The Frances File
SFSU credentials: Professor, 1976 - 2001; director of the Poetry Center, 1979 - 1982; chair of Creative Writing, 1991 - 1997
On teaching at SFSU: "I did it 23 years and I loved it."
Husband: Once Ed Kleinschmidt, now Ed Mayes. "I think he was tired of spelling Kleinschmidt," Mayes says. "The Italians kept telling him it was una cosa terribile, a terrible thing."
At home in Tuscany and Marin: Mayes and her husband divide their time between Bramasole and a new Mediterranean-style home just across the Golden Gate Bridge (Unlike Bramasole, "Everything works," she says.)
Dual citizenship: U.S. citizen and honorary citizen of Tuscany.
Mayes other books on life in Italy:
"In Tuscany," "Bella Tuscany: The Sweet Life in Italy"
Life philosophy: Live each day to the fullest because "tomorrow may see you smeared in the road by a potato chip truck."
On critiquing the work of student writers: "There's a time to offer suggestions and a time to keep quiet."
