About
Marc DiPaolo is an Associate Professor of English at Southwestern Oklahoma State University and Secretary of the Society for the Study of the Multiethnic Literature of the United States. He published the autobiographical novel Fake Italian (Bordighera Press) in 2021. DiPaolo has also written the academic books Fire and Snow: Climate Fiction from the Inklings to Game of Thrones (2018) and War, Politics, and Superheroes (2011). His media interviews include appearances on NPR, BBC4, and AMC’s documentary Robert Kirkman’s Secret History of Comics (ep. 4, 2017). He has a PhD in English from Drew University and was a reporter for The Staten Island Advance.
Featured Work
Fake Italian: An 83% True Autobiography with Pseudonyms and Tall Tales.
New York, 1987: In a city torn apart by racial tension, Damien Cavalieri is an adolescent without a tribe. His mother—who pines for the 1950s Brooklyn Italian community she grew up in—fears he lacks commitment to his heritage. Damien's fellow Staten Islanders agree, dubbing him a "fake Italian" and bullying him for being artistic. Complicating matters, his efforts to make friends and date girls outside of the Italian community are thwarted time and again by circumstances beyond his control. When a tragic accident shakes Damien to his core, he begins a journey of self-discovery that will lead him to Italy, where he will learn, once and for all, who he really is.
"If Lenny Bruce had stolen a time machine, kidnapped the young James Joyce, and trained him in a Staten Island dojo circa 1975, the result would be this portrait of the artist as a fake Italian boy." - Anthony Lioi, author of Nerd Ecology: Defending the Earth with Unpopular Culture
