Darlene Madott is a Toronto lawyer and author. Prior to law, she worked at Saturday Night and Toronto Life magazines. Her call to the Bar in 1985 coincided with the publication of a collection of short stories, Bottled Roses, Oberon, 1985. A film script, Mazilli's Shoes, was published by Guernica, in 1997, then Joy, Joy, Why Do I Sing? Canadian Scholars' Press, 2004. Included in that collection was "Vivi's Florentine Scarf," winner of the 2002 Paolucci Prize of the Italian American Writer's Association.
The title story of Making Olives and Other Family Secrets, Longbridge Books, Spring, 2008, won the Bressani Literary Award, 2008. Darlene has read in New York, at the John Calandra Institute, Queen's College/CUNY, conference entitled "The Land of Our Return" (April, 2009), from a story "On Leave Takings and Monuments", previously published in Accenti magazine. Her stories have been anthologized in Italian Canadian Voices, (Mosaic Press, 2006, ed. Caroline di Giovanni), and forthcoming anthology, More Sweet Lemons, (Longbridge, 2010).
A mother of one son, she continues to write and practice, primarily in the area of matrimonial law. Please click here to visit Darlene's legal website.
"This collection poses the important questions - about love, about the choices that irrevocably change lives… I like the way the stories examine all these questions askance - not directly, but circling them in a very delicate way…. They are haunting mediations by a fine artist blessed with a scrupulous intelligence. Savour them."
Guy Vanderhaeghe
"When Darlene Madott casts her line, you can't help but bite and allow her powerful writing to reel you in - sometimes slowly, at first, but with the crescendo that keeps you hooked. She can strip the veneer off simple life and plunge the reader into the depths of experience. She can connect the mind-boggling death of stars to the lives of fragile human beings, and make the reader nod in understanding. Reading Madott is an experience in itself."
Marisa De Franceschi, author of Surface Tension
"Madott is not afraid to pose risky questions in her fiction, ones to which the answers are not known or may not even exist. Her characters brave perilous emotional territory and face questions about desire, need, connection, pride and shame. The result is a series of deftly constructed stories that simmer with intensity and produce clear moments of truth."
Beth Ryan, Globe & Mail
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