Italian Diaspora Studies

 The Writing Seminar 2026 will offer three writing workshops, led by Juliet Grames, Mark Axelrod-Sokolov, and Stephen J. Cribari, plus one workshop on Italian diaspora literature, led by Margherita Ganeri.

Novel-Prose, Workshop 1 (meets four sessions 2h each)

Bringing the Diaspora to Life on the Page

We will trace the development of a diaspora story — fiction or nonfiction — from an idea up through a finished work. We will discuss strategies for nurturing a story idea, researching and world-building, executing the written work, and polishing it for wider readership.

Session 1: The Heart of the Story. We start writing a story or essay because we have something to say. But how do we convert the burning flame of an idea into prose? This session will focus on harnessing an idea and shaping it into a work of prose.

Session 2: Research. Bringing to life a diaspora story often hinges on research, which can take many forms: text-based reading, archival visits, photo research, interviews, even (and most importantly) self-reflection. This session will focus on tips and tricks for ferreting out lost histories and crucial details that might unlock our diaspora mysteries.

Session 3: The Interview. Connections with other diaspora members, especially with elders, are precious in the pursuit and preservation of diaspora identities and stories, but bridging those connections can feel intimidating. This session will focus on strategies for conducting interviews — from casual to formal — as part of a diasporic research process. It will also delve into the ethics of using material from such interviews in one’s writing, examining such questions as ownership of story and representation versus exploitation.

Session 4: Craft and Stamina. The best works of literature pulse with a compelling rhythm on macro and micro levels. This session focuses on ways to develop craft on each of those levels, from plotting to word choice, and on methods for nurturing creative stamina for your work to carry on through hours of writing and self-editing.

Juliet Grames is the national and international bestselling author of The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna (Ecco/HarperCollins) and The Lost Boy of Santa Chionia (Knopf/Penguin Random House), as well as a forthcoming novel. Her writing has appeared in Best American Mystery & Suspense, People, Real Simple, Family Circle, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, and the Boston Globe, among other venues, and has been translated into nine languages. A proud granddaughter of Italian immigrants, she has dedicated her writing career to stories of the Italian diaspora. Grames is also SVP, Editorial Director at Soho Press, where she has curated the award-winning Soho Crime imprint and literature in translation program since 2010. Over her 20-year career as a book editor, she has acquired and edited numerous bestselling and award-winning novels. She is the recipient of the Premio Cetraro for contributions to Southern Italian literature for The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna as well as the Ellery Queen Award from the Mystery Writers of America for her editorial work.

Screenplay-Dialogue, Workshop 2 (meets two sessions 2h each)

Constructing Dialogue

Constructing Dialogue is, arguably, the most important aspect in screenwriting and, curiously, often the most ignored. Yet, there are techniques that one can rely on to write quality dialogue. Using extended clips from Rocky, Lolita, The Graduate, Pulp Fiction, Death in Venice, The Great Beauty we will focus on the techniques involved in creating dialogue that sounds like authentic conversation.

Mark Axelrod-Sokolov is a Professor of Comparative Literature at Chapman University, Orange, CA. Prior to teaching at Chapman he taught at the University of Minnesota, the University of East Anglia (UK) and Edinburgh University. He’s received Fulbright grants to study and/or teach at Oxford University, as well as Fulbright Specialist grants to teach in São Paolo, Stockholm, Torino, Aarhus (Denmark) and Athens. He’s been the Director of the John Fowles Center for Creative Writing for over two decades and has received four NEA grants for such. His last novel, The Mad Diary of Malcolm Malarkey, was published by Dalkey Archive Press in January 2023, and his novel, Cardboard Castles, was published by Old Lion Press, Kyiv in 2023. He has won over two dozen awards for his screenwriting and his work has been shortlisted twice by the Sundance Institute.

Poetry, Workshop 3 (meets two sessions 2h each)

Children of the Diaspora: Exploring the personal encounter in poetry

Session 1: The Verse Novella. Why a novella? Why a novella in verse? Blank verse or free verse? Using dialogue to develop the story, using the music and rhythm of words to develop character and personality.

Session 2: Reportage Poetry. Reportage poetry is all about epiphanies: unexpected personal revelations. It begins with an actual experience - something overheard or something seen in, as Emily Dickinson wrote, “a certain slant of light” that makes all the difference and takes the poet to “where the Meanings are.” Reportage poetry reports the experience accurately, as it happened, but in a way that can take the reader to their own epiphany, to their own moment of unexpected beauty in the mundane, to a flash of insight from the ordinariness of living.

Stephen J. Cribari’s poetry and plays have found their way into print and onto the theatrical and operatic stage in the United States and abroad. His recent poetry publications appear in The Bluebird Word (February, 2026); Fresh Words: Voices Unbound - an anthology of international poetry (2025); Freshwater Literary Journal (2025); Ganeri & Gillan eds., Writings from the Thyrrhenian Coast of Calabria (Rubbettino, 2025). His poem The Grammar Lesson was featured on Passager Magazine’s Burning Bright podcast, January 14, 2025. In a parallel life he was a criminal defense attorney and law professor.

Literature, Workshop 4 (meets two sessions 2h each)

The South of Italy in Literature

This workshop will provide a glimpse into the South of Italy’s history, which includes massive waves of emigration, through the lenses of literature. We will address such crucial questions, as the so-called Southern Question, the definition of diasporic identity in relation to displacement, the internalized colonial orientalism, the definition of Italian Diaspora Literature, the importance of positionalities and the benefits of changing them. We will reflect on the mission of this seminar and on the relationships between reading, writing and the search for roots in order to liberate creative energy.

Session 1: The Southern Question. Carlo Levi, Christ Stopped at Eboli; Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, The Leopard. References to other southern Italian writers and women writers.

Session 2: The South of Italy Seen from Abroad. Helen Barolini, Umbertina; Maria Mazziotti Gillan, selection of poems. References to other women writers of Italian heritage

Margherita Ganeri. A full Professor of Contemporary Italian Literature at the University of Calabria, she is the founding director of the Seminar Italian Diaspora Studies. She has an extensive record of publications on Italian and Italian diasporic literature in the 19th and 20th centuries, and on related issues of literary criticism and theory, with a predominant recent interest on Trauma Studies. She is on the board of directors of the journal «Moderna», and directs the book series Italian Diaspora Studies for the publisher Rubbettino. Receiver of two Fulbright fellowships, she was appointed visiting professor at Cambridge University (UK), Stony Brook University (NY, US), Italian School at Middlebury College (VT, US), University of Chicago (IL, US), Karl Ruprecht University of Heidelberg (DE), Seton Hall University (NJ, US), University of Saskatchewan (SK, CA), Fordham University (NY, US), The University of Toronto (ON, CA), and was an invited speaker at various conferences in Europe and Australia. She coordinates the annual Fulbright Lectureship in Italian American Culture and Literature at the University of Calabria.