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Grace Andreacchi (born December 3, 1954) is an American-born author known for her blend of poetic language and modernism with a post-modernist sensibility. Andreacchi is active as a novelist, poet and playwright.

Biography

Grace Andreacchi was born in New York City and grew up in the Inwood section of Manhattan. She was educated at the Academy of Mount St. Ursula High School, and went on to study theatre at the Stella Adler Studio. A brief period on the stage was followed by the study of philosophy, first at Hunter College (New York City), and then at Binghamton University (Binghamton, New York). In her final year she received a fellowship to study at Bedford College, London. Since 1989 Andreacchi has lived in Europe, moving first to Paris, then rural Normandy, and later to Berlin (1994–1998) and London, where she now lives. In 2008 she founded Andromache Books, a writers' cooperative, to publish literary fiction and poetry.

Works

Her first work was the play Vegetable Medley (1985, Soho Repertory Theater, New York and Boston Center for the Arts, Boston, Massachusetts), an experimental work fusing elements of comedy and melodrama in a highly poeticised language. Her first novel, Give My Heart Ease (1989), received the New American Writing Award and was translated into Slovenian as Pomiri mi srce. Admired by some critics, others found its frank depiction of an abusive sexual relationship disturbing.

Her 1993 novel, Music for Glass Orchestra, garnered much critical acclaim for its wildly beautiful, surrealistic style. Set in Paris, it contains a wide-ranging discourse on the music of J.S. Bach, with special attention to the Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin. Her first collection of poetry, Elysian Sonnets and Other Poems (1990) was published as a chapbook in Paris.

In 1995 Andreacchi was a collaborator in the project Violin Music in the Age of Shopping, a work by avant-garde composer and violinist Jon Rose. For her contribution Andreacchi was made an Honorary Fellow of the Rosenberg Foundation (Sydney, Australia).

The novel Scarabocchio (1995), an architecturally adventurous ‘inverted fugue’, is based on Goethe’s Italian Journey, and continues the discussion of Bach through the character of ‘Barton Beale’, a lightly fictionalized Glenn Gould. The short novel Poetry and Fear (2001) is set in the Berlin opera world, and uses the myth of Orpheus to explore themes of love and loss. Later works showed an increased emphasis on Christian spiritual themes. A continued interest in the culture of the far east is reflected in Two Brothers (2007), a version of the Korean pansori tale Heungbu and Nolbu. Recent work has shown a turning away from Christianity towards an avowedly feminist point of view. Her semi-autobiographical novel You Are There Behind My Eyelids Forever , a coming of age story with feminist and erotic content, is set in the Inwood of her childhood.

Publications

Novels

• Give My Heart Ease ISBN 0-932966-90-X (1989)
• Music for Glass Orchestra ISBN 1-85242-299-8 (1993)
• The Prodigy ISBN 978-1-4452-0980-7 (1994, first complete print edition 2009)
• Scarabocchio ISBN 978-1-4092-3643-6 (2008)
• Poetry and Fear ISBN 978-1-4092-3642-9 (2008)
• You Are There Behind My Eyelids Forever ISBN 978-0-244-52504-0 (2021)

Plays

• Vegetable Medley (1985)
• Raphael and Tobias (1994)
• Two Brothers ISBN 978-1-4092-3672-6 (2007)
• Agnes in Dappled Things 2008
• Lawrence in Dappled Things 2008
• Two Martyr Plays ISBN 978-1-4092-3768-6 (contains both Agnes and Lawrence) (2009)
• Raphael and Tobias ISBN 978-1-4461-3340-8, ebook version ISBN 978-1-4461-2880-0. 2010

Short fiction

• The Golden Dolphins (The Carolina Quarterly 1991)
• The Black Swan (1994)
• Violin Music in the Age of Shopping -The Judy Papers (Editors Jon Rose and Rainer Linz) ISBN 0-646-18105-X,(NMA Publications, 1994)
• Golden Vanities, Stories, Tales and Occasional Pieces (2018) ISBN 978-0-244-10691-1, (Andromache Books, 2018)

Poetry

• Elysian Sonnets and Other Poems (The Paris Press 1990)
• Songs for a Mad Queen (2000)
• Two Hands Clapping (with artist Alexandra Rozenman) ISBN 978-1-4092-9978-3 (2009)
• Berlin Elegies ISBN 978-1-4452-1640-9, ebook ISBN 978-1-4461-2878-7 (2010)
• Little Poems for Children ISBN 978-1-4457-6338-5 (2010)
• Ten Poems for the End of Time ISBN 978-1-326-49489-6 (2015)
• Beauty Has a Thousand Faces: Selected Poems ISBN 978-1-4466-2893-5, ebook ISBN 978-1-4478-1026-1 (2024)
• Thelonious Magpie: A Book of Found Poems ISBN 978-1-4461-5202-7, ebook ISBN 978-1-4461-2505-2 (2024)
• Worm Bug Feather: One Hundred Very Short Poems ISBN 978-1-4461-5968-2, ebook ISBN 978-1-4461-7833-1 (2024)

References

1. "Grace Andreacchi". Poets & Writers. March 18, 2008. Retrieved April 6, 2024.
2. "Another Country". Retrieved April 2, 2024.
3. "Grace Andreacchi". Poets & Writers. March 18, 2008. Retrieved April 6, 2024.
4. "SNAKESKIN: The Poetry Webzine". www.snakeskinpoetry.co.uk. Retrieved April 2, 2024.
5. "Grace Andreacchi". Poets & Writers. March 18, 2008. Retrieved April 6, 2024.
6. "Grace Andreacchi". Poets & Writers. March 18, 2008. Retrieved April 6, 2024.
7. "An American Writer in Paris". Retrieved April 2, 2024.
8. "John le Carré - Sie Verlassen den Amerikanischen Sektor". Retrieved April 2, 2024.
9. Phillips, Jo (May 8, 2013). "Grace Andreacchi". Cent Magazine. Retrieved April 2, 2024.
10. Shoes, Agnieszkas (June 24, 2010). "The Man Who Painted Agnieszka's Shoes: Andromache: A little Corner of Excellence". The Man Who Painted Agnieszka's Shoes. Retrieved April 2, 2024.
11. Kirkus Reviews, 1989 and Publishers Weekly, 1989
12. Review of Contemporary Fiction, June 1993
13. The Sunday Times, September 12, 1993
14. Beyond Baroque Chapbook Archive .
15. The Rosenberg Archive .
16. "scarabocchio1". www.kissthewitch.co.uk. Retrieved April 2, 2024.
17. "Maxim Gorky and Grandmother's God".
18. "Literary Mothers".

External links

• Grace Andreacchi's website
• An interview with Grace Andreachi on Authortrek
• Grace Andreacchi at LibraryThing
• Grace Andreacchi on Poets & Writers

• 1954 births
• Living people
• American women novelists
• American women poets
• Modernist women writers
• American postmodern writers
• 21st-century American novelists
• 20th-century American novelists
• Hunter College alumni
• Binghamton University alumni
• Writers from New York City
• American women dramatists and playwrights
• 20th-century American women writers
• 21st-century American women writers
• 20th-century American poets
• 20th-century American dramatists and playwrights
• 21st-century American poets
• Novelists from New York (state)