In Memoriam: Nick DiGiovanni and Elisabeth Stevens

Nicholas DiGiovanni

Fiction writer, Highland Park, NJ

1954-2018

A six-time VCCA Fellow, Nick DiGiovanni was a fiction writer, essayist, award-winning journalist, blogger and teacher of creative writing. He died on July 13, 2018. His last residency at VCCA was in February 2018. We were happy that he was able to be with us one last time. A collection of essays titled "Man Has Premonition of Own Death," inspired by an ancestor's death in the 1920s and DiGiovanni's own unexpected encounter with serious illness, was published in 2017 by Blue Heron Book Works. His novella “Rip,” a modern-day parody of Washington Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle,” was published in 2011 by Black Angel Press. He was one of the writers included in “Songs of Ourselves,” the anthology published by Blue Heron Book Works in 2015. 

DiGiovanni founded the Delaware Valley Poetry Festival, held annually in western New Jersey from the late 1990s through the late 2000s, which featured many widely-acclaimed poets including former U.S. poets laureate Robert Pinsky, Rita Dove and Louise Gluck and Pulitzer Prize winner Paul Muldoon. 

Elisabeth Stevens

Writer, Sarasota, FL

1929-2018

A writer of fiction, poetry and plays, Elisabeth Stevens was in residence at VCCA thirteen times, from 1982 to 2007.  She was a regular presence at VCCA in the 1980s and 1990s and a vibrant part of the community. Stevens was the author of over 20 books of fiction, poetry, art criticism, drama, and an architectural guide. She was also an art and architecture critic of The Baltimore Sun and a former art critic of The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and The Trenton Times. She had written articles for magazines ranging from Art News, Art In America, The New Republic, Life, The New Leader and The New York Times Sunday Magazine to The Atlantic, Mademoiselle, The Antietam Review and Confrontation.  She has also exhibited etchings, linocuts, silverpoints, and illustrated her many books. 

As a writer, artist, and critic, Stevens received fellowships from The National Endowment for the Arts, The MacDowell Colony, Ragdale Foundation, Villa Montalvo, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and Yaddo.  Stevens is donating all of her personal papers to the John Hay Library at Brown University in Providence, RI. Certain etchings and writings may also be found in the collections of The Baltimore Museum of Art, Cornell University, Harvard University, Hamilton College, The New York Public Library at 42nd Street, Princeton University, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, The University of Texas at Austin and Wellesley College.