Mary di Michele will share insight into the life of an Italian-Canadian during a speaking engagement at Brock on Thursday, Oct. 5.

The Italian-Canadian poet will also speak about self-representation and will read from her 2017 book, Bicycle Thieves.

The event, held at 11 a.m. in the Fireplace Lounge at Earp Residence, is part of the Italian Diaspora Speakers Series hosted by the Department of Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures.

A poet and author, di Michele immigrated to Toronto with her family from Lanciano, Italy, in 1955. Her work has appeared in a number of anthologies, including The New Oxford Book of Canadian Verse (1982), edited by Margaret Atwood. She began exploring the Italian-Canadian experience in her first book of poetry, Tree of August (1978), becoming a major voice among female poets and Italian-Canadian poets. She has gone on to publish more than a dozen books, including two novels.

Di Michele has received numerous awards for her work and has been writer-in-residence in several Canadian cities, as well as in Rome and Bologna. She has been a professor of creative writing at Concordia University since 1990.

Di Michele’s Brock speaking engagement, co-hosted by the Centre for Canadian Studies, is free and open to everyone.