Rita Ciresi

Last updated
Rita Ciresi
Born1961 (age 6162)
New Haven, Connecticut, U.S.
OccupationNovelist - Short Stories
Education Pennsylvania State University (MFA)
Period1993–present
SubjectWomen's Fiction - Romantic Comedy - Memoir - Illness and Grief
Notable worksMother Rocket - Pink Slip - Blue Italian
Notable awards2002 Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction - 2017 Jeanne Leiby Memorial Chapbook Series Award
Website
www.ritaciresi.com

Rita Ciresi (born in 1961) is an American short story writer and novelist. She is the author of three award-winning novels that address the Italian-American experience. [1]

Contents

Early life and career

Ciresi was born in New Haven, Connecticut, a city which serves as the backdrop for most of her fiction. [1] She attended Penn State University, and graduated with an M.F.A. [2]

Ciresi is the author of several novels, short stories, and pieces of flash fiction that have appeared in magazines such as Cosmopolitan , Creative Nonfiction , Brevity, South Carolina Review , California Quarterly, and Prairie Schooner . She has also had anthologies published by Penguin , Purdue University Press , and Feminist Press . She has written romantic comedies, such as Love on Longboat Key, under the pen name of Meg West. Her fiction has been translated or optioned for translation in German, Dutch, Greek, Polish, and Bulgarian. [2] Ciresi is well regarded for her writing style, and on her novel Pink Slip, she is appreciated for her ability to mix the tragic and the comic aspects of love in a hilarious fashion. [3]

Ciresi has received support from the state arts council of Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Florida. She has been in residence at the American Academy in Rome, Hawthornden International Writers' Retreat, Sozopol Fiction Seminars, Martha's Vineyard Writers Residency, Virginia Center for the Arts, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Santa Fe Art Institute, and the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation. She has written the first and final drafts of most of her work at the Ragdale Foundation. [4]

Ciresi has served as a fiction editor of 2 Bridges Review, an annual published by New York City College of Technology. She currently rests as a retired faculty of the University of South Florida, where she was a professor emerita. Her primary mission was to work alongside her prose students in a supportive and nurturing environment to help them produce their visions of a first book. Ciresi served as director of M.F.A. theses that resulted in publication and worked alongside award-winning former students. [2]

Bibliography

Collections and Novels

Meg West's Romantic Comedies

Awards

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rita Coolidge</span> American singer (born 1945)

Rita Coolidge is an American recording artist. During the 1970s and 1980s, her songs were on Billboard magazine's pop, country, adult contemporary, and jazz charts, and she won two Grammy Awards with fellow musician and then-husband Kris Kristofferson. Her recordings include "(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher," "We're All Alone", "I'd Rather Leave While I'm in Love", and the theme song for the 1983 James Bond film Octopussy: "All Time High".

The Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction is an annual prize awarded by the University of Georgia Press in to a North American writer in a blind-judging contest for a collection of English language short stories. The collection is subsequently published by the University of Georgia Press. The prize is named in honor of the American short story writer and novelist Flannery O'Connor.

Mary Dorcey is an Irish writer and poet, winner of the Rooney Prize for Irish Fiction, a feminist, LGBT+ activist, and elected member of the Aosdána.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marcella Hazan</span> Italian-born American cookbook author

Marcella Hazan was an Italian cooking writer whose books were published in English. Her cookbooks are credited with introducing the public in the United States and the United Kingdom to the techniques of traditional Italian cooking. She was considered by chefs and fellow food writers to be the doyenne of Italian cuisine.

Mary Stolz was an American writer of fiction for children and young adults. She received the 1953 Child Study Association of America's Children's Book Award for In a Mirror, Newbery Honors in 1962 for Belling the Tiger and 1966 for The Noonday Friends, and her entire body of work was awarded the George G. Stone Recognition of Merit in 1982.

Joy Williams is an American novelist, short-story writer, and essayist. Her notable works of fiction include State of Grace, The Changeling, and Harrow. Williams has received a Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts, a Rea Award for the Short Story, a Kirkus Award for Fiction, and a Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction.

