Greetings from Matera!

As this goes out, I’m enjoying myself at the annual Matera Women’s Fiction Festival. I’m probably having a brilliant time exploring the picturesque cave district of this unique southern Italian town, chatting about books and reading with fellow participants, learning all about the changing publishing industry from the panels of experts, and enjoying the creative…

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My stories will be published in Digital Papercut

I heard the nice news that two of my short stories have been accepted for publication in the online literary journal Digital Papercut. I have been putting together a series of short  stories of Italian women and expatriate women living in Italy, which I would eventually like to compile in a  collection. In the meantime,…

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Favorite summer reads? Part 2

Last week I wrote about summer reading in general, those distant memories of long summer holidays and stacks of good books I’d devour as a child. Seems that, despite work, and family obligations, and-ahem-the tiny amount of time I (should) eke out for writing, some things simply don’t change. I still love summer reading, and…

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19th century meets the 21st century: The Austen Project

I’ve been reading Sense & Sensibility, not the original, but the first volume of ‘The Austen Project‘. The AustenProject teams up contemporary authors with 19th century classics written by one of my favorite authors of all time – Jane Austen. The first novel in the series is written by British bestselling author Joanna Trollope, and…

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#ReadWomen2014 progress: Favorite books so far

I’m so happy to have learned earlier this year from Claire, over at the wonderful Word by Word site about the #ReadWomen2014 challenge, and  I’ve written about in an earlier post. I strongly support the objective of this campaign. Talented women writers too often fall into an unfair, second-tier category when it comes to traditional book…

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#ReadWomen2014

I read about this great initiative, the #ReadWomen2014 Twitter campaign earlier this year. In recent years, a lot of attention has been focused on the gender bias in the publishing industry. Despite the fact that the overwhelming majority  of readers are women, male authors still enjoy the lion’s share of media attention, awards, covers of…

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Brainstorming at the Spa 2014

I’ve heard so many great things about the Brainstorming at the Spa event held each year in Matera, Italy. This year it takes place 4-7 April 2014. This is an event organized by the Women’s Fiction Festival I write so much about, held each year in September in Matera, southern Italy. For the past three…

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