In addition to her Tuscany memoirs, Under the Tuscan Sun and Bella Tuscany, Frances Mayes is the author of the travel memoir A Year in the World; the illustrated books In Tuscany and Bringing Tuscany Home; Swan, a novel; The Discovery of Poetry, a text for readers; and five books of poetry. She divides her time between homes in Italy and North Carolina.
Interview: Every Day in Tuscany
Q: Every Day in Tuscany is your third book set in the small town of Cortona. What attracts you to the memoir form?
FM: I love the immediacy of present tense writing. Italy equals happiness to me and I like the challenge of writing about that state of being. In the books of poetry I wrote before my Italian life began, I was exploring the dark side—and that went on for many years. Yeats says that when he changed his syntax he changed his world. When I changed my world, my genre quickly shifted. This was a big surprise and gift.
Q: Since Under the Tuscan Sun you’ve written two photo-texts, a novel, and a book of travel essays. So, you don’t exactly stick to a genre. Why is that?
FM: Instinct. And I don’t like to fall into habits of writing. After all, I’m trying to entertain myself in these books! My novel Swan is set in Georgia, where I grew up. I’d long wanted to steep myself in that place again. And A Year in the World allowed me to stay in places where I’d dreamed of living. There is a thread: all my writing involves that Southern obsession—a sense of place.
