Diana Walker Featured in Author Form at WVIHF

Diana Pishner Walker will be a presenter and co-chairperson at the

Author’s Forum during the West Virginia Italian Heritage Festival on August 29, 2020 at noon ET live on the WVIHF Facebook page. She has participated in numerous book signings and events throughout WV, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Washington D.C. and Massachusetts.

This year Diana has a new children’s book, just released by Headline Books, The Christmas Feast: A Fishy Tale, scheduled to be presented at the 2020 Virtual WVIHF Author’s Forum via a Zoom Presentation.

Diana wrote her first children’s book, Spaghetti and Meatballs: Growing up Italian (Headline Books 2015) Illustrated by Ashley Teets, and it is about her childhood. This book has received the Reader’s Choice Award Honorable Mention for best children’s non- fiction as well as the Hollywood Book Festival Award Honorable Mention, Mom’s Choice Award, London Book Festival Award, Southern California Book festival award and most recently a 2016 Preferred Choice Award by the Creative Child Magazine , as well as a Next Generation Indie Book Award. It has been juried and accepted at Tamarack in Beckley, WV and “The Italian American Press.”

Diana’s second book, Hopping to America: A Rabbits Tale of Immigration (Headline Books 2016) illustrated by Ashley Teets and it is a Next Generation Indie Book Award Winner as well as winning a New York Book Festival and a Readers Favorite award, and a Literary Classic International Children’s Book Award. It is the story of immigration from Italy to the United States to Ellis Island and onto Clarksburg, WV by a family of rabbits! This book is on display and available for sale at Ellis Island in NYC.

The second in the Hopping to America series, Hopping to America A Rabbit’s Tale of LaBefana is also a Mom’s Choice Award Winner, plus winning a Next Generation lndie Book Award and a Creative Child Magazine Award.

All of the children’s books have been accepted to “I Am Books” the first Italian-American Bookstore in the United States where she held a book launch and presentation / book signing.

A third book was released in The Hopping to America Series, Hopping to America A Rabbit’s Tale of a Wedding (Headline Books 2018), and was launched at the WVIHF Author’s Forum. Illustrated by Ashley Teets and is a Gold Mom’s Choice Award Winner.

The Hopping to America Series of books have been performed as plays by the Vintage Theater Co. in Clarksburg, WV. Diana Pishner Walker is also a Zoom Into Books author and her presentations about her books are available on the Zoom Into Books YouTube Channel.

Diana’s paternal grandparents were from CauJonia (Reggio Calabria) Italy and her maternal grandparents were from the Province of Cosenza, Italy. Her paternal grandparents were from Caulonia, Reggio Calabria Italy.

Diana was born in Clarksburg, WV and is the daughter of the late Louis and Anna Allessio Pishner. She attended Notre Dame High School and graduated with the class of 1977. She attended Fairmont State College and was an employee of the Marion County Board of Education for over 25 years, until recently when she has resigned her position to pursue a full time career as an author, doing school visits and speaking to groups about family and their heritage. Diana resides in Fairmont, WV with her husband Mark and they are the parents of three children Courtney and her husband Phil, Curt and his wife Allyson, Chris and his wife Ashley. They have three grandsons, Ashton, Austin, and Ace.