Francine Masiello reads from The Tomb of the Divers: A Novel (Bordighera Press, 2024) Suzanne Uttaro Samuels reads from Seeds of the Pomegranate: A Novel (Sibylline Press, 2025)

Moving beyond tales of Southern Italian poverty and deprivation, The Tomb of the Divers weaves an immigrant yarn about small-time artists and crooks who, over the course of a century, wend their way from Basilicata to the anarchist enclaves of Paterson, New Jersey, and from Fascist Italy to Buenos Aires after Argentina’s Dirty War. This multigenerational story is told by Rosanna and Max, siblings locked in unreliable-narrative rivalry. Masiello takes as an organizing principle the confounding old Italian saying, “It’s not true, but I believe it.”

Seeds of the Pomegranate tells the story of Mimi Inglese, an Italian noblewoman in early twentieth-century Sicily. A talented painter, she dreams of escaping the rigid expectations of her class and attending the Palermo Art Academy. But when those ambitions are shattered, she and her family leave for New York City in search of a fresh start. Instead of opportunity, Mimi finds herself pulled into the dark underbelly of city life and her father’s money-laundering scheme, reluctantly contributing via her flair for forgery. Beset by turmoil in and outside the family, she must flee before she is trapped forever.

Discussion led by Siân Gibby, John D. Calandra Italian American Institute.