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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).
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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.
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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”.
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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.