BOOKMARK
Welcome
Thank you for scanning my bookmark.
Whether you're a reader, writer, book club member, or fellow lover of family stories, I'd love to stay connected.
Buy the Book
Read Seeds of the Pomegranate
A story of family secrets, identity, and the search for belonging.
Available at AMAZON
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Join My Newsletter
Subscribe to Persephone's Story. Weekly reflections on writing, family history, Sicily, hidden histories, and the stories we inherit.
Substack: https://suzannesamuels.substack.com/
Events
Join Suzanne Uttaro Samuels for readings, conversations, workshops, and literary events exploring the intersections of history, migration, family memory, Sicily, women’s lives, and the stories official records leave behind.
Through talks, festival appearances, and public conversations, Suzanne invites audiences into the worlds behind her fiction, essays, and historical research — where hidden histories, family stories, and questions of identity continue to echo across generations.
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BOOK BUZZ:
BUILDING A LITERARY ECOSYSTEM
A book launch lasts a day. A literary ecosystem can sustain a career.
Join me for a conversation about finding readers through newsletters, book clubs, festivals, conferences, social media, speaking opportunities, and authentic community building.
Drawing on the journey of launching Seeds of the Pomegranate, I'll share what's worked, what hasn't, and how authors can build lasting connections with readers.
Hosted by
Liberty States Fiction Writers
June 13, 10:30 am ET
To attend via Zoom,
please contact Caridad at contact@lsfwriters.com.
FROM FRAGMENT TO FORM
Transforming Memory and Family History into Story
FOUR-WEEK ONLINE WORKSHOP
August 2–29, 2026
Do you have a family story waiting
to be told?
Photographs tucked into drawers. Missing names on a family tree. Stories whispered across generations. Questions that linger long after the people who knew the answers are gone.
Over four weekly online sessions, we'll explore how to transform memory, family history, and research into compelling fiction, memoir, and personal essays. Learn techniques for finding the story within the fragments and bringing the past vividly to life on the page.
Presented by Story Circle Network
LIVE FROM SICILY
JUNE 20
What Gets Buried
Never Stays Buried
I'll be joining readers live from Sicily for a special Facebook chat during the American Historical Novels Sizzling Summer Event.
Let's talk about family stories, hidden histories, ancestral mysteries, and the moments when the past suddenly feels alive. I'll be sharing what I've discovered while researching in Sicily, and I'd love to hear about the family stories and mysteries that still linger in your own family.
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Enter to win a signed copy of
Seeds of the Pomegranate
and a Taste of Sicily gift basket.
June 20 • 8–11 a.m. ET
Join the Facebook Event
Substack: Persephone’s Stories
Persephone’s Stories is Suzanne Uttaro Samuels’ weekly newsletter of personal essays about life, family, writing, marriage, motherhood, travel, aging, reinvention, memory, and the quiet moments that shape who we become.
Some essays begin in Sicily and historical research. Others begin in kitchens, weddings, long conversations, lakeside mornings, departures, grief, joy, or the strange feeling of standing between one season of life and another.
Together, they form an ongoing reflection on storytelling, resilience, love, identity, and the complicated emotional landscapes we move through over time.
Substack: https://suzannesamuels.substack.com/
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Notebooks from Sicily
Notebooks from Sicily is an evolving collection of travel writing, photographs, historical reflections, research notes, and literary observations gathered during Suzanne’s journeys through Sicily and Sardinia.
Moving between past and present, the notebooks trace village streets, convent archives, family histories, sea crossings, forgotten names, marketplaces, ruins, recipes, and fragments of memory that reveal the layered realities of Sicily beyond nostalgia or postcard images.
Part travel journal, part archive, part meditation on migration and belonging, the project explores how place continues to shape identity long after people leave home.
Visit SuzanneSamuels.com to explore upcoming events, workshops, weekly essays from Persephone’s Stories, and ongoing work from Notebooks from Sicily. Subscribe, follow along, and join the conversation about story, memory, migration, and the lives history so often leaves unrecorded.