I am a scholar, writer, and educator. Born and raised in Sicily, I studied at the University of Catania before moving to the United States, where I earned an M.A. and Ph.D. in English at the University of Miami.

I work in the field of Italian American studies and am the author of Writing with an Accent: Contemporary Italian American Women Authors (Palgrave, 2002) and, in Italian, of Dire l'indicibile: il memoir delle autrici italo americane. Much of my work has been collaborative, including interviews I have conducted with Italian and Italian American writers and artists such as Nancy Savoca and Marisa Tomei. I have coedited six anthologies: The Milk of Almonds: Italian American Women Writers on Food and Culture (with Louise DeSalvo), Italian American Writers on New Jersey (with Jennifer Gillan and Maria Mazziotti Gillan), Teaching Italian American Literature, Film, and Popular Culture (with Kathleen Zamboni McCormick), Embroidered Stories: Interpreting Women's Domestic Needlework from the Italian Diaspora (with Joseph Sciorra), Personal Effects: Essays on the Work of Louise DeSalvo (with Nancy Caronia), and Talking to the Girls: Intimate and Political Essays on the Triangle Fire (with Mary Anne Trasciatti), winner of the 2023 Susan Koppelman Award in feminist studies. Its Italian translation, Le ragazze della Triangle, appeared in 2025.

I have championed the recognition of Italian and Italian American women writers, working with publishers to return classics such as Tina De Rosa's Paper Fish, Helen Barolini's Umbertina, and Louise DeSalvo's Vertigo to print with my accompanying essays. I have served as coeditor of Transformations: The Journal of Inclusive Scholarship and Pedagogy and poetry editor of The Women's Studies Quarterly, and I have coedited special issues of Leggendaria and TutteStorie.

My creative writing appears in anthologies and magazines including The Adroit Journal, Barrow Street, Creative Nonfiction, and Words Without Borders, and in Italy in El Ghibli, DWF, and the volume Padri.

In 1996 I joined the English Department at New Jersey City University, where I developed courses on the memoir, including speculative memoir, the flash, and the Triangle Fire. In 2026 NJCU merged with Kean University, where I am a Professor of English. I lead memoir workshops for writers of all backgrounds and levels. My work in memoir owes much to my long collaboration with the late Louise DeSalvo.

I live in New Jersey.