Author Spotlight: My Experience at Sicily Focused Book Event

Today I was privileged to be the featured author at the Amicizia Book Club hosted by the Italian Cultural Society of Naples, FL.  

With 450 active members, this prestigious organization is  a group of Italophiles who love and celebrate the rich, cultural heritage of Italy in all of its aspects, for personal enjoyment and enrichment.

A huge Thank You to Grace M Rocco for honoring me as the author and for presenting my travel memoir, My Love Affair with Sicily. Thank you also to Lisa Forino, chairperson of the Amicizia Committee, for your warm welcome. It was a real pleasure to meet you.

It was truly an honor to be among this group where I really felt the Italian friendship immediately. I enjoyed every minute of the event, including a delicious lunch in a beautiful restaurant in Naples, Florida.

I was impressed to learn that most everyone here had been to Italy quite a few times, and they all exuded such a love and passion for bella Italia. What struck me even more was that a fair number of them had also been to Sicily. According to the most recent statistics, the majority of travelers to Italy never make it to southern Italy. I recently wrote about that very fact, and you can read more in this blog post, Interesting Destinations in Southern Italy.

Grace Rocco, my good friend and an avid supporter of my writing, was gracious enough to invite me, and she did a wonderful job presenting highlights from my book to  generate interesting questions and dialog at this event. I enjoyed the collaborative atmosphere where I was able to answer questions that the attendees asked, as well as hear a few stories that some of them shared from their personal experiences in Sicily.

I wanted to do something fun to thank them, so I brought some of my other Italy travel books and had a random drawing. No surprise that book club members love a free book!

They were all so enthusiastic and appreciative, that I wish  I lived closer, so I could become a member myself.

I was also pleasantly surprised to finally meet Nancy and Jon Petralia in person. Aside from being members, they are also authors of award-winning Italy travel memoirs, like Not in a Tuscan Villa. I had a wonderful time meeting everyone, and once more, a huge thank you to Lisa Forino.

As an added surprise, I gave everyone in attendance a copy of my hardback coffee table book, Colors of Naples and the Amalfi Coast.

A special thank you to Kathleen Azzariti, Ann Newton, and Carolyn Dickinson for all their hard work putting this event together. It definitely takes more than a village to make special events like this to come together as well as this one did. I know that I will cherish this day forever. 

I hope you enjoyed this post. I love feedback, so please feel free to leave a comment.

Grazie and  Ciao

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In case you haven’t checked out my Italy travel books, they are available on Amazon and Audible. Enjoy!