Penelope (Crossings, 30)

Silvana La Spina was born in 1945 in the province of Padua to a Venetian mother and Sicilian father. This split cultural heritage characterizes La Spina's life as well as her literary oeuvre. Author of over a dozen books of fiction and non-fiction, La Spina's publications include L'ultimo treno da Catania (1992), Quando Marte è in Capricornio (1994), La creata Antonia (2001), La mafia spiegata ai miei figli (ed anche ai figli degli altri) (2006), La continentale (2014), L'uomo che veniva da Messina (2015), and, most recently Sorella detective (2020). Over the course of her literary career, La Spina has contributed articles on cultural and literary topics to numerous Italian newspapers; and, in 1993, La Spina received the prestigious Premio letterario Piero Chiara for her novel Scirocco. Invested in examining a logic of domination and propelled by a desire for creative resistance and change, La Spina's writings represent a unique and important voice in Italian literature of late 20th and early 21st centuries.

Anna Chiafele is an Associate Professor of Italian Studies at Auburn University, in Alabama. Her monograph Sfumature di giallo nell'opera di Luigi Malerba was published by Rubbettino in 2016. Chiafele has published scholarly articles on Italian writers, such as Luigi Malerba, Massimo Carlotto, Elisabetta Bucciarelli, Ugo Riccarelli, and Antonio Scurati. Her articles appear in Italica, Quaderni di Italianistica, Rivista di Studi Italiani and Ecozon@. Her most recent interests focus on Italian climate fiction in conjunction with material ecocriticism.

Lisa Pike holds a PhD in Comparative Literature. She has worked and studied in Italy and France, and currently resides in Canada. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies including CV2, The New Quarterly, Riddle Fence, Re: Generations: Canadian Women Poets in Conversation, and VIA: Voices in Italian Americana. She is the author of a poetry chapbook Policeman's Alley, and the novel My Grandmother's Pill (Guernica Editions, 2014).