American-Irish writer and historian Mary Jane Cryan has been living in Italy since 1965. An international educator, researcher and writer, she has also been an official Vatican guide, Site Director and lecturer for Elderhostel and the creator of start-ups for numerous American universities, high schools, writers and artists workshops. She continues to put her experience to good use acting as consultant for tourism and educational endeavors and as enrichment lecturer aboard luxury cruise ships plying the Mediterranean, Adriatic and Black Seas.

Her byline appears in scholarly journals (Biblioteca e Società, The Irish Sword), best-selling guidebooks (Eyewitness Guide to Rome, Fodor’s Italy Upclose), on Italy’s English language press and Italian lifestyle magazines (Case e Country, Ville e Casali). While living in Moscow during the Perestroika she was on the staff of Moscow Magazine, the first Western style magazine to appear in the USSR.

Northern Lazio has inspired her latest books: Vetralla-The English Connection, Affreschi-Exploring Etruria,  and Travels to Tuscany and Northern Lazio, based on the 18th century travel diaries of Cardinal Henry Stuart, Duke of York, was presented at the Uffizi Library in Florence in 2004.

2010 saw the publication of Etruria-travel, history and itineraries in central Italy presented at Palazzo del Collegio Romano in Rome and, a few months later,  a limited edition dedicated to 19thcentury Italian history, The Irish and English in Italy’s Risorgimento.

Besides the Tarquinia-Cardarelli prize for cultural promotion and City of Capranica prize for historical research, her cultural website www.elegantetruria.com has won several awards including Narrare il Lazio prize for the best website about the Lazio Region.