Saturday, September 22. 2:00 pm Garibaldi-Meucci Museum - 420 Tompkins Avenue, Staten Island, NY. Admission: $10/$5 for members; open to the public. Contact: Stephanie Lundegard 718-442-1608 [email protected] In What My Father Taught Me, Maria Giura writes richly and candidly about growing up Italian-American Catholic from her earlier days as the daughter of immigrant parents and a workaholic father to her coming of age and onward into adulthood where she works at reconciling the natural and divine.

Her poems are a celebration in the face of love and loss. They are at once intimate and universal, serious and light and are grounded in the Brooklyn, New York that she cherished and called home from her parents' pastry shop, to the view from the Belt Parkway, to the family living room where she learned to pull out the microphone, even though it was always broken, and sing.