Grace Andreacchi


Grace Andreacchi 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, and then at Binghamton University. 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 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, an experimental work fusing elements of comedy and melodrama in a highly poeticised language. Her first novel, Give My Heart Ease, 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 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.
The novel Scarabocchio, 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 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, 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
  • Music for Glass Orchestra
  • The Prodigy
  • Scarabocchio
  • Poetry and Fear
  • ''You Are There Behind My Eyelids Forever''

    Plays

  • Vegetable Medley
  • Raphael and Tobias
  • Two Brothers
  • Agnes in Dappled Things 2008
  • Lawrence in Dappled Things 2008
  • Two Martyr Plays
  • Raphael and Tobias, ebook version. 2010

    Short fiction

  • The Golden Dolphins
  • The Black Swan
  • Violin Music in the Age of Shopping -The Judy Papers ,
  • Golden Vanities, Stories, Tales and Occasional Pieces ,

    Poetry

  • Elysian Sonnets and Other Poems
  • Songs for a Mad Queen
  • Two Hands Clapping
  • Berlin Elegies, ebook
  • Little Poems for Children
  • Ten Poems for the End of Time
  • Beauty Has a Thousand Faces: Selected Poems, ebook
  • Thelonious Magpie: A Book of Found Poems, ebook
  • Worm Bug Feather: One Hundred Very Short Poems, ebook
  • Multas per Gentes: Poems in Translation, ebook