“We were told in no uncertain terms that we were the type of people who wore shoes…” Grazia Ietto Gillies reminisces of her early life in By the Olive Groves, A Calabrian Childhood, a memoir that focuses on her time growing up in Delianuova, a hill town of southern Calabria.
Reggio TV, My Appearance on Italian TV
Life is funny. When I began to study the Italian language as an adult and made my first attempts at conversation, I would never have imagined that one day I would be capable of giving full-fledged presentations in Italian or would appear on Italian TV.
My Italy Blog – Has It Been Two Years Already?
BLOG ANNIVERSARY This month marks my two-year anniversary of blogging about Italy, mostly Calabria, the region in the toe of the peninsula, and I would like to reflect a moment on what I feel makes something worth blogging or writing about. As with my book, I’ve put my all into my Italy blog and when people ask me, “When are …
Visiting a High School in Calabria
THE ANGLO-ITALIAN CLUB Calabrians have shown a lot of interest in my book, Calabria: The Other Italy. Even those who don’t speak a word of English want to know what it’s about and how they’re portrayed. The members of the Anglo-Italian Club of Reggio Calabria have taken a particular interest. Heck, the group is in the book.
Three Classic Books on Calabria
CALABRIAN TRAVELOGUES If you do any search of books about Calabria, there are three titles that will invariably come up: Journals of a Landscape Painter in Southern Calabria (1852) by Edward Lear, By the Ionian Sea: Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy (1901) by George Gissing and Old Calabria (1915) by Norman Douglas.
Reflection: From Print to Electronic Formats
UNDERSTANDING THE E-BOOK “It’s just words on a page.” I’m not an e-book reader. When I started out in the process of converting my print book to an electronic format, I had a little trouble wrapping my brain around the so-called fluidity of the page and this is what I was told.
Reflection: Publishing CALABRIA: THE OTHER ITALY
WRITING IS JUST THE BEGINNING Writing a book is demanding. Publishing a book is another story. I’m generally very disciplined, so setting myself in front of the computer every day for about ten months was challenging, but doable. Plus, I already had a doctoral dissertation under my belt, so it wasn’t as formidable a task as a first effort might …
Reflection: Lining up Today’s Pixels With the Columns of Ancient Greece
THE BOOK COVER PUTTING TOGETHER A BOOK for publication takes a lot of thought and requires many decisions. For obvious reasons, much care is given to the cover, but the interior layout, choice of fonts and typesetting is equally important as that’s where the reader ultimately will spend most of his time. The book cover, however, gives the first impression, …