Award-winning Newport News poet Ann Falcone Shalaski was born in Connecticut and "nurtured by a warm, loving, and at times loud Italian family," according to her website. Her second and newest book of poems, "Without Pretense," is dedicated to her parents, Fred and Seraphina Falcone.

It is about her everyday experiences from childhood as an Italian-American, through midlife as a woman and mother, and finally poems that chronicle the process of growing older.

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Source: http://touch.dailypress.com/