Andrea Mazzariello, associate professor of music, has received a Creative Individuals grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board (MSAB). Support from MSAB will enable Mazzariello to work toward completing The Blessed Electric in Continuous Present, a novel of speculative fiction underpinned by his family’s history of emigration from southern Italy to New York and their subsequent relocation to Minnesota. While this work represents a creative shift for Mazzariello, who is perhaps best known as a composer and musician, the novel is structured as music: materials are developed, reprised, and re-attempted before the reader’s eyes, drawing deeply from his family’s slanted Catholicism and old-world superstitions. In addition to furthering the manuscript itself, Mazzariello will share selections from the novel at community organizations and other venues in Northfield.