Arturo Vivante

Who was Arturo Vivante?

Arturo Vivante was an Italian American fiction writer.

He was the son of Elena, a painter, and Leone Vivante, a philosopher. The family fled to England in 1938, anticipating the war and the fascist government's anti-Semitic policies. The British sent Arturo to an internment camp in Canada while his family remained in England for the duration of the war. He graduated from McGill University in 1944 and received his medical degree at University of Rome in 1949. He practiced medicine in Rome until 1958, but thereafter moved to New York to pursue writing full time.

He married Nancy Adair Bradish in 1958. In 1982, he appeared at the University of North Dakota Writers Conference.

In addition to writing numerous short stories and three novels, Vivante taught writing courses at various colleges from 1968 to 1993, including the University of Iowa, Bennington College, and MIT. After publication of his final book in 2006, he retired and lived in Wellfleet, Massachusetts until his death two years later.

His work has appeared in The New Yorker over 70 times, as well as other magazines including AGNI, Vogue, The New York Times, London Magazine, The Guardian, Antaeus, TriQuarterly, Santa Monica Review, and The Southern Review. His fiction often drew from autobiographical experiences with attention to the subtlest details of reflective observation.