Helen Barolini has been included in Best American Essays for 1991 and 1993. Her first book, the novel Umbertina (1979), was assisted by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and in 2008 won the Premio Acerbi, a coveted Italian literary prize. Her anthology The Dream Book: An Anthology of Writings by Italian American Women received an American Book Award. She lives in New York.
