Frensis Meyes

Frances Mayes is a professor at American University, as well as a poet, memoirist, publicist, and writer.

Frances Mayes was born in 1940 in Fitzgerald, Georgia. She graduated from Randolph-Macon Woman’s College in Lynchburg, Virginia, and earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Florida. In 1975 she received a master’s degree from the University of San Francisco, where she eventually became professor of creative writing, director of the Poetry Center, and chair of the Department of Creative Writing. Mayes has published several works on poetry: Climbing Aconcagua (1977), Sunday in Another Country (1977), After Such Pleasures (1979), The Arts of Fire (1982), Hours (1984), and Ex Voto (1995).

In 1996 she published Under the Tuscan Sun: At Home in Italy. The book is a memoir of Mayes’s purchase, renovation, and life in an old villa near the town of Cortona in the Italian province of Tuscany. The book reached number one on the New York Times bestseller list and remained on the list for two years. In 2003, a film adaptation of Under the Tuscan Sun was released. In 1999, Mayes consolidated her literary success with the publication of her second book, Bella Tuscany: The Sweet Life in Italy, which also became an international bestseller. In 2000, her third book, In Tuscany, was published. Frances Mayes’s first major novel, Swan, was published in 2002. In addition, Mayes is the editor of The Best American Travel Writing 2002 and the author of travel essays.

Frances Mayes and her husband divide their time between homes in Hillsborough, North Carolina, and Cortona, Italy, where she also serves as art director of the annual Tuscan Sun Festival.