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The American's Team

Good writers are hard to find. The American has been fortunate beyond measure to assemble a group of veteran journalists and younger writers. Since the magazine began publishing online in 2004, some have written once, others dozens of times. But each has done his or her part with enthusiasm and a commitment to professional ethics.

Below you'll find a list of the most recent contributors to the project (in all, we've published some 200 writers). Some live in Italy while others write from afar. A list of their published work for us may be found below their brief biographies. We do not list the personal email addresses of our writers at their request. Some have blogs and personal sites, and many of those are also listed. The writers are responsible for the content of their personal biographies and are also accountable for their spirit and accuracy. Errors in fact, however, are the full responsibility of the magazine. Point them out and we'll correct them.

If you wish to get in touch with one of our writers about their work you may write to them maginfo@theamericanmag.com and your message will be forwarded to them in due course. Whether they choose to answer is up to them.

Finally, while all content has been vetted and edited, the views represented in our reports, interviews, profiles, and first-person columns represent those of the authors and not the magazine. The American is a forum for ideas about Italy and the world around it. It's also a venue where expatriates can read about what their fellows are thinking. If you'd like to join our team, write to us at the maginfo address and we'll open up a conversation. Eloquence and insight is what we seek and what we hope to have provided so far. Our magazine is the sum of its wonderfully disparate parts. It is "old school" in that it does not represent a forum for reader ideas and "quickie" feedback. Nor is it a blog. Instead, it is a kind of "log," which we see as an effort to compile many life narratives, some from Italy, others not. With luck, bits of wisdom follow suit.

—Christopher P. Winner, editor and publisher


Sam Alberts "Apicius"	Sam was born and raised in New York, N.Y., and made his first trip to Rome during his freshman year of high school, and from there his interest for the city only grew. After studying Classics and Art History at Davidson College, he seized the opportunity to return to Rome for a summer internship in 2008. Not finding two months sufficient time to delve into the city's history and culture, Sam remained in Rome. He now leads private tours, writes, and works as an apprentice in a well known restaurant. See Sam's blog

Lynda Albertson Writer	Lynda Albertson was born and raised in the Little Havana section of Miami. Affection for American "Beat Generation" authors led her first to poetry and then to prose. Her writing has appeared in a number of online books as well as in print. She works for the non-profit Rome-based American Institute For Roman Culture and was the author of The American's monthly wine column between 2006 and March 2010.

Nicole Arriaga "Bella Figura"	Nicole Arriaga graduated from the Florida International University in Miami with a BA in Mass Communications. While completing her degree, she worked part-time as a news writer for a local television station in Miami and freelanced for The Miami Herald. Later, she was a producer for an NBC television affiliate. Arriaga came to Rome to earn her MA in International Relations at St. John's University. In her spare time, she enjoys reading books by Paulo Coelho, watching foreign films, and catching up with friends over an aperitivo.

Eleonora Baldwin "In Cucina"	American-born, Italian-raised Eleonora Baldwin lives in Rome and divides her time between working on film sets, food and travel writing, and designing Italian culinary holidays. She is currently editing her Italian cuisine/lifestyle manuscript, a collection of family recipes, food history notes, gastronomy traditions, and the ingredients that inspire them. Eleonora is the author/editor of four popular websites Aglio, Olio & Peperoncino, Roma Every Day, Rome City Guide for Kids and Forchettine.

Marc Alan Di Martino "Man About Rome"	Marc Alan Di Martino is an American poet, writer and translator living in Rome, Italy. His work has been published in Poetry Salzburg Review, BigCityLit, Pivot, The New Formalist, The New Yorker's “Bookbench blog” and Mr. Beller's Neighborhood. He is a frequent contributor to the Journal of Italian Translation, published twice yearly at Brooklyn College. The Fall 2009 issue includes his translations of the Roman dialect poet Mario Dell'Arco — which he is developing into a full-length manuscript — and an interview with prize-winning translator Michael Palma. Marc's "skeptical" blog

Kissy Dugan "Parenthood"	Kissy Dugan started her career at the age of four at Delaney's Irish Pizza Pub where she sang back up for a band... of midgets... dressed as leprechauns. From there, a career in comedy was inevitable. As a comic, Kissy's work appeared regularly at all of L.A.'s famous clubs like Laugh Factory, Comedy Store and The Improv. She has performed her comedy all over the United States and eight countries in Europe. As a writer, Kissy has worked in many capacities including: indie film, stage and public relations. She now takes her new experience as a mother to the pages of The American.

Suzanne Dunaway "Suzanne's Taste"	Suzanne Dunaway is the author and illustrator of "Rome, At Home, The Spirit of la cucina romana in Your Own Kitchen" (Broadway Books) and "No Need To Knead, Handmade Italian Breads in 90 Minutes" (Hyperion). She has had illustrations published in The New Yorker, Gourmet, Bon Appetit and the Los Angeles Times. See Suzanne's site

Nancy Feyen "Due Diligence"	Nancy Feyen has a BA, BM and MM, all from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She was working on a doctorate in piano performance when she traveled to Italy. She met her husband and never moved back. Feyen’s two children attend university in Milan. She has played chamber music and worked as a vocal and ballet accompanist. She also teaches music.

