Sensitive, funny, and charming. . . a refreshing entry to the sub-genre of cancer lit. —Publishers Weekly
Quarterfinalist for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award
Runner-up for the Faulkner/Wisdom Novella Award
Poignant ... an old-fashioned tale about girls with old-fashioned dreams ... Angel and Lina will charm the reader. —USA Today
Ciresi has a lovely ear for dialogue and the ability to nail the details in descriptions that are both funny and painfully accurate. —The New York Times Book Review
A Book Sense 76 Pick
Finalist for the Paterson Fiction Prize
Rita Ciresi's beautifully written, bittersweet first novel examines love and marriage with unflinching honesty. The ending, with its moving, explicit sense of loss, resonates long after the book is closed. —Elle
This is honest, earthy, warm, and funny—as well as heartbreaking. Highly recommended. —Library Journal
There is a sure hand and a keen eye reporting from the two ethnic camps. Despite their faults and excesses. . . the characters are funny and sympathetic in their misery. —New York Times
Selected for the Barnes and Noble Discover New Writers Series
A moving love story. —Redbook
Wit and humor are the keys to this lively novel. —Mademoiselle
It’s refreshing to find a female narrator with an authentically lusty voice. —New York Times
Ciresi mixes the tragic and the comic aspects of love in hilarious fashion. —Tampa Tribune
Bright characters and sharp dialogue make this witty romantic comedy a worthy sequel to the author’s admirable Blue Italian. —Dallas Morning News
Winner of the Pirate's Alley Faulkner Prize for the Novel
Ciresi's depiction of post-singleton life is clever and surprisingly honest. Grade: A —Entertainment Weekly
A cutting commentary on the lasting implications of 'til death do us part. —Hartford Courant
Ms. Ciresi’s characters…are artfully balanced, charged with currents of despair, but never lugubrious and often funny. What jolts the reader through these pieces is the consistent blasts of vitality in the author’s prose. —The New York Times Book Review
Sharp-eyed, gently humorous fiction whose characters linger in the mind. —Kirkus Reviews
Winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction & finalist for the Los Angeles Times' Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction
Second Wife, winner of the Jeanne Leiby Chapbook Award sponsored by Florida Review, is now available for order here from Burrow Press. It also is available in print and e-book form from Amazon, IndieBound, and Barnes & Noble.
“Second Wife is bursting with wit, tragedy, humor, and heart. Rita Ciresi’s collection of short and flash fiction brings together over twenty stories of loss, longing, and love, each one echoing with a voice as powerful and true as the emotions it speaks of.”
–ROBERT VENDITTI, The Surrogates
“The stories are full of pathos. . . Ciresi’s mastery of the form lies in her endowing commonplace objects with the symbolic power to elicit the sad emptiness of modern life.” —ITALIAN AMERICANA
Maybe the Mermaids, audio recording, Petrichor
Some Things You Can Ask Me, Pacifica Literary Review
The Catholic Girl & the Protestant Boy: A Fable, Ovunque Siamo
D: 1969, BoomerLitMag
Bargains, forthcoming in wigleaf
Old Flames, forthcoming in wigleaf
Disposal, Juked
Warmth, Juked
Maybe the Mermaids, originally published in Creative Loafing, gets a second birth in The Negatives
I Don't Want Other People to Know Where I Am, Lightning Key Review
One Last Stand at the Motel 6, AMP
Sunday Night & Monday Mornng, Hobart
Research Claims, Almost Five Quarterly
Reason for Return, Hawai'i Pacific Review
The Doctor's Wife, Chapter One, Works In Progress Journal
The Love Test, The Frank Martin Review
Second Wife, Blue Earth Review
Girl Gone Wild, The Mailer Review
Stroke, Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review
The Honeymoon Is Over, Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review
'merigan, forthcoming in f(r)iction, spring 2019 creative nonfiction award judged by Sarah Gerard
Scuola, forthcoming in Under the Gum Tree
American Money, Pithead Chapel
Gun, BurningWord Literary Journal
Ampersands, 1967, forthcoming in Shift
Monopoly, Temenos
Two Views of Florida, Aquifer/Florida Review
Facetime With the Famous Memoirist, The Offbeat
Arte Italiana, Ovunque Siamo (artwork by Pat Messina Singer)
Enormous Men, Tahoma Literary Review
Who Be Other, Sandhill Review (My America print edition)
Goodbye to the Island, The Mailer Review (print edition)
The Year of the Lice, The Chaos
Kidnapped, New South Journal
Go Back to Where You Came From, Redux
Why I Write, Fiction Southeast
Clock Clock Clock, The Medical Literary Messenger
The Truth About Cancer: Inside the Waiting Room of Bring Back My Body to Me, Reconstruction
Whale in Thirteen Languages, Society Nineteen
