As I live in Italy I cannot say I was completely taken by surprise to find such beauty surrounding Civitella. But I was not expecting such a warm atmosphere. I had planned spending my five weeks’ stay writing a screenplay, a first-time adaptation of a novel...
Among its many gifts to me, Civitella gave me the subject of my next novel. I arrived wrapped in the blank, despairing doubt that occurs between books, with no idea what I wanted to write next. No certainty that there would even be a next. For a week this place and...
When I came to stay at the Civitella Ranieri, I had a new book of poetry — my twenty-first — half done. I was hoping to finish it during my stay, and I did, writing fifty-six “versions” of poems from Charles Baudelaire’s 1861 collection...
Our family lived in a city without elms called The Elm City, on a street with no willows named Willow Street. Uncelebrated trees shaded our part of the road, sturdy oaks and mature maples, their branches so thick with leaves that they created a blind curve just before...
