Born in San Mateo, California, Luisa Giulianetti was raised on her parents’ and grandparents’ immigrant stories, memories and lore shared at the kitchen table, and books that transported her to countless places. She holds degrees from Santa Clara University and UC San Diego, where she began her career as an educator. Since 1994, Luisa has worked at UC Berkeley, teaching and directing programs for undergraduates.

Her writing appears in Brilliant Corners, CALYX, HerStry, Italian Americana, Motherscope, Ploughshares, Rattle, River Heron Review, Tule Review, and VIA. She and her husband live in Kensington, California, and they are the proud parents of two children.

Agrodolce is her first book.

Kneading

Nonna Maria Grazia

Burying three children and a young husband
shapes a woman, shrinks the world to a room.
Ghosts share space, hide in book spines.
She measures the survivors, their breaths

like handfuls of flour added to proofed yeast
Kneading oxygen, she pushes supple dough
pulls it in. Folds seams of memory and kin.
Scored loaves left to rise under baby quilts.

She washes bowls and scours pans.
Dresses baked bread with oil. Soup
awaits their arrival. Serving slow time
she bargains with saints for safe passage.

A century of waiting: dough to rise, doors
to open. Love knots what it cannot free.

Terri Dawn Kent is a Pushcart-nominated writer, poet, and occasional vocalist. Her poetry and prose has appeared in Brevity, River Teeth, The San Pedro River Review, One Art, Barnstorm, and more. Recently, she collaborated with Brian Turner and The Retro Legion on two albums. Also recently, her piece, "My Father Becomes a Bird," was nominated for Best American Essays and is being used in Wake Forest University's Narrative Medicine program. Currently, she is working on what she plans to be her first book of poems. www.terridawnkent.com

Frank Gioia is a short story writer, actor and playwright. His recently published memoir, The Mercury Man: Remembering Brooklyn, is a collection of personal narratives about coming of age on the streets of Brooklyn in the 1950s, in a Brooklyn that no longer exists. He also introduces us to the year he served in Vietnam in the 1960s. His work has been published in the on-line magazine, Ovunque Siamo, as well as The Artful Mind and an Anthology of Veterans' Voices. A staged reading of his play, 14 Holy Martyrs, was performed in Great Barrington, Massachusetts in 2016. He has read his work in the Berkshires, the Twin Cities, Sacramento and the Sierra Foothills.

January 14, 2021 Frank Stanford: A Talk by John Amen, Greg Brownderville, & John Erwin

2020

November 31, 2020 MALDEF Reading