Roundtable Discussion: Three Creative Women: Penny Arcade, Joanna Clapps Herman, and Helene Stapinski

Three women artists with roots in Basilicata gather to discuss their work and shared origins. Penny Arcade (born Susana Ventura into a family hailing from Picerno) is a primal force in the New York City performance art scene. Her work explores themes including women’s sexuality and working-class and immigrant identity. Joanna Clapps Herman is a writer who has portrayed the “two worlds” she inhabited while growing up in Waterbury, Connecticut, as the child of Italian American immigrants from Avigliano and Tolve, in works including The Anarchist Bastard. Journalist Helene Stapinski’s family origins in Bernalda formed the basis of her memoir Murder in Matera, in which she investigates the life of her great-great-grandmother, who fled to the United States after a murder.

In conjunction with the exhibition BASILICATË: A Celebration of Lucanian Culture in the World