| Frances
Mayes has always adored houses, and when she saw Bramasole,
a neglected, 200-year old Tuscan farmhouse nestled in five overgrown
acres, it was love at first sight. Out of that instant infatuation
have come four marvelous, and hugely popular, books: the bestsellers
Under
the Tuscan Sun, Bella
Tuscany, In
Tuscany, a collaborative photo-textbook with her
husband, the poet Edward Mayes, and photographer Bob Krist,
and Bringing
Tuscany Home: Sensuous Style From the Heart of Italy,
another collaborative book with Edward Mayes and photographer
Steven Rothfeld. All four highly personal books are about taking
chances, living in Italy, loving and renovating an old Italian
villa, the pleasures of food, wine, gardens, and the “voluptuousness
of Italian life.”
Her first novel, Swan,
a family saga and mystery, returns Mayes to her childhood home
of Georgia and was published in 2002. A film version of Under
the Tuscan Sun, starring Diane Lane, was released in fall
of 2003. Frances Mayes was the editor for the 2002
Best American Travel Writing. She is also the author of
the travel memoir entitled A
Year in the World: Journeys of A Passionate Traveller, which
immediately debuted as a New York Times bestseller in 2006.
Working again with Steven Rothfeld, she published Shrines:
Images of Italian Worship, also in 2006.
A widely published poet
and essayist, Frances Mayes has written numerous books of poetry,
including Sunday in Another Country, After Such Pleasures,
The Arts of Fire, Hours, The Book of Summer,
and Ex
Voto. Her work The
Discovery of Poetry: A Field Guide to Reading and Writing Poems
is widely used in college poetry classes. Formerly a professor
of creative writing at San Francisco State University, where
she directed The Poetry Center and chaired the Department of
Creative Writing, Mayes now devotes herself full time to writing
and to her “At Home in Tuscany” furniture and accessory
lines. She and her husband divide their time between
North Carolina and Cortona, Italy.
•••
“Frances Mayes
is an elegant and gracious speaker. She quickly engaged the
audience of more than 1000 people, who arrived eager to hear
everything she had to say about Tuscany, and left with their
expectations met and then exceeded.”
— North Suburban
Library, Wheeling, IL
“Tuscany may
have found its own bard in Frances Mayes.”
— The New York
Times |
