Oretta Zanini De Vita was born in Bologna, where she learned the art of pasta making as a child in a local convent school. A respected Italian culinary historian, she has written more than forty books on Italian food and its traditions, including the James Beard Award–winning Encyclopedia of Pasta (2010) and Popes, Peasants, and Shepherds: Recipes and Lore from ... Read moreRome and Lazio (2013), both translated by Maureen B. Fant. She lives in Rome. Maureen B. Fant, a native of New York, is a writer and translator who came to live in Rome in 1979 believing that her future lay in classical archaeology. She now writes mostly about Italian food. She is the coauthor of Women’s Life in Greece and Rome and Dictionary of Italian Cuisine, among others. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Gourmet, and other periodicals, and she lectures on the food of Rome and ancient Rome. Show Less