Erica Firpo Writer	Erica Firpo wrote The American's pet advice column from 2006 to 2009. She is a freelance travel and culture writer who lives in Rome with husband, daughter and faithful sidekick Bella. She has worked for Fodor's Rome edition, Luxe City Guides and National Geographic Travel, as well as writing art reviews for Zing and other U.S.-based magazines.

Patricia E. Fogarty "Scriptorium"	Ex-Rabelais scholar, "Scriptorium" boss Fogarty skipped from degreeland to clock-filling doublejobs in NYC: ghetto teaching; freelance copyediting Prentice Hall. The next, Italian experience added translation word games. In Rome, jump-started an Italian publisher’s English-language series, cinema-slanted. Over years, time snatched for travel pieces, short stories, placed wherever they fell. "Scriptorium": a few monthly grafs from an over-booked head.

Julia Gabrick Writer	Julia Gabrick graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 2006 with a degree in European Studies. Determined to recreate the non-stop adventure that was junior year in Perugia, she moved to Salo', on Lake Garda, to teach high school English in 2007. Although she has since returned to the U.S., she's always looking for a way to live permanently in Italy without marrying anyone.

Enrico Jacomini Direttore Responsabile	Enrico Jacomini was born in New York, May 2, 1941. He worked for over 31 years in the Rome bureau of The Associated Press. He was then Chief of Staff of the IAAF, the world track and field body, and Secretary General of the International Athletics Foundation in Monaco. He retired in 1997, but returned to become president of Venice Marathon, Italy's leading marathon. He is a consultant for several sports and editorial organizations.

Madeleine Johnson "Milan Notebook"	Associate editor Madeleine Johnson is an unrepentant midwesterner who has lived in Italy — with a two-year break in Paris — since 1988. She has degrees in art history from Wellesley College and U.C. Berkeley. To her monthly column for the American, she brings two decades of thought and research on a wide range of Italian social and political matters, including education, history, politics, literature and culture. She has written about Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi for the New York Post and is a frequent contributor to the Financial Times, for whom she writes on numerous matters including Italian real estate, urban growth, confiscation of Mafia property as well as travel and food. She lives in Milan.

Lauren Jurgensen Critic	Lauren Jurgensen graduated with a degree in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Mary Washington. When she wasn't studying the coming-of-age rituals of West Africans, she was writing daily for local papers in the Washington, D.C.-Metro area. A passion for spreading the word about world cinema eventually led her to become president of the campus film club. There, she insisted on screening Italian crime dramas and the Rome-set films of director Federico Fellini. Today she lives in solitude in Fredericksburg, Virginia, where she writes haiku, bikes the Civil War trails and builds an endless personal library of books and vinyl records.

Madeline Klosterman "American Girl"	Madeline Klosterman was born in Dayton, Ohio in corn and soybean country. As the youngest of 14, she strictly followed the edicts of family order theory and ran off to see the world upon turning 18. She has traveled Europe and the United States, lived in San Francisco, Seattle, and Southern California. She came to New York in 1999 and studied creative writing at the Writers Studio in the West Village. She loves art, nature, vodka martinis and Brazilian music. Spurning Manhattan, she lives in Brooklyn (in Walt Whitman's old neighborhood) and hangs out where artists and musicians continue to thrive and inspire her.

Patrick Masterson "Tracks"	Patrick Masterson is a freelance writer living on Chicago's West Side. Born in New York and raised in South Carolina, his enthusiasm for reading and writing led to a degree in Journalism and Mass Communications from the University of South Carolina. Though his free time is divided primarily between writing for Dusted Magazine and DJing for the Chicago Independent Radio Project, Patrick also spends significant time illegally obtaining MotoGP and World Superbike broadcasts by foreign providers, craft beers, and traveling on a shoestring budget.

Katie McGovern Writer	Associate editor Katie McGovern is from Connecticut. She graduated from Harvard with a BA in English and American Literature, received a masters in International Affairs on a Fulbright scholarship in Germany, and an MBA from INSEAD on a Rotary Scholarship in France. She resides in Rome with her Italian husband.

Luisa Milanese Writer and Listings Editor	Luisa Milanese is a true Milan native. For a decade she worked in public relations. In 1998, she joined Italy Daily, a daily newspaper published in English by Rizzoli and the International Herald Tribune, where she wrote the culture listings page. After its closing, she was hired by the monthly magazine Capital and later by Style, a monthly men's magazine of Corriere della Sera. After two years in Condé Nast, she is now working as a fashion producer for A, weekly magazine published by Rizzoli. Luisa loves reading, going to the movies or to art exhibits and, above all, traveling.

Clare Pedrick Writer	Clare Pedrick is a British journalist who has lived in Italy for nearly 20 years. She is a former Washington Post correspondent and ex-European Editor for the "World News Link" agency. She now edits Spore, a magazine on agriculture and development, as well working as a freelancer. She lives in Spoleto with her Italian husband and three children. She wrote The American's "View from Spoleto" column from 2004 through 2009.

