American Women Writers

All Things Italy December 2022 19th-C. Asks from Italy Pre-date Giving Tuesday

Dear Friends, This issue of All Things Italy pushes into the past as well as across the Atlantic as I consider end-of-year giving and its...

All Things Italy November 2022 Where is Home?

Rome's cimitero acattolico, or non-catholic cemetery With the fall of leaves, the slant of the sun, holidays like All Saints Day, and other holidays ahead,...

Writing Places & Bagni di Lucca, Italy

Bagni di Lucca, Italy, on the Lima River in Tuscany (Photo Credit: By Keith Ruffles, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=53034692) Six years ago this week, I...

Utopian and Dystopian Visions: Sicily and Engaging Italy

Monte Argentario, off the coast of southern Tuscany Emeralds in a sea of sapphire—gems among gemstones—to a romantic dreamer. To those...

A Sicilian Memoir: Simeti’s On Persephone’s Island

Mandarins and pears at an open market in Sicily. Photo: Andrew Malone , Wikimedia Commons via Flickr Mary Taylor Simeti’s memoir of...

The Past Hauntingly Repeats Itself? National Elections of 1844

George Perkins Marsh portrait engraving by H. B. Hall, reprinted in Life & Letters (1888)  Title Page of Life & Letters...
Cover of book Precious and Adored

A Valentine’s and Presidents’ Day Book: Precious and Adored

Cover of Laskey and Ehrenhalt's book, Precious and Adored Here's a book suited for both Valentine's and Presidents' Day. No, it's...
Cover of book Precious and Adored

First Lady Rose Cleveland and Bishop’s Wife Evangeline Whipple: Later Vocations in Italy

Who knew that former US First Lady Rose Cleveland moved to the Tuscan town of Bagni di Lucca, Italy? Or that she lived there with...

Cultural Crossings in Denver: Union Station, Ume Tsuda & Others

A few photos on Denver’s Union Station in October prompted a friend to ask for more. My initial post focused on the warm and inviting lights...

Anne Hampton Brewster: Nineteenth-Century News from Rome

Think of Anne Hampton Brewster as a precursor to NPR's Sylvia Poggioli. American, female, news correspondent in Rome,  writing stories followed by many in the US....

Let There Be Light: Leaning in to Change

We finally have a “new” antique light in our dining room. After 18-plus years of wanting to gaze upon something other than a 1970s Victorian...

Constance Fenimore Woolson and Zoar

Constance Fenimore Woolson Linking “utopian” communal groups and American women writers in Italy, I spoke last weekend on Constance Fenimore Woolson...