Antonia Burgato

Seeds of a Nation

For the U.S. Economy to flourish to its full potential, outdated immigration policy must be modernized.” In it, significant contributions by immigrants are illustrated and immigration myths are debunked. […]

Where to Find Inspiration

A flower growing out of a crack in the canyon wall caught my attention—a lonely flower, a toadflax with delicate lavender petals and a white center, reached skyward. It seemed to be out of place in this parched landscape, yet it thrived. […]

An Author’s Guide to Getting and Using Book Reviews by David Wogham

Writing book reviews is a challenge for many indie authors. Yet, it is an essential skill to learn early on in any publishing venture. In The Book Review Companion: An Author’s Guide to Getting and Using Book Reviews, David Wogham explains the process of getting reviews and why they are essential in a step-by-step manner. From finding the right reviewers to rules and ethics of the game, this guide is requisite in all publishing endeavors.

Quotes to Fit the Day

September 9, 2020“To have compassion for those who suffer is a human quality which everyone should possess, especially those who have required comfort themselves in the past and have managed to find it in others. ”― Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron May 11, 2020 You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them― Ray Bradbury The corona virus (COVID-19) pandemic has caused the largest number of shutdowns of businesses worldwide and changed life as we know it. In the first week of April, more than half of the world’s population has received orders to […]

Social Isolation During Pandemics

Booccaccio’s Decameron shows us how ten people entertained themselves while on isolation for ten days during the Black Plague. […]

Wordsworth and Daffodils

Each year, around spring, when the daffodils are out, I think of William Wordsworth’s poem “I wondered Lonely as a Cloud,” written in 1804. This poem has become my prayer at every spring celebration table, such as Easter Day dinner. I grew up a Catholic, and that’s my way of celebrating rebirth and renewed hope although I don’t practice religion. I practice tradition. There is joy and optimism in this poem that makes me soar through the clouds and see the earth below carpeted with colors. There’s a light breeze—music to the flowers—and daffodils dance with the blades of grass […]

Humanism or Religious Dogma

I was born a Humanist in a religious household, and that created a battle between the values taught at home and school and my developing mind. Parents and church would like say that I was born a Catholic, that I have no choice about that just as much as children born into a Jewish family or in any other faith have no choice about their religion. My mother sent me to Sunday school to learn Catechism with the same fervor and duty that parents of any religion instruct their children in the Torah if they are Jewish, in the Qur’an […]

Structure of a Novel

Lessons on Structure Learned from Writing My First Book If there’s one lesson I learned about how to structure a novel is that it involved a lot more than the basic five elements of plot shown in the classic diagram of building a novel. It took me more than ten years to write my debut book Canaries Can’t Cry, but the real writing was done in less than a year. Most of the time was spent in learning how to write a novel. By that, I mean to build the structure, the framework that would keep my family biography from […]

Blog

Interview with an Immigrant

Canaries Can’t Cry Anchored in the Adriatic is the tiny island called Sansego, where people live their lives in heavy labor, faith, and superstition, working the land from cockcrow to vespers and the sea from vespers to cockcrow. This is the birthplace of author Antonia Burgato who, in Canaries Can’t Cry, stitches the stories her mother told of life on the island that, in part one, spans the time between two world wars. The author’s voice changes in the second part, as she comes of age in an America of President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Elvis Presley and becomes an adult during […]

The Challenge of Writing in a Second Language

Writing in a second language is a challenge, for sure, but the result is often superior to that of writing in the comfort of the first language. Samuel Beckett, the Irish playwright and novelist, said that he wrote in French “out of a need to be ill equipped.” Indeed, there’s something to that. I am never comfortable writing in either of the two languages that I speak fluently. Italian is my native language, but my knowledge of it has never progressed beyond the basic communicative level necessary to carry on a social conversation. So for me writing in that language […]

Galani Venice Style

It is a common occurrence in social gatherings to place of big bowl of galani in the center of the table with a jug of red wine, much the way Americans would put a bowl of potato chips and a pitcher of beer, except that the galani are always homemade. I fully embrace my American culture now together with my Veneto-Dalmatian heritage, and on, occasion, I heartily put of bowl of potato chips and a pitcher of beer on the table. […]

The Art of a Good Impression

La bella figura is a uniquely Italian concept of living with dignity and difficult for outsiders to comprehend. […]