Octavia Waldo
Octavia Waldo (full name Octavia Capuzzi Waldo Locke; born 1929) is an American writer and artist. She is best known for her 1961 novel, A Cup of the Sun.[1]
Biography
She was born in 1929 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the eighth child of Italian-American parents. She graduated with honors from the Tyler School of Fine Arts at Temple University, and from 1949 to 1950 was a Fulbright fellow at the American Academy in Rome. She has also been a fellow at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and a resident at Yaddo. Her artwork has been shown in galleries and is included in private collections; she taught art for many years in Washington D.C. Her first novel was published in 1961 under the name Octavia Waldo; other writings have appeared under the names Octavia Capuzzi and Octavia Capuzzi Locke.[2] In A Cup of the Sun, the Italian-American female protagonist struggles "to achieve a level of autonomy unknown to her mother."[3] Waldo's short stories and other writings have appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Helen Barolini's The Dream Book: An Anthology of Writings of Italian American Women (1985) and Don't Tell Mama: The Penguin Book of Italian American Writing (2002).[4]
References
- Marrone, Gaetano; et al. (2007). Encyclopedia of Italian Literary Studies: A-J. Taylor & Francis. p. 964. ISBN 9781579583903.
- Barolini, Helen (1985). "Octavia Locke". The Dream Book: An Anthology of Writings by Italian American Women. New York: Schocken Books. pp. 186–195. ISBN 0-8052-3972-3.
- D'Acierno, Pellegrino (1998). The Italian American Heritage: A Companion to Literature and Arts. Taylor & Francis. pp. 324–325. ISBN 9780815303800.
- Waldo, Octavia (2002). "From A Cup of the Sun". In Barreca, Regina (ed.). Don't Tell Mama: The Penguin Book of Italian American Writing. Penguin Books. pp. 524, 536. ISBN 9780142002476.
Further reading
- Bona, Mary Jo (1999). "Growing Down: Arrested Development in the Family Narratives of Octavia Waldo's A Cup of the Sun and Josephine Gattuso Hendin's The Right Thing to Do". Claiming a Tradition: Italian American Women Writers. SIU Press. pp. 57–92. ISBN 9780809322589.