Menu
Marcia DeSanctis
  • Home
  • Bio
  • Print Media
  • Web
  • Book
  • Anthologies
  • Interviews
  • News
  • Blog
  • Contact
Close Menu
The Travel Essay that Started My Career
September 13, 2016

The Travel Essay that Started My Career

I’ve been asked a lot lately how I became a travel writer. The answer is, by accident. But it was this story – about a woman I met in Moscow, a memoir from the Cold War – that launched my career. I submitted it everywhere (and I mean everywhere – one fancy editor said, “There’s not enough […]

The Millions
July 9, 2016

The Millions

I never thought I’d contribute to the vast canon of writers-on-writing essays, but here is one, called ‘There is No Handbook for This’ that I wrote about second-career writers (like me) for The Millions.

The Summer is Over, Let Life Begin
September 14, 2015

The Summer is Over, Let Life Begin

Thirteen years ago, my family and I pulled up stakes and relocated from New York City to our country house in a part of rural Connecticut that swells with city people (like we were) in the summertime. At first, I struggled mightily as I transitioned from urbanite to full time forest dweller in what had […]

This Travel Story is about Staying Home
July 16, 2015

This Travel Story is about Staying Home

May 2015       The artistry in travel writing is in how deftly one can dance between two seemingly disparate things. We must disappear into our new surroundings while maintaining the detachment that is required of the observer. Travel writing is about immersion, but it is also about being a stranger and an outsider. […]

The Perils of Standing Still
April 3, 2015

The Perils of Standing Still

    This exceptionally punishing New England winter is, at long last, fading out. Grass is beginning to reveal itself in ash-colored patches around the yard. The snowdrifts that line both sides of the driveway are blackened from exhaust but slowly disintegrating into lower and lower ridges. I hope by Easter, the last chunk of […]

On Writing a Book About France
October 18, 2014

On Writing a Book About France

No sooner had I handed in the manuscript for 100 Places in France Every Woman Should Go that I finally had a much-postponed lunch with an old friend. I had not seen her throughout the several months I spent in a dark cave writing, and behind the wheel of a little Citroën in France, researching this […]

Collecting
September 23, 2014

Collecting

After my first research trip for 100 Places in France Every Woman Should Go, I learned to pack an extra suitcase. A duffel bag from REI folded into its own little zipper case that slips right behind the rest of the stuff on the way over. The extra baggage fees are awful, of course, but 70 euros is a […]

The West Coast
September 12, 2014

The West Coast

    A year ago, I had not yet begun to research my book, 100 Places in France Every Woman Should Go. In fact, I had a beautifully empty slate, a 4-week residency at Ragdale, a memoir I was itching to write there and a novel I was desperate to revise and get back into the market. […]

Why Women Love France
August 26, 2014

Why Women Love France

Last year, months before I was asked to write a book about France for Travelers’ Tales, I was explaining to a friend why I – let’s say – strongly encouraged my daughter to study French. For me it was simple. “Every girl should live for a while in Paris,” I said. Another person in the room […]

The Off Season
October 28, 2013

The Off Season

    It’s the middle of October and the throngs have gone home. Where that is it’s hard to know, but there is a clear breeze wafting through, as if the roads themselves can breathe now that they are relieved of the traffic and congestion that gums up the corniches all during the high season. […]

Torn and Frayed
October 25, 2013

Torn and Frayed

    The town of Villefranche-sur-Mer seems to be rather mum on the subject of its most famous residents, the Rolling Stones. They lived there during the summer of 1971 in the Villa Nellcote, a mansion overlooking the Mediterranean, and recorded much of Exile on Main Streetwithin the seclusion of its iron grates. This was chronicled […]

Me, in a Suitcase
October 25, 2013

Me, in a Suitcase

When I get ready for a trip, I put different parts my life inside of a container. Toothpaste, a bathing suit, a raincoat, trousers for day and night, too many shoes. Never enough tank tops (which I wear under the sweaters I usually forget). What ends up in my suitcase is always an accident and […]

1 2
©2019 Marcia DeSanctis
Website Design: Dog & Pony Design