Kathryn M. Lucchese

After years of teaching Latin, Earth Science and Geography, doing research, getting a PhD in cultural geography and raising two now-adult children, I am now writing stories, the thing I had hoped to do since I first learned how to write.

My first published book was "Folk Like Me: The Read-Aloud Book of Saints," written for use at the school where I taught for many years. All stories were "battle tested" in Chapel and I made all the maps and fun indices myself, while my art teacher friend Cathy Rylander, did all the gorgeous illustrations. It makes a lovely weekly devotional and it is NOT preachy. And at no extra cost you get a Dryden Ode, an Ogden Nash poem AND my own terrific Saint Nicholas Play, all written in doggerel verse. Check out its Facebook page "Folk Like Me."

I also have a scholarly chapter published in the University of Texas Press book, "Mystic Cults of Magna Graecia" (Chapter 9 - "Landscape Synchesis" -- is dynamite, all about an underground chamber I discovered and the goddess Demeter's rite of Thesmophoria) and an article in the cultural geography online journal YOUAREHERE, from the University of Arizona: "The Shores of Sendai-Wan," collecting a few of my observations on pre-tsunami Sendai and Shiogama.

I worked for many years translating Italian and Latin sources, making maps and gathering materials for a non-fiction book called in its Japanese version, forthcoming May 2021 from Sojinsha Joint-Stock Enterprises, NJK Kotobuki 1-3-4, Taito-ku, Tokyo: 鳳来の夢、伊達政宗の慶長遣欧使節 Horai no yume: Date Masamune no Keicho Ken-oh shisetu (“Horai Dream: The Keicho Mission of Masamune Date”), about the Keicho Mission from Sendai, Japan to Rome, Italy and back, that took place from 1613-1620. The University of Michigan Press is currently considering an English-language edition, possibly accompanied by an English-language version of a popular Manga version of the life of Date Masamune. Check out its Facebook page "Daimyo and Saint."

As "Cate DeLuca," (amazon.com/author/catedeluca) I have also written a series of romantic archaeological adventure stories called "Finds & Keepers," based on skills garnered during three seasons of training digs in England and ideas hatched while a student in Rome and featuring plucky grad student (later assistant professor) Tanaquil S. Greenough and her best beloved, Professor James Pericles Lewis. A trilogy of the chief of these stories will be published by DLG Publishing Partners, LLC, beginning in April of 2021 and finishing in January of 2022, God willing: The Castellina Curse, Deep Scansion, and Place of Sacrifice. Facebook: Finds & Keepers.

Then there is my Big Roman Novel series, Ourania, Worthy Daughter of Herodes, based on the imaginary life of someone I came across in a catacomb, deep under the site of my Master's research, just outside of Rome: Ourania, one of twenty-four children begged, borrowed or stolen to help teach a famous rhetor's son his alpha-beta-gammas. Manuscripts for the first two -- Playthings of a Fool and Race Across Gaul -- merely await revision and seamless incorporation into the third, Worthy Daughter. It, too, has its own Facebook page: Worthy Daughter.

All these are gathered under my imaginary imprimatur, Riparia Publications, named for the people who stand on the banks of the river and observe the great movements of history go by: we women and children and the marginalized Other. As such, I have a website with news on all the above projects, and some blog reflections as well: ripariapublications.squarespace.com.