John Pitonzo Writer	John Pitonzo is a literature and drama teacher at the International School of Florence. He has a monthly column, Postcard From Florence, with Calcio Italia, a British football magazine, that exclusively covers Italy. John runs a small farm in the Chianti in his spare time.

Amanda Ruggeri "La Straniera"	Growing up, Amanda Ruggeri lived on a Vermont mountain in winter, a boat in Maine in summer, in Rochester, N.Y. on off-seasons, and in her books at every moment in between. The peripatetic lifestyle — and love of writing — stuck with her. After a degree in history from Yale and an M.Phil in international relations from Cambridge, she moved to Washington to cover politics and the economy for U.S. News & World Report before deciding that her life needed more exposure to 15th-century churches, ancient ruins and Berlusconi-style politics. Now a freelance writer in Rome, she writes two blogs, Revealed in Rome and Inking Italy and has published in the Guardian.

Eleanor Shannon Tasting Notes	Eleanor is based in Milan, where she trained to become an Italian sommelier (Associazione Italiana Sommeliers), Originally from Charlottesville, Virginia, she earned a BA in French and history at Dartmouth and an MBA at Harvard. She worked for the World Bank in Africa, taught at the University of Virginia, and raised three children. In 2004, the phone rang with an invitation to teach university students in Italy, and she never looked back. Now, she writes, works on her wine company, Bella Vita Wine, practices yoga, and spends as much time as possible in the seaside town of San Rocco di Camogli.

Annie Shapero "Annie's Kitchen"	Descended from a long line of gourmets, Annie has food and wine in her DNA. A nationally certified Italian sommelier (AIS) and recreational chef, she picked up the essentials of Italian cooking over the course of eight years in Rome and her frequent travels throughout Italy. A believer in culinary sorcery, Annie understands of the healing powers of everything from chicken soup to a flourless chocolate aphrodisiac. A freelance food, wine, and travel writer, she is a contributor to Eurocheapo.com, Berlitz, Time Out, Insight Guides, DK Eye Witness Guides, as well as Where Rome, Draft, and YRB magazines. Now in Brooklyn, she serves as Wine Director and Senior Editor for Haute Life Press, and runs "DiVino", a wine consulting business. See Annie's blog:

Andrea Smith "The Hiker"	Andrea Smith lives with her husband Marino in Milan. Born and raised in Canada, she's an avid hiker. Here, she's pictured with Marino at the Lunghin Pass in Engadina.

Julianne VanWagenen "Wonderland"	Julianne is a twenty-something United Statesian best known for her 1991 rendition of a Bon-Bon in the Lansing, Michigan community theater performance of "The Nutcracker." She has since moved on to greater, if less celebrated roles in life. She graduated from DePaul University in Chicago and moved to Rome in 2006 to enroll at L'Universita' Roma Tre. In 2010 she returned to East Lansing where she works at Michigan State University's chemistry department and Abram's Planetarium. She's an advocate of the elegant written word, positive romanticism, quests, tutus, a multiverse, and eating bottom feeders at home rather than sushi out.

Ingrid Williams "The Casual Traveler"	Ingrid Williams is a freelance writer living with her husband on the Ligurian coast. She graduated from NYU with degrees in journalism and politics, and now writes about travel for U.S. publications including The New York Times and Budget Travel. When she's not traveling, you can find her baking Swedish pastries, practicing Anusara yoga, reading fashion magazines and planning her next trip. See Ingrid's site

Christopher P. Winner Editor and Publisher	Christopher P. Winner was born in Paris, France. He founded The American in 2004. He wrote cover stories for USA Today and was later named European correspondent. He has published in The New York Times, Newsweek and The Christian Science Monitor, among others. An American citizen, Winner has been based in Europe for most of his career. He writes the column Area 51 He's a lifelong Neil Young and New York Yankees fan.

David Winner Fiction Editor	David Winner's first novel, "The Cannibal of Guadalajara," won the Gival Novel prize and received advance praise from National Book Award winners, Shirley Hazzard and John Casey. It will be published in 2010 by the Gival Press. His short fiction has been nominated twice for the Pushcart and the Associated Writing Programs Intro prize, as well as winning the 2003 Ledge Magazine Short Story contest. He has published in The Village Voice, Fiction, Confrontation, Dream Catcher, The Cortland Review and several other journals in the U.S. and UK. Another story, "My Lover's Moods" was made into a short film that played at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival. See "My Lover's Mood" clip

Marcia Yarrow Film Critic	A military brat, Marcia Yarrow was born in Hamburg, Germany. She grew up in Germany, Spain, and Provo, Utah. She attended Michigan State University, graduating with honors in French studies in 1990. She attended the National Film School of France, La Femis. She also studied film at USC. She lives in London with her Siamese cat Miou-Miou and her Sioux Indian boyfriend Jasper. She's working on a book on modern European film and second one called, "How to See Movies."

Germano Zaini "Da Germano"	Germano Zaini was born and lives in Rome. He has a degree in biology and works for a pharmaceutical company. He loves traditional Italian and international cooking, mixing flavors to create his own brand of "fusion" cuisine. In his spare time, he cooks for his American wife and friends.