Journalism, Travel Writing and Fiction
Harrison wrote for many of the leading periodicals of her time, including The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, Harper's, The Atlantic Monthly, The Village Voice, The Nation, Ladies' Home Journal and Mother Jones magazine. Among the people she interviewed were Red Barber, Mario Cuomo, Jane Fonda, Gore Vidal, Joan Didion, Francis Ford Coppola, Nadia Comăneci, Alessandra Mussolini and Barbara Bush. Because of her background, Harrison was often asked to write about movements that were perceived to be cults; she described families affected by the Unification Church and the Northeast Kingdom Community Church, and reported on the U.S. government's deadly standoff with the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas.
Harrison published two collections of her essays and interviews: Off Center (1980) and The Astonishing World (1992). Her 1992 Harper's essay "P.C. on the Grill", which lampooned the "philosophy" of popular TV chef The Frugal Gourmet, was included in the 1993 edition of Best American Essays.
Harrison also wrote numerous travel articles covering destinations all over the world. She published two books about her travels in Italy, Italian Days (1989) and The Islands of Italy: Sicily, Sardinia, and the Aeolian Islands (1991).
In 1984 Harrison published a novel, Foreign Bodies. She won an O. Henry Award for short fiction in 1989.
Read more about this topic: Barbara Grizzuti Harrison
Famous quotes containing the words travel, writing and/or fiction:
“When you travel to the Celestial City, carry no letter of introduction. When you knock, ask to see God,—none of the servants.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The importance to the writer of first writing must be out of all proportion of the actual value of what is written.”
—Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973)
“Americans will listen, but they do not care to read. War and Peace must wait for the leisure of retirement, which never really comes: meanwhile it helps to furnish the living room. Blockbusting fiction is bought as furniture. Unread, it maintains its value. Read, it looks like money wasted. Cunningly, Americans know that books contain a person, and they want the person, not the book.”
—Anthony Burgess (b. 1917)