Sharp Monica

An honest voice in Italian paradise.

About Monica Sharp

About the Author

Writing since 1980 for private clients, agencies, non-fiction, legal, Op-Ed, travel, poetry, and more. I also translate Spanish, French, and Italian into English.

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I live and work in Florence, Italy. My international spirit travels with an American passport but I’ve long since lost count of all the relevant metrics. I am very much at home in Europe. Italy has been my cultural north star since 2004. I moonlight as a legal researcher for a local law firm. My off-hours are filled with parenting, managing various people and projects, and literature. I have worked professionally in higher education, international education, software development, fine art, and writing and publishing.

I freelance online content for a variety of entities. I’ve got novels in draft (see: Publications link). I love to read (see below). I’m an incurable shutterbug (see: Blog link). Follow me on Instagram as @occhiatafiorentina.
Presently cultivating a line in editing conference articles and book-length publications in English for non-native speakers. I’m good, friendly, and fast, and my rates are competitive. Are you a European academic, or do you know one who could use my assistance? Contact me on the contact form here on my site – I would love to help you! Happy to provide references.

Back to literature! Favorite authors and poets:

Short list. FSF, Hemingway, Austen, Annie Proulx, Louise Erdrich, Lydia Davis, Chang-Rae Lee.

Latinx and italiani:

Antonio Machado, Pablo Neruda, Elena Poniatowska, Cervantes, Isabel Allende, Jorge Luis Borges, Luisa Valenzuela, Pablo Neruda, Julio Cortazar. Elena Ferrante, Claudio Magri.

Canadians, Brits, and poets:

Alice Munro, Joyce Carol Oates, Mark Strand, John Donne, Emily Dickinson, Philip Larkin.

Americans, Irish, and dissidents:

Carson McCullers, Flannery O’Connor, Edna O’Brien. Sally Rooney. James Joyce. George Orwell. DH Lawrence. Milan Kundera.

Warrior women:

Isak Dinesen. Beryl Markham. Katherine Mansfield, and Katherine Anne Porter. Sylvia Plath. Gertrude Stein.

French:

Marguerite Duras. Simone de Beauvoir. Marguerite Yourcenar. André Gide. Flaubert. Baudelaire. Villon.

Russian classics! I cannot get enough:

Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Turgenev, Pushkin, Chekhov.

Nonfiction faves:

Anthony Lane and Judith Thurman, both often found in The New Yorker, and Thurman’s biographies, which are to die for if you like to get buried in a book like me. John McPhee. Isak Dinesen. And, of course, Orwell, again. Joan Didion.

Feature photo:

Museo Primo Conti in Fiesole. Selfie: my workdesk.