Called Back: My Reply to Cancer, My Return to Life

KINGSTON, R.I. – September 30, 2009—Mary Cappello, a professor of English at the University of Rhode Island, was planning a national reading tour for her latest book in the late spring of 2007 when she felt a lump in her breast.

Rather than blink, Cappello looked at her breast cancer straight on with a poet’s eye for incongruity and an intellect’s heart for meaning. She translated those experiences into a memoir, Called Back: My Reply to Cancer, My Return to Life, just published by Alyson books. The book is part memoir, part meditative, and wholly absorbing.

Cappello will read from her book and entertain questions on Wednesday, Oct. 14 from 4 to 6 p.m. in Swan Hall Auditorium, 60 Upper College Road, Kingston. A reception will follow. To learn more, go to http://www.uri.edu/news/releases/index.php?id=5016 or http://www.uri.edu/artsci/eng/english_NEW/Faculty/Cappello.html.

The reading, free and open to the public, is co-sponsored by the URI Center for the Humanities, URI College of Arts and Sciences, URI Departments of English, Psychology, and Women’s Studies, The Dana Shugar Lecture Series, URI READ/WRITE, and the URI Bookstore.

Cappello will also participate in “The Big ‘C’: Living Fully, Living Healthy” program at URI’s Feinstein Providence Campus on Thursday, Oct. 15, with a reading and signing at 7 pm. The program itself is from 5 to 9 p.m. at the campus at 80 Washington St., Providence, R.I.