Barbara Ann Curcio

As a “sit-down” comedian, Barbara Ann Curcio has been contributing features and satire to VTDigger.org since 2009. Her writing career started quite by accident, inspired by a conversation with two editors on a flight from Milan to Chicago. That led to her first editing job and to dual writing/editing careers that have spanned three decades, from her first job at Water and Sewage Works magazine (not kidding) to work at The Washington Post as a reporter, columnist and feature writer. She got her first newspaper job (at the Post) as a self-taught writer in her late 30s, without benefit of prior reporting experience and having never taken a journalism class. Luckily, she survived and went on to write her own syndicated travel column, in addition to travel, style and Weekend features covering everything from the arts to popular culture and trends. When she dies she hopes her epitaph will read “We Knew There Was Something Funny About Her.” Her work is featured in “I Really Should Have Stayed Home: Worst Trips of Great Writers” in an essay entitled “Puerto Plata: Just Say No.” She also edits fiction, plays classical piano, has her own vintage clothing business and is an avid rider. She grew up a “townie” in Cambridge, Mass., and thereafter lived in Chicago, San Francisco, Washington, D.C. and Geneva, Switzerland. Currently, she lives in Charlotte with her three horses and her husband, Nick Monsarrat, not necessarily in that order. She has a B.A. in English Literature from Simmons College and an M.A. in English from Loyola University in Chicago. Her name means “strange short one” in Latin and Italian.