening Essays." Canadian Literature 206 (2010) 177.
Wilke, Gundula. "Tricultural Landscape." Canadian Literature 178 (2003) 164-166.
Zucchero, Jim. "Migration as Muse." Canadian Literature 185 (23005) 177-179.
See Guernica Editions website.