Jeanne Leiby was an American teacher, fiction writer and literary magazine editor. Leiby's short stories were published in several U.S. literary journals, including Fiction, Indiana Review, The Greensboro Review, and New Orleans Review. In 2000, she won the Poets and Writers Writer Exchange. Her first collection of short stories, Downriver, was published by Carolina Wren Press as the 2006 winner of the Doris Bakwin prize. Leiby also served as fiction editor of Black Warrior Review and as the Editor in Chief of the Florida Review (2004–2007). In Spring 2008, she took over as editor of The Southern Review at LSU in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Enid Shomer is an American poet and fiction writer. She is the author of five poetry collections, two short story collections and a novel. Her poems have appeared in literary journals and magazines including The Atlantic Monthly, Poetry, Paris Review, The New Criterion, Parnassus, Kenyon Review, Tikkun, and in anthologies including The Best American Poetry. Her stories have appeared in The New Yorker, New Stories from the South, the Year's Best, Modern Maturity, New Letters, Prairie Schooner, Shenandoah, and Virginia Quarterly Review. Her stories, poems, and essays have been included in more than fifty anthologies and textbooks, including Poetry: A HarperCollins Pocket Anthology. Her book reviews and essays have appeared in The New Times Book Review, The Women's Review of Books, and elsewhere. Two of her books, Stars at Noon and Imaginary Men, were the subjects of feature interviews on NPR's Morning Edition and All Things Considered. Her writing is often set in or influenced by life in the State of Florida. Shomer was Poetry Series Editor for the University of Arkansas Press from 2002 to 2015, and has taught at many universities, including the University of Arkansas, Florida State University, and the Ohio State University, where she was the Thurber House Writer-in-Residence.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elizabeth Sims</span> American novelist

Elizabeth Sims is an American writer, journalist, and contributing editor at Writer's Digest magazine. She is a former correspondent for the Sarasota Herald-Tribune and author of two series of crime novels, including her Rita Farmer Mystery Series, originally published by St. Martin's Press Minotaur and Lillian Byrd Crime Series, originally published by Alyson Books. She has also published a stand-alone novel, Crimes in a Second Language, under her personal imprint, Spruce Park Press. Crimes in a Second Language was awarded the Silver Medal for General Fiction in the Florida Book Awards 2017. Her nonfiction works include You've Got a Book in You: A Stress-Free Guide to Writing the Book of Your Dreams, published by Writer's Digest Books, articles, short stories, poems, and essays for magazines and books. She also serves as a coach and mentor for new and aspiring writers and offers keynote speeches and presents workshops at writer's conferences around North America.

Chavisa Woods is a New York City-based author, and winner of the Shirley Jackson Award.

Laura M. McCullough is an American poet and writer living in the state of New Jersey. McCullough is the author of seven published collections and is the founding editor of Mead: the Magazine of Literature and Libations. She was a finalist for the 2016 Miller Williams Poetry Prize.

Bonnie Jo Campbell is an American novelist and short story writer. Her most recent work is Mothers, Tell Your Daughters, published with W.W. Norton and Company.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jesse Lee Kercheval</span> American poet (born 1956)

Jesse Lee Kercheval is an American poet, memoirist, translator and fiction writer. She is an emeritus professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She is the author of numerous books, notably Building Fiction, The Museum of Happiness, Space and Underground Women.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Debra Monroe</span>

Debra Monroe is an American novelist, short story writer, memoirist, and essayist. She has written seven books, including two story collections, a collection of essays, two novels, and two memoirs, and is also editor of an anthology of nonfiction. Monroe has been twice nominated for the National Book Award, is a winner of the prestigious Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, and was cited on several "10 Best Books" lists for her nationally-acclaimed memoir, On the Outskirts of Normal: Forging a Family Against the Grain.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">J. T. Ellison</span> American writer

J. T. Ellison is a New York Times bestselling American author. She writes domestic noir and psychological thrillers, the latter starring Nashville Homicide Lt. Taylor Jackson and medical examiner Dr. Samantha Owens. She also pens the "A Brit in the FBI" series with #1 New York Times bestselling author Catherine Coulter. With over a million books in print, Ellison's work has been published in twenty-eight countries and sixteen languages. She is also the co-host of the Emmy Award-winning television series, A Word on Words, which airs on Nashville Public Television. Ellison is also the founder of Two Tales Press, an independent publishing house, and The Wine Vixen, a wine review website. She lives with her husband in Nashville, Tennessee.

