Department of English
Rita Ciresi
Rita Ciresi
Professor of English
Coordinator of Creative Writing
On Sabbatical 2009-2010
Contact
Office: CPR 320
Phone: 813/974-9570
Email:
Links
Bio
Rita Ciresi is the author of five works of fiction. Mother Rocket won the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times' Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction. Blue Italian was chosen for the Barnes and Noble Discover New Writers Series. Pink Slip was the winner of the Pirate's Alley Faulkner Prize for the Novel and an alternate selection of the Literary Guild and the Doubleday Book Club. A volume of linked short-stories, Sometimes I Dream in Italian, was a Book Sense 76 Pick and a finalist for the Paterson Fiction Prize. Remind Me Again Why I Married You, a comic novel in two voices, was published in 2003. Ciresi’s work has been translated or is forthcoming in German, Dutch, Greek, and Bulgarian. Her commentary, “America Today,” appeared in the Saturday edition of the Rome daily newspaper Europa from 2003-2006. She also writes for I-Italy, the Italian/American Digital Project, which can be found at www.i-italy.org.
Ciresi's fiction, poetry, and personal essays have appeared in numerous literary magazines, including Cosmopolitan, Creative Nonfiction, South Carolina Review, California Quarterly, and Prairie Schooner. Her work has been included in anthologies published by Penguin, William Morrow, Hyperion, Legas, Mammoth Books, Purdue University Press, Welcome Press, Other Press, and the Feminist Press. She has received support for her work from the Ragdale Foundation, American Academy in Rome, Hawthornden International Retreat for Writers, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the University of South Florida, Hollins College, and the state arts council in Florida, Virginia, and Pennsylvania.
Ciresi is professor of English and coordinator of creative writing at the University of South Florida, where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. Visit her website at www.ritaciresi.com.
Education
M.F.A., Penn State University
Specialty Area
Fiction writing; creative writing; contemporary literature; ethnic literature; creative nonfiction writing