Linda Lappin

At the invitation of Pino Matteucci, manager of Feltrinelli International in Rome, on May 18th, Linda Lappin conducted a creative writing workshop focusing on the creative travel essay. Among the twenty participants were professional journalists, screenwriters, poets, and university students hailing from Rome, London, Copenhagen, Los Angeles, and other far points of the globe. Lappin's lesson dealt with recreating a vivid sense of place. Watch this place for future updates.

In April, Lappin was invited to give a presentation at the Santa Chiara Study Center in Castiglion Fiorentino. This center offers its campus space to several US universities, including Texas American University, where Professor Susan Stabile has added
The Etruscan to her course on American expatriate women writers in Italy. Lappin met with Professor Stabile's literature class to discuss the book and answer students' questions. Later that evening Sergio Baldassarre presented his DVD "The Etruscan, A Tale of Tuscia" at the Santa Chiara Theater and Lappin read from the novel.

The Etruscan Tours Europe

After a successful launch in Rome at Feltrinelli
International , Rome's most prestigious international bookstore, the next stop on Lappin's European tour was Siena , where she read from The Etruscan at Lisa Fanlon's English Bookshop srl on Dec. 10th.

Located in the heart of old Siena, just steps away from the Duomo in Via San Pietro 19 , the Bookshop occupies spacious quarters with handsome vaulted ceilings, lots of browsing room, a couple of comfortable armchairs, and a reading area for events. In business for just over a year, the Bookshop is well-stocked with classics and contemporary fiction, art books, children's books, cookbooks and travelguides, meeting both the needs of the expat community and tourists. Lisa, the manager, hopes to create a gathering place and cultural center for the English-speaking community of Siena and its outlying areas.

After a brief discussion of the Tuscia and its magical and mysterious sites , Lappin read an extract from Harriet's diary in The Etruscan The evening concluded with prosecco.

While in Siena, Lappin and her husband were guests of the bookshop at the Palazzo Ravizza , one of Siena's most elegant hotels with exquisite period furnishings and a view of the Sienese countryside. Lappin found it a perfectly Jamesian atmosphere.

Then in January,despite the bitter cold, a small crowd turned out to hear Linda Lappin read from the Etruscan at ESCAPE BOOKS, located at Oberstraße 8 30167 in Hannover Tel. 0511 - 769 21 61 www.escapebooks.de This charming bookstore is located in the university district and serves students, tourists, and anglophone residents of Hannover.
Copies of The Etruscan are available here.

From Hannover to Berlin where Linda met with Uwe Herms, formerly of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa, where Linda worked years ago.

Then on to Geneva for the Geneva Writers Conference where Linda met with colleagues David Applefield, editor of FRANK, the Paris-based literary journal, and Thomas E Kennedy, author of The Copenhagen Quartet and international editor of
the Literary Review, to discuss upcoming plans for podcasts of American writers living in Europe.

This spring Linda Lappin will be conducting a creative writing lab at Feltrinelli International in Rome. A presentation of The Etruscan is scheduled at Feltrinelli International in Florence in
May. Keep posted.