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Cheryl A. Ossola in Conversation with Lisa DeNatale | How Long a Shadow

Name: Cheryl A. Ossola in Conversation with Lisa DeNatale | How Long a Shadow
Start: 2026-12-06T15:00:00-05:00
Location: Phoenix Books Burlington

Sunday, December 6, 2026 · 3:00 PM
Phoenix Books Burlington · 191 Bank St, Burlington, VT 05401 · Burlington
Author: Cheryl A. Ossola
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Phoenix Books is excited to welcome author Cheryl A. Ossola to Phoenix Books Burlington on Sunday, December 6 at 3:00 PM in collaboration with our friends at The Vermont Italian Cultural Association! Cheryl will be in conversation with Lisa DeNatale for an afternoon of conversation about Cheryl's new book, How Long a Shadow. Cheryl A. Ossola is a second-generation Italian American and a descendant of the stonecutters who shaped Barre, Vermont's granite industry, on which her forthcoming novel How Long a Shadow (Cynren Press, 2026) is based. Her fiction and poetry explore Italian heritage, art, identity, and the immigrant experience. A new edition of her debut novel, The Wild Impossibility (2019), came out from Cynren Press in 2026. Her third novel, Sisters of Lucrezia, about art and obsession, set in Italy, is forthcoming in 2028, also from Cynren Press. Her work has appeared in Fourteen Hills, Writer's Digest, Switchback, VIA: Voices in Italian Americana, and Eastern Iowa Review: Best Prose Poetry 2025. A former editor and freelance writer with an MFA from the University of San Francisco, she writes Italicus: A Writer's Life in Italy from a hilltop town in Umbria. Lisa DeNatale is a 1980 graduate of Boston College where she earned a BS in Marketing. She had a thirty-year career in Marketing and Brand Development including roles at Reebok, NIKE, and Ben & Jerry's. In 2011, she became the President & CEO of Special Olympics Vermont, where she remained until her retirement in 2018. Lisa has served as the President of the Vermont Italian Cultural Association since June 2021. Growing up in suburban Boston, Lisa was surrounded by a large extended Italian family. Her love of all things Italian was instilled at a young age by her Sicilian father. In 2022, Lisa became an Italian citizen. She and her husband Steve have traveled extensively throughout Italy. About the book: As strikes shake Vermont's granite industry, one woman carves her own story. In 1903 Barre, Vermont, granite is king--and it's killing the men who sculpt it. While her father and brothers risk their lungs in the granite sheds and the town fractures over union strikes, twenty-year-old Rosina Bottinelli longs for a life shaped by her own hands. Determined not to be bound by marriage, she sets aside her artistic ambitions and turns to midwifery. Her apprenticeship to her formidable aunt reveals both the fierce power and the terrible cost of women's work. But Barre is a tinderbox. A deadly lung disease--mal d'america--ravages the immigrant stonecutters. Labor unrest erupts into violence. And a bitter political rift between Rosina's unionist father and his capitalist brother threatens to shatter the family that crossed an ocean together. As love and loyalty collide with ambition and belief, Rosina must decide what kind of life she will carve--and how long a shadow she is willing to cast. DATE: Sunday, December 6, 2026 at 3:00 PM LOCATION: Phoenix Books Burlington, 89 Church Street, Burlington, VT TICKETS: Tickets are FREE. Phoenix Books has adopted an RSVP-based system, and you can RSVP through the Seven Days Tickets website. Your RSVP grants you a $3.00 off coupon for How Long a Shadow by Cheryl A. Ossola that can be used during the day of the event! BOOKS: Copies of How Long a Shadow by Cheryl A. Ossola will be available for purchase at the event.