Diana Cavallo (1931-2017) was an American novelist, educator, playwright, and performer.

Biography

Early life and education

Cavallo was born in Philadelphia in 1931, the daughter of Genuino and Josephine (Petraca) Cavallo. She grew up in an Italian neighborhood of South Philadelphia, where she attended public schools. Her grandparents, who lived with the family, spoke the Abruzzese dialect; Cavallo learned Italian from them, and later based two characters in her first novel on them. As a teenager, she moved with her family to Upper Darby, Pennsylvania. She attended the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

and spent time in

Florence, Italy Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilancio demografico an ...

, as a

Fulbright scholar The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States Cultural Exchange Programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people of ...

. She was a member of the

Phi Beta Kappa Society The Phi Beta Kappa Society () is the oldest academic honor society in the United States, and the most prestigious, due in part to its long history and academic selectivity. Phi Beta Kappa aims to promote and advocate excellence in the liberal ar ...

Career

After graduation, Cavallo worked for a year at the

Philadelphia State Hospital The Philadelphia State Hospital at Byberry was a psychiatric hospital located on either side of Roosevelt Boulevard (US Route 1) in Northeast Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was specifically located in the Somerton section of the city on the borde ...

as a psychiatric social worker; this experience provided the background for her first novel, ''A Bridge of Leaves'' (1961). Written in New Hampshire on a MacDowell Colony fellowship, the novel depicts a young man's

rite of passage A rite of passage is a ceremony or ritual of the passage which occurs when an individual leaves one group to enter another. It involves a significant change of status in society. In cultural anthropology the term is the Anglicisation of ''rite ...

to adulthood. She published a nonfiction book, ''The Lower East Side: A Portrait in Time'', in 1971. Her short stories and other writings have appeared in a variety of journals and anthologies, including

Helen Barolini Helen Barolini (born November 18, 1925) is an American writer, editor, and translator. As a second-generation Italian American, Barolini often writes on issues of Italian-American identity.How to count American immigrant generations is a subject ...

's ''The Dream Book: An Anthology of Writings by Italian American Women'' (1985). After teaching in public schools in Philadelphia and

Clifton, New Jersey Clifton is a city in Passaic County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. Criss-crossed by several major highways, the city is a regional commercial hub for North Jersey and is a bedroom suburb of New York City in the New York Metropolitan Area. As ...

, and at a private school in

Brooklyn, New York Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

, Cavallo taught creative writing at

Drexel University Drexel University is a private research university with its main campus in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Drexel's undergraduate school was founded in 1891 by Anthony J. Drexel, a financier and philanthropist. Founded as Drexel Institute of Art, S ...

and

Queens College Queens College (QC) is a public college in the Queens borough of New York City. It is part of the City University of New York system. Its 80-acre campus is primarily located in Flushing, Queens. It has a student body representing more than 170 ...

. From 1969 to 1973, she taught literature and creative writing at the University of Pisa as a

Fulbright The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States Cultural Exchange Programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people of ...

teaching fellow. Starting in 1980, she taught creative writing at the University of Pennsylvania. Cavallo wrote fictionalized essays about the neighborhood where she grew up, and performed them as monologues on stages in South Philadelphia. Her one-act play, ''Family Album'', won a competition held by the Ethical Humanist Society of Philadelphia in 2011 and was performed there to a large audience; the play is about two sisters who become involved in controversy after one of them writes a book about their father's suicide.

Personal life

Cavallo was married to the German-American artist Karl Hagedorn (1922–2005). She died in Springfield, Pennsylvania, on June 17, 2017.

References

External links