Rita Mae Reese is an American poet, fiction writer, and marketing director at Headmistress Press, an independent publisher of chapbooks and full-length collections by lesbian poets.

SJ Sindu is a genderqueer Sri Lankan American novelist and short story writer. Her first novel, Marriage of a Thousand Lies, was released by Soho Press in June 2017, won the Publishing Triangle Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction, and was named an American Library Association Stonewall Honor Book. Her second novel, Blue-Skinned Gods, was released on November 17, 2021, also by Soho Press. Her second chapbook Dominant Genes, which won the 2020 Black River Chapbook Competition, is being released in February 2022 by Black Lawrence Press. Her middle-grade fantasy graphic novel, Shakti, is forthcoming from HarperCollins. Her work has been published in Brevity, The Normal School, The Los Angeles Review of Books, apt, Vinyl Poetry, PRISM International, VIDA, Black Girl Dangerous, rkvry quarterly, and elsewhere. Sindu was a 2013 Lambda Literary Fellow, holds an MA from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and a PhD in Creative Writing from Florida State University. She currently teaches Creative Writing at University of Toronto Scarborough.

Maureen Seaton is an American LGBTQ poet, activist, and professor emeritus of English/Creative Writing at the University of Miami. She is the author of fourteen solo books of poetry, thirteen co-authored books of poetry, and her memoir, Sex Talks to Girls. Throughout her writing career, Seaton has often collaborated with fellow poets Denise Duhamel, Neil de la Flor, Kristine Snodgrass, Samuel Ace, Aaron Smith, Nicole Tallman, Carolina Hospital, Nicole Hospital-Medina, and Holly Iglesias.

Ellen J. Levy is an American writer and academic who is an associate professor of English at Colorado State University. Her collection of short stories, Love, In Theory, was published in 2012, and her first novel, The Cape Doctor, in 2021 to positive reviews.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rosemary Daniell</span> American poet and writer

Rosemary Daniell is an American second-wave feminist poet and author. She is best known for her controversial poetry collection, A Sexual Tour of the Deep South and memoirs Fatal Flowers: On Sin, Sex, and Suicide in the Deep South and Sleeping with Soldiers: In Search of the Macho Man.

References

  1. 1 2 "Rita Ciresi". www.fantasticfiction.com. Retrieved 2023-08-10.
  2. 1 2 3 "Rita Ciresi". www.usf.edu. Retrieved 2023-08-10.
  3. Ciresi, Rita (1999-12-28). Pink Slip. Delta. ISBN   978-0-385-32363-5.
  4. "About". Rita Ciresi. Retrieved 2023-08-10.
  5. "BOOK TALK". Tampa Bay Times. Retrieved 2023-08-10.
  6. awardsarchive_e47t1f (2020-03-25). "1993 Los Angeles Times Book Prize - First Fiction Winner and Nominees". Awards Archive. Retrieved 2023-08-11.
  7. "Pink Slip by Rita Ciresi". www.publishersweekly.com. Retrieved 2023-08-10.
  8. "Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction". Georgia Press. Retrieved 2023-08-10.
  9. "Jeanne Leiby Memorial Chapbook Series". The Florida Review. Retrieved 2023-08-10.
  10. "Rita Ciresi". Rita Ciresi. Retrieved 2023-08-11.
  11. "Anywhere in the World – Accenti Magazine". 2022-06-30. Retrieved 2023-08-11.

Fiction

Non-Fiction

Anthologies