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Jana Siciliano

Biography

Jana Siciliano


Jana Siciliano is a writer and filmmaker. Her company, Thieving Granny Productions, creates film projects for non-profit companies, instructs children ages 4-18 in creating original films and graphic novels, and is hard at work writing her own first novel.

Jana Siciliano

Reviews by Jana Siciliano

by Lynn Steger Strong - Fiction, Women's Fiction

The Kenner siblings are at odds. Jenn is a harried mom struggling under the weight of family obligations. Fred is a novelist who can’t write, maybe because she’s lost faith in storytelling itself. Jude is a recovering corporate lawyer with her own story to tell, and a grudge against her former favorite sister, Fred. George, the baby, is estranged from his wife and harboring both a secret about his former employer and an ill-advised crush on one of his sisters’ friends. Gathered after a major loss, each sibling needs the others more than ever --- if only they could trust each other.

by Colum McCann - Fiction

Anthony Fennell, an Irish journalist and playwright, is assigned to cover the underwater cables that carry the world’s information. The sum of human existence --- words, images, transactions, memes, voices, viruses --- travels through the tiny fiber-optic tubes. But sometimes the tubes break, at an unfathomable depth. Fennell’s journey brings him to the west coast of Africa, where he uncovers a story about the raw human labor behind the dazzling veneer of the technological world. He meets a fellow Irishman, the mysterious John Conway, who is a skilled engineer and a freediver capable of reaching extraordinary depths. When the ship is sent up the coast to repair a series of major underwater breaks, both men learn that the very cables they seek to fix carry the news that may cause their lives to unravel.

by Jeff Hobbs - Biography, Nonfiction, Social Sciences

In 2018, poverty and domestic violence cast Evelyn and her children into the urban wilderness of Los Angeles, where she avoids the family crisis network that offers no clear pathway for her children to remain together and in a decent school. For the next five years, Evelyn works full time as a waitress yet remains unable to afford legitimate housing or qualify for government aid. All the while she strives to provide stability, education, loving memories and college aspirations for her children, even as they sleep in motels and in her car, living in fear of both her ex and the nation’s largest child welfare agency. Eventually Evelyn encounters Wendi Gaines, a recently trained social worker who decades earlier survived her own abusive marriage and housing crisis. Evelyn becomes one of Wendi’s first clients, and the relationship transforms them both.

by David Sheff - Biography, Nonfiction

John Lennon once described Yoko Ono as the world’s most famous unknown artist. “Everybody knows her name, but no one knows what she does.” She has only been important to history insofar as she impacted Lennon. Throughout her life, Yoko has been a caricature, curiosity and, often, a villain --- an inscrutable seductress, manipulating con artist and caterwauling fraud. The Lennon/Beatles saga is one of the greatest stories ever told, but Yoko’s part has been missing --- hidden in the Beatles’ formidable shadow, further obscured by flagrant misogyny and racism. This definitive biography of Yoko Ono’s life will change that. In this book, Yoko Ono takes center stage.

by Elon Green - Nonfiction, True Crime

At 25 years old, Michael Stewart was a young Black aspiring artist, deejay and model, looking to make a name for himself in the vibrant downtown art scene of the early 1980s New York City. On September 15, 1983, he was brutally beaten by New York City Transit Authority police for allegedly tagging a 14th Street subway station wall. Witnesses reported officers beating him with billy clubs and choking him with a nightstick. Stewart arrived at Bellevue Hospital hog-tied with no heartbeat and died after 13 days in a coma. This was, at that point, the most widely noticed act of police brutality in the city's history. THE MAN NOBODY KILLED recounts the cultural impact of Michael Stewart’s life and death.

by Lisa Rogak - History, Nonfiction

Betty MacDonald was a 28-year-old reporter from Hawaii. Zuzka Lauwers grew up in a tiny Czechoslovakian village and knew five languages by the time she was 21. Jane Smith-Hutton was the wife of a naval attaché living in Tokyo. Marlene Dietrich, the German-American actress and singer, was one of the biggest stars of the 20th century. As members of the OSS during World War II, their task was to create a secret brand of propaganda produced with the sole aim to break the morale of Axis soldiers. Betty, Zuzka, Jane and Marlene forged letters and “official” military orders, wrote and produced entire newspapers, scripted radio broadcasts and songs, and even developed rumors for undercover spies and double agents to spread to the enemy. And outside of a small group of spies, no one knew they existed. Until now.

by Samantha Shannon - Dystopian, Fantasy, Fiction, Science Fiction, Urban Fantasy

Paige Mahoney is outside the Republic of Scion for the first time in more than a decade, but she has no idea how she got to the free world. Half a year has been wiped from her memory. Her journey back to the revolution soon takes her to Venice, where the Domino Programme has uncovered evidence of a secret Scion plan. Before Paige can return to London, she must help the network unravel the sinister Operation Ventriloquist, which threatens to bring Europe to its knees in weeks. And it soon becomes clear that the one person who could recover her memories --- Arcturus Mesarthim --- also might hold the key to thwarting Scion, allowing the revolution to strike an unprecedented blow.

by Rebecca Romney - Literary Criticism, Nonfiction

Long before she was a rare book dealer, Rebecca Romney was a devoted reader of Jane Austen. She loved that Austen’s books took the lives of women seriously, explored relationships with wit and confidence, and always allowed for the possibility of a happy ending. She read and reread them, often wishing Austen wrote just one more. JANE AUSTEN’S BOOKSHELF investigates the disappearance of Austen’s heroes --- women writers who were erased from the Western canon --- to reveal who they were, what they meant to Austen, and how they were forgotten. Each chapter profiles a different writer and recounts Romney’s experience reading them, finding rare copies of their works, and drawing on connections between their words and Austen’s.

by Lola Kirke - Essays, Humor, Memoir, Nonfiction

The youngest daughter of a rock star father and clothing designer mother, Lola Kirke and her siblings (including actress Jemima and celebrity doula Domino) spent their childhoods freshly plucked from their English heritage in an eclectic West Village brownstone, hosting everyone from Cuban exiles to Courtney Love. But behind the enviable exterior of worldly coolness was a home in disarray. In WILD WEST VILLAGE, Kirke chronicles a search for self amidst the chaos of the affairs, addictions and afflictions surrounding her, detailing misadventures in everything from masturbation to marijuana, Cadbury’s to country music, and a dream of salvation on the silver screen.

by Allegra Goodman - Fiction, Historical Fiction, Women's Fiction

Heir to a fortune, Marguerite is destined for a life of prosperity and gentility. Then she is orphaned, and her guardian --- an enigmatic and volatile man --- spends her inheritance and insists she accompany him on an expedition to New France. That journey takes an unexpected turn when Marguerite, accused of betrayal, is brutally punished and abandoned on a small island. Once a child of privilege who dressed in gowns and laced pearls in her hair, Marguerite finds herself at the mercy of nature. As the weather turns, blanketing the island in ice, she discovers a faith she’d never before needed.