Virginia Woolf's First Voyage: A Novel in the Making

Louise A. DeSalvo was born Louise Anita Sciacchetano in Jersey City, New Jersey on September 27, 1942. She received a bachelor's degree in English from Douglass College in 1963. She taught at Wood-Ridge High School for four years before receiving a master's degree in English in 1972 and a Ph.D. in English in 1977 from New York University. She taught at Fairleigh Dickinson University from 1977 to 1982 before becoming a professor of English and creative writing at Hunter College. She was an authority on Virginia Woolf and a memoirist on Italian-American culture. She wrote and edited numerous books including Virginia Woolf: The Impact of Childhood Sexual Abuse on Her Life and Work; Between Women: Biographers, Novelists, Critics, Teachers and Artists Write About Their Work on Women; Territories of the Voice: Short Stories by Irish Women; The Letters of Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf; The Milk of Almonds: Italian American Women Writers on Food and Culture; Writing as a Way of Healing; and The Art of Slow Writing. She wrote several memoirs including Crazy in the Kitchen, Chasing Ghosts, The House of Early Sorrows, and Vertigo, which won the Gay Talese Award. Her novel, Casting Off, was published in 1987. She died from metastatic breast cancer on October 31, 2018 at the age of 76.