Selected Works

Nonfiction
A look at life in little-known mountain towns of the Sicilian hinterlands.
A true account of the last years of an ancient Sicilian giant bluefin tuna trap.
Clemente Ventrone bathing in the Chamber of Death after a mattanza. Mid 1990s.

Rais Salvatore Spataro, circa 1993, supervising the setting of the Chamber of Death floor.

Gioacchino Cataldo, who eventually became the last rais of the favignana tonnara.

Pulling up the Chamber of Death

Friends at Bue Marino on Favignana.

Favignana: Getting ready to set up I santi, the cross bearing the saints who watch over the tuna trap.

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Archives

Out of Palermo

Watercolors of Sicily by Kathleen Citrolo Gwinnett

June 29, 2017

Tags: Kathleen Citrolo Gwinnett, sicily, watercolor, artist, paintings, love, colors, air, sun, churches, people, sea, gardens, wonderful, happy

My current favorite.
Kathleen Citrolo Gwinnett is a prolific and wonderful watercolor artist of Sicilian descent living and painting in North Carolina. She recently returned from ten days in the center of Sicily, near Caltanisetta, where she painted the vistas she had from her house. I met Kathleen on one of my book tours but we have been exchanging e mails for years.
If you want to get happy despite so much heart-wrenching news please click on the caption and go to her Facebook gallery. Her paintings are full of the joy and color and light of springtime Sicily. They make you want to sing.

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Aquarius rescues 432 immigrants today alone

May 24, 2016

Tags: Aquarius, rescue ship, Germany, France, immigrants, shipwrecked, rescue, sea, Italy, sicily

Some of the people rescued by the crew and benefactors of the rescue ship Aquarius today in the Mediterranean Sea.
In the past 24 hours more than 2,700 African immigrants have been plucked from the sea between Libya and Europe. The private non profit rescue ship Aquarius first picked up 132 shipwreck victims from a Zodiac rubber raft. Among them, 92 men, 38 women, of whom 7 were pregnant, 14 babies under five years of age and 19 minors unaccompanied by their (more…)

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SHort Break: Favignana Photos

October 28, 2015

Tags: favignana, egadi, isole, island, tonnara, fishermen, beach, fun, blue, sea, sky, tuna, archeology, Clemente Ventrone, Cristina Torre, Theresa Maggio, tonnaroti, tradition, net, beauty, nature, sun, sea, Mediterranean, fun, world unto itself



Circa early- to mid-1990s. Here's the video link in case the embed code does not work:
http://vp.telvue.com/preview?id=T01304&video=61535

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Syrian girl, 10, dead because traffickers threw away her insulin

July 18, 2015

Tags: syrian, baby, girl, dead, insulin, refugees, syria, sicily, Egyptian, traffickers, greed, murder, mediterranean, sea, graveyard

10-year-old grl fleeing Syria dead of diabetes coma after Egyptian traffickers throw her insulin to the sea to make more room.
A ten-year-old diabetic girl escaping war in Syria boarded a wooden vessel with her father, who has a degree in economics, and her sisters, headed for the Italian coast. They were 320 people squashed together like sardines. The traffickers made more room by throwing the little girl's day pack into the sea. It contained vials of insulin (more…)

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NPR: couple spends millions to save immigrants

May 17, 2015

Tags: NPR, rescue, mediterranean, sea, immigrants, Malta, sicily, europe, MOAS, Phoenix, ship, couple, wealthy, help, humanitarian

Rescue at sea. Click here to listen to the NPR story about MOAS and the wealthy couple with a heart and social conscience.