Local Author Mary Dorra

Chaucer’s Books hosts author Mary Tonetti Dorra for a book talk and signing of her short story collection I Am a Portrait: Flash Fiction and Other Short Stories.

In her newest book, a collection of short stories, Mary Tonetti Dorra has amassed a group of characters based in part on her own real friends and relatives who interact with those which are purely fictional.

Refracted through Mary Dorra’s own life, these delightful short stories illuminate the last century of international cultural diaspora, one tied together by art and cuisine. A painting moves from Cuba to Paris to California to Pittsburgh, telling us its history as it goes; a Peruvian lepidopterist of English descent meets a former ballerina; a Venezuelan painting goes from Washington to Carpinteria and back to Venezuela. Not so much a feast of stories but tapas, small tasty morsels.

About Mary Tonetti Dorra – Mary Tonetti Dorra (Mrs. Henri Dorra), who has lived in Santa Barbara for over 50 years, grew up in Fort Worth, Texas. She graduated with a BA degree in Philosophy from Vassar College in 1956. Mary lived in Italy for three years where she studied at the University of Florence and then worked as a research-reporter in the Rome bureau of Time-Life. Upon returning to this country, she attended graduate school at UCLA, obtaining a master’s degree in Italian. She taught Italian at UCLA, then at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1965. The Dorras have lived part time in Paris since their marriage in 1965.