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Meet Angalia
This is her story...
ABOUT:
Angalia Bianca is an international speaker, award‑winning author, and community activist—but the life that built that résumé began in a very different place. Affectionately known as Bianca, she was raised in Chicago by a close‑knit, loving Sicilian family and a grandmother who spoiled her, yet even that warmth could not shield her from the pull of the West Side streets. Over the course of seven trips to the penitentiary, Bianca spent a total of 12 years in Illinois state prisons, alongside countless stays in county jail, while addiction, violence, and homelessness kept her on Chicago’s West Side for more than two decades. During those years she became estranged from her family, lost custody of her children, and lived in a world defined by loneliness, darkness, and despair.
Everything shifted on August 9, 2011, when Bianca walked out of prison for the last time and chose not to go back to the streets that had always pulled her in. Instead, she sought help at A Safe Haven in Chicago, where for the first time she was able to address the root causes of her addiction; in just eight months she completed the program and has remained clean ever since. Two months into her stay there, she found her calling: working as a violence interrupter for the anti‑violence organization CeaseFire, after program manager J.W. Hughes took a chance on hiring her—later calling it the best hiring decision of his career. Bianca went on to spend eight years with CeaseFire at the University of Illinois Chicago, evolving into a highly sought‑after authority on violence prevention who delivers presentations on incarceration, gang violence, anti‑terrorism, substance abuse, and social change at universities, high schools, prisons, legislative hearings, and national conventions.
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Today, Bianca’s work extends far beyond Chicago as she continues to travel internationally to share her story and teach conflict mediation, with appearances in places as far‑reaching as Nova Scotia, Abu Dhabi, Argentina, and London. Her journey—from spoiled granddaughter to homeless addict to globally recognized violence interrupter and author of In Deep—gives her a rare combination of hard‑earned wisdom, credibility, and compassion that audiences around the world trust and remember.
THE BOOK
Angalia Bianca turned the darkest chapters of her life into the award‑winning memoir In Deep: How I Survived Gangs, Heroin, and Prison to Become a Chicago Violence Interrupter, a book that has reached readers around the world. The writing process required Bianca to relive deeply traumatic experiences—addiction, violence, incarceration, and loss—and translate them into a story that is both unflinchingly raw and unexpectedly hopeful.
Published by Chicago Review Press in October 2018, In Deep went on to win the Chicago Writers Association’s 2019 Book of the Year award for Traditional Nonfiction
AS SEEN in the media
A sampling of old and recent interviews, and or articles. Some are available to read in it's entirety simply by clicking on the image.
