Additional information
by Robert Zises (Editor), Stevan Jennis (Illustrator), Nita Micossi (Author)
For 10 years, from 1998 to 2008, Nita Micossi wrote a monthly essay for a local publication. In this body of work, Nita lampooned her own life, politics, and the melodrama of her community through her unique perspective. You won't be able to read a single essay without being touched by her wit and wisdom, educated by her relentless fact-checking, and taken by the effortless prose that only painstaking re-writing could produce. You won't find a single trite, corny or hackneyed phrase on these pages. Her talents were legend; her exploits prodigious. A PhD from Berkeley led her into teaching college courses in Sociology to prisoners at a maximum security prison, but at one time or another she was a professional cabaret singer, journalist, friend, daughter, sister, wife, mother...and always...always...a humor columnist. It's hard to know which she loved more: the teaching or the humor writing. At the end she had both. Nita passed away in December 2008, but through this book, her humanity and compassion, insight and warmth, love and levity live on. Enjoy
Author Biography
Anita Lynn Micossi was born in California on July 3, 1946. She received a Ph.D, MA, BA Sociology degrees from the University of California, Berkeley, and Faculty of Arts & Letters, University of Padua, Italy. Dr. Micossi was a member of the National Writers Union, Dramatists Guild, Phi Beta Kappa, Manhattan Association of Cabarets and Clubs, Village of Tivoli Master Plan Committee and Architectural Review Board, Chair and Director of the Northern Dutchess Jewish Family Group Most recently, Dr. Micossi was a Professor, Senior Academic Advisor and Director of Program Development at Bard Prison Initiative, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson. At the same time, she wrote a humor column for the Hudson River Sampler, a monthly newspaper covering general interest topics for the Mid-Hudson Valley of New York. Dr. Micossi was also a media consultant and business editor for numerous national corporations and an on-air essayist for The Roundtable on WAMC, an NPR affiliate in Albany. Previously she wrote and produced features for weekly broadcast of PC Talk Radio, syndicated nationally through the American Broadcasting Company Network, NYC. she was the Eastern News Editor for Computer Decisions, a trade biweekly where the covered the Boston hi-tech business and science community, research legal, labor and social issues, and wrote features and news articles. Her features appeared in The Humanist, Forbes, Ms., Savvy, Boston Globe, the Christian Science Monitor, San Francisco Chronicle, PC World, Bloomberg Personal, and numerous others, In 1982-83 she was a reporter for the Israel Economist, Jerusalem, and was an instructor in English as a Second Language, Haifa, Israel at the same time. From 1978-82, she was involved with The Iroquois Poetry Ensemble & Theater Group in Berkeley, CA. She had one child, Sofia Lilli Rose, with her husband, Robert.
