Paola Corso, a New York Foundation for the Arts Poetry Fellow and Sherwood Anderson Fiction Award Winner, is the author of eight books of poetry and fiction set in her native Pittsburgh where her Southern Italian immigrant family worked in steel mills. Her recent books include Vertical Bridges: Poems and Photographs of City Steps, exploring her family’s ethnicity and working-class background; The Laundress Catches Her Breath, winner of the Tillie Olsen Award in Creative Writing; Catina’s Haircut: A Novel in Stories, and Once I Was Told the Air Was Not for Breathing, a 2018 Triangle Fire Memorial Association Awardee invited to read her poetry about garment and steel workers in universities across the country. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, Women's Review of Books, and numerous journals. A literary activist, Corso is co-founder of Steppin Stanzas, a grant-awarded poetry and art project celebrating city steps and the early immigrants who built them. She is proud to be included on the Pennsylvania Center for the Book’s Literary and Cultural Map. Corso splits her time between New York City and Pittsburgh. www.paolacorso.com.