Author Mary Sharnick Book Signing and Writing Workshop Feb. 28 at MxCC

Feb 23, 2017 – To recognize and celebrate Black History Month, Middlesex Community College presents author and teacher Mary Sharnick for a fiction reading, writing workshop and book signing. The free event will take place on Tuesday, Feb. 28, from 12:30 to 1:45 p.m. in Chapman Hall, room 808, at the Middletown campus on Training Hill Road.

Mary Sharnick will read from her third and latest novel, “Orla’s Canvas,” which is a coming-of-age story about a young female artist set against a backdrop of civil-rights-era New Orleans. The novel won first place in the Connecticut Press Club Communications Contest (2016) and third place in the national competition of the National Federation of Press Women (2016).

After the reading, book sale and book signing, Sharnick will lead a writing workshop.

Chair of the English department at Chase Collegiate School in Waterbury, Sharnick reviews books for the New York Journal of Books, Southern Humanities Review, and America, among others. Also, excerpts of Sharnick’s memoir-in-progress have appeared in the American Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias, Italian Americana, and Healing Ministry. Her publications also include a short story in Voices in Italian Americana, and her first two novels, “Thirst “(2012) and “Plagued” (2014), set in the Venetian lagoon during the 17th and 15th centuries, respectively.

The event, which is free and open to the public, is sponsored by the MxCC Creative Writing Club and supported by the Student Senate. For more information, please email CRuggiero@mxcc.edu.