Park Slope author, Paola Corso, has a new book out, Catina’s Haircut (published by the University of Wisconsin Press), her first novel and it’s already gathering acclaim for its portrayal of the  Italian American immigrant experience, its keen insight and haunting beauty.

The book, which Corso calls a novel in four stories, spans four generations of a peasant famiy in the poverty of post-Unification southern Italy and in an immigrant neighborhood in Pittsburgh.

The women in Corso’s book dare to cross boundaries by discovering magical leaps inherent in the landscape, in themselves, and in the stories they tell and retell of family tragedy at a time of political unrest.

Paola Corso grew up in the Pittsburgh area. She is a Sherwood Anderson Fiction Award winner, a John Gardner Fiction Book Award finalist, and author of a book of poems, Death by Renaissance, and a collection of stories, Giovanna’s 86 Circles. She lives in Park Slope Brooklyn with her husband and two sons.