Frances Mayes ’62 featured on CBS News

Frances Mayes ’62 was recently profiled on CBS Sunday Morning at her home in Tuscany, Italy.

Mayes bought the 200-year-old farmhouse in 1990 and transformed it into one of the most famous villas in Tuscany. Following the incredible restoration project, she wrote about her experience in the bestselling memoir, Under the Tuscan Sun, which was adapted into a movie in 2003. She has since written two other international bestsellers and just released her latest book, See You in the Plaza: New Places to Discover in Italy. She has also written numerous other books, essays, and poems, including Sunday in Another Country, After Such Pleasures, The Arts of Fire, Hours, The Book of Summer, and Ex Voto. Her text The Discovery of Poetry: A Field Guide to Reading and Writing Poems is widely used in college poetry classes.

Formerly a creative writing professor at San Francisco State University, where she directed The Poetry Center and chaired the Department of Creative Writing, Mayes now devotes herself to writing full-time. She and her husband divide their time between North Carolina and Tuscany. Mayes also returned to Randolph as part of the College’s Visiting Writers Series in 2011.

Watch the CBS Sunday Morning interview with her below:

Watch alumna Frances Mayes on CBS Sunday Morning discussing her novel Under the Tuscan Sun.