Mary Melfi

Let us introduce Mary Melfi, an accomplished writer, by way of a simple question: in Canada, who establishes the literary canon? Is it a simple exercise of power? For as the essays in this collection will demonstrate, Melfi's work is not only -- to use those hanging definitions -- a work of excellence, it is so remarkably well developed in all genres from poetry to the novel, to the play, to the modern fairy tale that it deserves a recognition that has been late in coming. Melfi's work achieves importance by bringing into play displacement, irony, ethnicity, class and gender -- for being both of the times and outside of time. This is what we ask of our artists -- not to be ideologically compatible, but to be critically endowed. The contributors are Domenico D'Alessandro, William Anselmi, Lise Hogan, Francesco Loriggio, Eva Karpinski, and Marino Tuzi.