Louise A. DeSalvo (September 27, 1942 – October 31, 2018) was an American writer, editor, professor, and lecturer who lived in New Jersey. Much of her work focused on Italian-American culture, though she was also a renowned Virginia Woolf scholar.

DeSalvo taught memoir writing as a part of CUNY Hunter College's MFA Program in Creative Writing, published over 17 books, and was a Virginia Woolf scholar. She edited editions of Woolf's first novel Melymbrosia, as well as The Letters of Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf, which documents the controversial lesbian affair between these two novelists. In addition, she wrote two books on Woolf, Virginia Woolf: The Impact of Childhood Sexual Abuse on Her Life and Work and Virginia Woolf's First Voyage: A Novel in the Making. DeSalvo's publications also include the memoir, Vertigo, which received the Gay Talese award and was also a finalist for Italy's Primo Acerbi prize for literature. Vertigo holds as one of the most widely taught Italian American books and has been said to influence almost every Italian American memoir written since.[1] DeSalvo's memoir, Crazy in the Kitchen: Food, Feuds, and Forgiveness in an Italian American Family, was also named a Booksense Book of the Year for 2004. One of DeSalvo's most popular books to date is the writer's guide Writing as a Way of Healing: How Telling Our Stories Transforms Our Lives.

Life

Born in Jersey City, New Jersey, as Louise Anita Sciacchetano, she lived in Hoboken, before moving north to Ridgefield, New Jersey,[2] where she graduated from Ridgefield Memorial High School in 1959.[3]

She earned her undergraduate degree from Douglass College at Rutgers University and earned graduate degrees in English at New York University.[2]

DeSalvo and her husband raised their children in Teaneck, New Jersey, before they moved to Montclair to be closer to their grandchildren.[4]

Works

Major works

Vertigo

Reprinted by The Feminist Press and translated into Italian by Nutrimenti.[1]

List of works

  • Virginia Woolf's First Voyage: A Novel in the Making (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc., 1980)
  • Nathaniel Hawthorne (Brill Academic Publishers, Incorporated, 1987)
  • Casting Off (Prentice Hall / Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1987)
  • Virginia Woolf: The Impact of Childhood Sexual Abuse on Her Life and Work (Ballantine Books, 1990)
  • Territories of the Voice: Contemporary Stories by Irish Women Writers, Edited By Louise DeSalvo, Katherine Hogan, and Kathleen W. D’Arcy (Beacon Press, 1991)
  • Between Women: Biographers, Novelists, Critics, Teachers, and Artists Write About Their Work on Women, Edited by Carol Ascher, Sara Ruddick, and Louise DeSalvo (Routledge, 1993)
  • Conceived with Malice: Literature as Revenge in the Lives of Woolf, Lawrence, Barnes, Miller (Plume, 1994)
  • Breathless: An Asthma Journal (Beacon Press, 1997)
  • Vertigo: A Memoir (Penguin, 1997)
  • Adultery: An Intimate Look at Why People Cheat (Houghton Mifflin, 2000)
  • Writing as a Way of Healing: How Telling Our Stories Transforms Our Lives (Beacon Press, 2000)
  • A Green and Mortal Sound: Short Fiction by Irish Women Writers, Edited by Louise DeSalvo, Katherine Hogan, and Kathleen Walsh D’Arcy (Beacon Press, 2001)
  • The Letters of Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf, Edited by Louise DeSalvo and Mitchell Leaska (Cleis Press, 2001)
  • Melymbrosia by Virginia Woolf, Edited by Louise DeSalvo (Cleis Press, 2002)
  • The Milk of Almonds: Italian American Women Writers on Food and Culture, Edited by Louise DeSalvo and Edvidge Giunta (The Feminist Press at CUNY, 2003)
  • Crazy in the Kitchen: Food, Feuds and Forgiveness in an Italian American Family (Bloomsbury, 2005)
  • On Moving: A Writer's Meditation on New Houses, Old Haunts, and Finding Home Again (Bloomsbury, 2009)
  • Scrivere per stare meglio (Audino, 2011)
  • The Art of Slow Writing: Reflections on Time, Craft, and Creativity (St. Martin's Griffin, 2014)

Awards

  • Booksense Book of the Year 2004, Crazy in the Kitchen: Food, Feuds and Forgiveness in an Italian American Family [5]
  • The Douglass Society Medal for Distinguished Achievement [5]
  • Jenny Hunter Endowed Scholar for Creative Writing and Literature at Hunter College [5]
  • Gay Talese Award, Vertigo [5]
  • The President's Award from Hunter College [5]

References

  1. 1 2 "Oxford University Press".
  2. 1 2 Seelye, Katharine Q. "Louise DeSalvo, Memoirist and Virginia Woolf Scholar, Dies at 76", The New York Times, November 11, 2018. Accessed December 25, 2023. "Louise Anita Sciacchetano was born on Sept. 27, 1942, in Jersey City to Louis and Mildred (Calabrese) Sciacchetano. Her father was a machinist for a towing company, and her mother was a homemaker. Her early life was spent in the hardscrabble milieu of Hoboken, N.J., tenements, but in the postwar boom her family moved to a house in Ridgefield, a more suburban New Jersey town."
  3. ↑ "Ridgefield Seniors Given Scholarships", The Record, May 25, 1959. Accessed December 25, 2023, via Newspapers.com. "Three Memorial High School seniors have been awarded scholarships totalling $2,900, the 1959 scholarship committees of the Board of Education, Exchange Club, and Ridgefield Manufacturers Association announced last night. The award winners are Allan R. Cerny, Louise Sciacchetano, and Stephen Havlicek.... Miss Sciacchetano of 593 Prospect Avenue won the school board's $500 scholarship. She is on the. staff of the school news paper and yearbook and has been a member of the Student Council, the prom committee, and vocal music group. She plans to attend Douglass College and eventually become high-school English teacher."
  4. ↑ Eng, Christina. "'On Moving,' by Louise DeSalvo", San Francisco Chronicle, March 29, 2009. Accessed March 31, 2009.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 "Hunter College MFA Creative Writing".
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