(bio) Antiquities [Lazxy Eva]
2007-06-03 -- 10:15 a.m.

Hello!

My name really is Eva.

I was born on a farm in the hills outside Venice in 1948 and grew up on beans and chicory (dandelion leaves), that’s why I look so young.

At an early age I was transplanted to Britain. When I saw no pigs in the courtyard I was sure I had landed on a sinister planet and started writing.

During the 60s I thought kids of my age were a bit barmy so I went to a convent and became a nun. As the Novice Mistress was not keen on my writing love stories instead of prayers she told me I had no vocation.

At the teacher’s training college, I filled the magazine with my kids poems on teaching practice and tongue in cheek articles about the powers that be. Having graduated in art and drama I did every single nativity play in all the schools I set my foot in ever since. In the meantime I was on my second novel having had the first one, about life in a convent, turned down umpteen times and the number of poems with which I had better luck, were nearing the 500 mark.

It was the middle 70s and I thought it was time I learnt grammar and took a diploma in TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) which meant going abroad.

My first job as a TEFL teacher was in Vicenza which, much to my relief, the US Army base in that city said I could go and teach their soldiers how to file files instead. At the same time I made friends with the Bacchiglione Art Gallery Curator who introduced me to the art world in Vicenza. But, strangely enough I sold more paintings to the Americans than the Vicentines. The job at the Army lasted until I became a Red Brigade target at the time General Lee Dozier was kidnapped in 1982.

Returning to the hills of home outside Venice I was taken on as a ‘Reader’ and taught poetry in high schools and colleges and even there I was not spared the nativity plays. I enrolled as an external student for my BA English at London University which I got in 1991. In the meantime, I was on to my third novel, not even bothering trying to publish the second one. As I started to get the Italian confused with the English I decided to go back to England and do another spell of teaching with Manchester Education Authority and more nativity plays.

On my return to Italy, My fame was spread far and wide and I had students coming to my house instead of my going to their school; whilst an architect asked me to join his studio in caring for the English language projects. At the end of the last century, a local notary bought a Raja’s palace in Rajasthan and asked the architect to restore it. Part of this restoration involved researching the history which I was put in charge of and since the architect has not been paid for his work I decided I would transform the research on the history into popular narrative and use it as a text book in Rajasthani schools, among other things.

I took out my first novel and realized that 30 years on, I could now do a much better job. I started rewriting it completely and called it “Even Dandelions Go to Heaven” or “Why I went to be a Nun”

Then in January 2007, while looking for an agent I bumped into diaryland and the rest is history.

© Eva