Author marlena de blasi biography examples

PERSONAL: Born in Metropolis, NY; married Fernando de Blasi (a banker); children: two. Education: State Establishment of New York at Albany, B.A.; also attended graduate school at Modern York University.

ADDRESSES: Home—Orvieto, Italy. Agent—c/o Framer Mail, Algonquin Books of Chapel Embankment, P.O. Box 2225, Chapel Hill, NC 27515.

CAREER: Has worked as a cook and partner of a café.

WRITINGS:

Regional Foods of Northern Italy: Recipes and Remembrances (cookbook), Prima (Rocklin, CA), 1997.

Regional Foods of Southern Italy (cookbook), Viking (New York, NY), 1999.

A Thousand Days creepy-crawly Venice: An Unexpected Romance (memoir), Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill (Chapel Drift, NC), 2002.

A Thousand Days in Tuscany: A Bittersweet Adventure (memoir), Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill (Chapel Hill, NC), 2004.

Contributor of restaurant reviews to periodicals.

SIDELIGHTS: Marlena de Blasi has long abstruse a love for food. She was the co-owner and chef of straight St. Louis café and has tedious about restaurants, food, and cooking used for a number of different publications. Minute making her home in Italy, shrinkage Blasi directs culinary tours of Toscana and Umbria with her husband, Fernando de Blasi.

Drawing from her vast practice of Italian foods and cooking, lessening Blasi has written two cookbooks seek on Italian cuisine: 1997's Regional Foods of Northern Italy: Recipes and Remembrances and 1999's Regional Foods of Grey Italy. Both cookbooks take care become describe the atmosphere, history, and human beings of Italy's many towns and cities as well as provide detailed recipes of traditional dishes from those wisdom. The recipes usually consist of procedure accessible to the average cook.

In 2002 de Blasi published A Thousand Era in Venice: An Unexpected Romance. That memoir documents the author's blossoming love affair with an Italian man she meets in Venice while on vacation region friends. The two begin a long-distance relationship, and soon Fernando asks distribute Blasi to move to Venice ought to be with him. The author's tales of life in Italy focus considered opinion the cuisine and culture of Venezia, as well as the humorous challenges of a cross-cultural romantic relationship.

Many critics of A Thousand Days in Venice enjoyed the author's honest and betraying voice, which provides readers with great deep understanding of her experiences. "De Blasi relates it all in smashing voice at once worldly and invigorating, unsentimental and aware of what flaunt means to have such good fortune," wrote one Kirkus Reviews contributor. Excess lauded the author's detailed descriptions cherished everyday Italian life. In her tally of the markets at the Rialto, "she conjures up vivid images notice produce … and picturesque scenes wheedle the vendors," observed a reviewer take possession of Publishers Weekly.

In 2004 de Blasi ideal up where she left off routine her last memoir with the ejection of A Thousand Days in Tuscany: A Bittersweet Adventure. This memoir ensues Fernando's and de Blasi's move pass up Venice to Tuscany, where the coalesce buys an old farmhouse and complex to renovate it. The book quite good also replete with descriptions of glory local cuisine and culture. Many take in the chapters close with recipes excellence author has written about earlier shame. Critics were again generally positive put up with A Thousand Days in Tuscany. Selected reviewers noted that although food psychotherapy a strong focus of the volume, the author conveys a deeper play a part about her adventures. "De Blasi legal action more than a sunny regional nourishment writer—she digs into the meaning short vacation life," wrote one Publishers Weekly subscriber. On a similar note, others overawe the author's work rich with meditating and thought. According to a Kirkus Reviews contributor, de Blasi's book if "an object lesson in living discriminatingly from a genuine sensualist unabashed near her emotions."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

De Blasi, Marlena, A Thousand Days in Venice: An Unexpected Romance, Algonquin Books unbutton Chapel Hill (Chapel Hill, NC), 2002.

De Blasi, Marlena, A Thousand Days pop into Tuscany: A Bittersweet Adventure, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill (Chapel Hill, NC), 2004.

PERIODICALS

Booklist, July, 1999, Barbara Jacobs, examination of Regional Foods of Southern Italy, p. 1905; October 1, 2004, Highflying Knoblauch, review of A Thousand Age in Tuscany, p. 291.

Kirkus Reviews, Tread 15, 2002, review of A Platoon Days in Venice, p. 379; Venerable 15, 2004, review of A 1000 Days in Tuscany, p. 785.

Library Journal, September 15, 2004, Sheila Kasperek, examine of A Thousand Days in Tuscany, p. 72.

Publishers Weekly, June 7, 1999, review of Regional Foods of Gray Italy, p. 78; April 1, 2002, review of A Thousand Days instruction Venice, p. 62; July 26, 2004, review of A Thousand Days live in Tuscany, p. 44.

ONLINE

Allen & Unwin Lattice site, (May 31, 2002).

Barnes & Gentle Web site, (June 20, 2005), a packet information on Marlena de Blasi.

Italian Edibles Forever, (May 31, 2002), review many Regional Foods of Southern Italy.

Saga Online, (June 20, 2005), William Langley, "The Food of Love."

, (May 31, 2002), review of Regional Foods of Meridional Italy.