Paola Corso

Paola Jo (PJ) Corso (May 28, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) is an American fiction writer, poet, photographer and literary activist. Corso is a New York Foundation for the Arts Poetry Fellow, Sherwood Anderson Fiction Award Winner,, and included on the Pennsylvania Center for the Book's Literary Map. She is the author of eight books of fiction and poetry, including 'Vertical Bridges: Poems and Photographs of City Steps,' (2020) with original photos by the author and archival photographs from the University of Pittsburgh Library; ''Catina's Haircut: A Novel in Stories'' (2010) on Library Journal’s notable list of first novels; ''Giovanna's 86 Circles And Other Stories'' (2005), a Binghamton University's John Gardner Fiction Book Award Finalist; a book of poems, ''Death by Renaissance'' (2004), and award-winning poetry collections, ''The Laundress Catches Her Breath,'' winner of the Tillie Olsen Award for Creative Writing; and ''Once I Was Told the Air Was Not for Breathing'' (2012), about Pittsburgh steelworkers and garment workers in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire and winner of a Triangle Fire Memorial Association Award.

Her books are set in the Pittsburgh area, where her Southern Italian immigrant family members worked in the steel mills. Her themes include ethnicity, the working class, social change, and magical leaps. Corso has also written poetry books about growing up near a toxic dump that was on the EPA's Superfund List, the city's history of water and air pollution, and the link between cancer and a polluted environment in the workplace. She co-edited an anthology, ''Politics of Water: A Confluence of Women's Voices'' and wrote an introductory personal essay on the subject of industrial pollution.

Corso is co-founder and resident artist of Steppin Stanzas and a member of the Park Slope Windsor Terrace Artists Collective. Formerly a writer-in-residence in Western Connecticut State University’s MFA Program in Creative and Professional Writing, Corso has also been a lecturer in Chatham University's MFA Program in Creative Writing. She splits her time between Pittsburgh and New York City where she is on the faculty of the Languages and Literature Department at Touro College. Provided by Wikipedia