Toronto short story writer Darlene Madott and Vancouver novelist Victoria Miles are among the winners of the Bressani Prize, offered every two years to honour the literary work done by Canadian authors of Italian descent.

The other winners were Toronto's Elana Wolff for her poetry collection, You Speak to Me in Trees, and Donna Caruso for radio drama, The Clothesline. The awards were presented in Vancouver last Thursday.

Madott, a lawyer and writer, is the author of Making Olives and Other Family Secrets, a collection of short stories published by small Montreal press Longbridge Books.

Miles won for Magnifico, a novel about the 11-year-old daughter of Italian immigrants who wants to learn piano, but is presented instead with an accordion.

Caruso, a Fort Qu'Appelle, Sask., filmmaker, has embarked on The Clothesline Project, in which people hang out the colours of their own history on a clothesline. She is also author of Journey Without a Map: Growing Up Italian.

Wolff, who works as a proofreader and editor, has published three collections of poetry.

The prize, re-established in 2000, is named after the Jesuit father Francesco Giuseppe Bressani (1612-72), the first Italian missionary to Canada, and is awarded by the Vancouver Italian Cultural Centre.