Nino Ricci

The Institute of Italian Studies - Lakehead University was delighted and honoured to introduce Nino Ricci to a Thunder Bay audience.  Talented novelists like Nino Ricci are among Canada's most important cultural assets.  In the space of two decades, he has produced a significant body of work including five novels and a mini-biography of former Canadian Prime Minister the Rt. Hon. Pierre Elliott Trudeau.

The chorus of acclaim for each of these works would be the envy of any major Canadian writer.  For example, his first novel, Lives of the Saints (1990) won the Governor-General's award for fiction.  At the time, Nino Ricci was 31.  Eighteen years later, he was awarded this prestigious prize once again for his novel The Origin of Species.  Not to be forgotten is a little elegant book - a biography of Pierre Trudeau written for the "Extraordinary Canadian Series" (2009).  In the minds of some critics this biography provides Canadians with the best and best written perspective there is on Trudeau.

While in Thunder Bay on Thursday, 4 March 2010, Nino Ricci was interviewed on CBC radio by Lisa Laco; he graciously signed ten copies of The Origin of Species (which were donated to the library by the Text in the City Book Club) in the Fireside reading room of the Brodie Street Public Library; he read a segment of The Origin of Species before an audience of students, faculty, and the general public in the ATAC building on the Lakehead University campus; and he spoke to approximately 200 people gathered in the Marco Polo Room, Da Vinci Centre as part of the Institute's 2010 Speaker Series on the topic "Identity in a Post-Identity Era".

The Institute of Italian Studies - Lakehead University thanks Nino Ricci for his eloquence, his passion, and his sincerity as he spoke to the people of Thunder Bay.  We hope he will return soon.

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