Melissa Muldoon’s Author Site: MelissaMuldoon.com
Melissa Muldoon is the author of Dreaming Sophia a novel about Italy. The story weaves together fact and fantasy and takes the reader from the vineyards of Sonoma California to Florence, Italy. The novel is the result of Melissa’s Italian language studies, travels in Italy, Art History background and curation of the Studentessa Matta Italian language blog.
Melissa Muldoon’s Goodreads Author Page / Dreaming Sophia on Goodreads
Melissa Muldoon Amazon Author Page
Visit Melissa Muldoon’s Independent Author Network Page
(find her on Twitter #IAN1)
Melissa Muldoon is also the author of the Italian language blog Studentessa Matta”. In Italian “matta” means “crazy” or “impassioned”. Melissa has a B.A. in fine arts, art history and European History from Knox College, a liberal arts college in Galesburg, Illinois, as well as a master’s degree in art history from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. She has also studied painting and art history in Florence.
Melissa promotes the study of Italian language and culture through her dual-language blog,Studentessa Matta.com (studentessamatta.com), the Studentessa Matta YouTube Channel, the Podcast Tutti Matti per l’Italiano and through Matta Language Immersion Tours she co-leads with Italian Partners in Italy. She began the “Matta” blog to improve language skills and to connect with other language learners.
As a student, Melissa lived in Florence with an Italian family. She studied art history and painting and took beginner Italian classes. When she returned home, she threw away her Italian dictionary, assuming she’d never need it again. But after launching a successful design career and starting a family, she realized something was missing in her life. That “thing” was the connection she had made with the country and with friends who live there. Living in Italy was really a life-changing event! Wanting to reconnect with Italy, she decided to start learning the language again from scratch. As if indeed possessed by an Italian muse, she bought a new Italian dictionary and began her journey to fluency—a path that has led her back to Italy many times and which has enriched her life in countless ways.
Now, many dictionaries and grammar books later, she dedicates her time to promoting Italian language studies, further travels in Italy, and sharing her stories and insights about Italy with others. When Melissa is not wandering about Italy, she lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is married and has three boys and two beagles named Sinbad and Moka.
Melissa designed and illustrated the cover art for Dreaming Sophia. She also designed the Dreaming Sophia website and created the character illustrations that can be found in the book and on the Dreaming Sophia website and Dreaming Sophia Pinterest Site.
