by Annie Landenberger | Mar 18, 2021 | Reprinted from The Brattleboro Commons, Reviews, The First Glass
An immigration story dodges conventions Written by Annie Landenberger In his new novel, ‘Sicilian Dreams,’ Marlboro novelist Vincent Panella tells broad truths about his Italian American roots. “He couldn’t take his children back home where the March winters blew on...
by Vincent Panella | Nov 14, 2020 | Reviews
Sicilian Dreams, a novel by Vincent Panella, New York: Bordighera Press 2020. Reviewed by Nino Provenzano Sicilia Parra Bi-annual Newsletter of Arba Sicula: An International Organization that Promotes the Language and Culture of Sicily Volume XXXII, No. 2, Fall 2020...
by Vincent Panella | May 7, 2020 | The First Glass
It’s quiet on the Augur Hole Road, but not as quiet as during those Hurricane Irene days when the brook across from our house was one foot above road level and racing down the valley with its flotsam of trees and twisted culverts. After the storm there was an eerie...
by Vincent Panella | May 5, 2020 | The First Glass
Once long ago I needed a job. A friend had just quit as a reporter for a large Midwest newspaper and he suggested I take his place. I’d never worked as a news reporter, but I’d taken a J-School course and had recently written a piece about racing pigeons...
by Vincent Panella | May 4, 2020 | The First Glass
There’s a Hemingway story called Now I Lay Me in which he fears sleeping at night ever since he was struck by a mortar during World War I – ‘blown up’ as he puts it. To fall asleep in darkness would cause his soul “to fly out of his body,’ that is, he would...
by Vincent Panella | May 3, 2020 | The First Glass
She was sitting in front of the TV, remote in hand, water, books, and pills on the side table. She lowered the sound when he came in and sat, his back hurting from the day’s work.I don’t think I’ll be able to get up.You poor thing.Bent over a sink...
by Vincent Panella | May 2, 2020 | The First Glass
Twain didn’t like it when he had a situation but no story. Tell that to any writer.As a college student I worked summers in my father’s bar in upstate New York. Newburgh was a poor Hudson River town with such social ills that my father’s business would soon become a...
by Vincent Panella | May 1, 2020 | The First Glass
DEMOLITIONPrimo Levi’s Moments of Reprieve is a story collection based on his one-year stay in Auschwitz. The stories follow his other writings about the experience, and for those those who don’t know, Levi was an Italian Jew and trained chemist. In 1943 he joined a...
by Vincent Panella | Apr 30, 2020 | The First Glass
HELL AND BACKIn A Playboy’s Life, Anthony Valerio tells the story of an ordinary man who, almost without effort, finds himself in an extraordinary situation. This lively and skillfully written biography takes as its subject John Aimola, a son of Italian immigrants who...
by Vincent Panella | Nov 6, 2019 | The First Glass
Palm Sunday, 2019, Centre Congregational Church, Brattleboro.This is my short speech to the congregation as a Loaves and Fishes volunteer.Good morning, and thank you. My name is Vincent Panella, and I’m a retired teacher and a writer. I’ve been living in Vermont since...
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