Photo courtesy Paul Salsini
Paul Salsini
Paul Salsini was once the copy-editing cop at the Milwaukee Journal, encouraging the crew to turn in crisp, concise writing. In retirement he taught at Marquette and began penning a series of novels and stories about Tuscany. He has just published his eighth book on the Italian region, the short-story collection A Tuscan Treasury.
“I think Tuscany is so prominent for several reasons,” Salsini tells me. “First, because of Florence, its capital. Surely no other city in Italy—maybe the world—has such a collection of masterpieces of art and architecture, and all in a relatively small walkable space. It is the cradle of the Renaissance, romantic, enchanting and irresistible. Then there is the beauty of the entire region—green hills and valleys, cypress trees, stone farmhouses are on countless calendars and postcards. And the smaller cities—Siena, Pisa, Lucca—are each enticing. Oh, so many other reasons, too.”
Although of Italian ancestry, Salsini first visited Tuscany in 2004 and fell in love with the place. He brings his copy-editor’s eye to his prose as a fiction author writing with reportorial crispness as he jumps across time in A Tuscan Treasury while remaining in place. The themes of the stories are as varied as Tuscany’s terrain.
