In 2019 I was a writer-in-residence at Britex Fabrics, San Francisco’s textile emporium, and wrote an essay about it for the San Francisco Museum of Art’s Open Space. In 2020, as a columnist-in-residence at Open Space, I wrote four more essays. It was a pleasure to experiment with new ways of working with text, collages, documents, and photos. Thank you to Open Space editors Claudia La Rocco and Gordon Faylor. “Fata Da Forta” includes two excerpts from The Public Gardens and Wite Out, each focused on the Sicilian aspect of my family history.