Suzanne Uttaro Samuels Brings SEEDS OF THE POMEGRANATE to Big Red Books in Nyack, NY

Suzanne Uttaro Samuels is an award-winning legal scholar turned novelist whose writing explores resilience, hidden histories, and women’s voices across time. Seeds of the Pomegranate (Sibylline Press, 2025) is her debut novel. Her fiction and essays appear in Petigru Review, Snapdragon, and the anthologies Main, Feisty Deeds: Historical Fictions of Daring Women, and Desert of Dreams. Edvige Giunta is the author of Writing with an Accent and coeditor of The Milk of Almonds: Italian American Women Writers on Food and Culture and Talking to the Girls: Intimate and Political Essays on the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, recipient of the 2023 Susan Koppelman Award for Best Anthology in Feminist Studies in American and Popular Culture. She is Professor of English at New Jersey City University.

November 16th from 4:30pm-6:00pm — Books will be available to purchase at the event.

For more information, please visit Big Red Books’ event page here.

About Seeds of the Pomegranate:

A gritty story of a woman learning to survive in 20th century Gangland New York

In early 20th-century Sicily, noblewoman Mimi Inglese, a talented painter, dreams of escaping the rigid expectations of her class by gaining admission to the Palermo Art Academy. But when she contracts tuberculosis, her ambitions are shattered. With the Sicilian nobility in decline, she and her family leave for New York City in search of a fresh start.

Instead of opportunity, Mimi is pulled into the dark underbelly of city life and her father’s money laundering scheme. When he is sent to prison, desperation forces her to put her artistic talent to a new use—counterfeiting $5 bills to keep her family from starvation and, perhaps, to one day reclaim her dream of painting. But as Gangland violence escalates and tragedy strikes, Mimi must summon the courage to flee before she is trapped forever in a life she never wanted.

About Suzanne Uttaro Samuels:

Suzanne Uttaro Samuels’ award-winning stories and essays have appeared in anthologies and print and online literary magazines. Seeds of the Pomegranate is her debut novel. The prequel to Seeds, The Orphans’ Wheel, set during the tumultuous 19th-century Italian Wars of Independence, is forthcoming from Sibylline Press. A lifelong resident of New York City, Suzanne now resides in the Adirondack Mountains.