Gabriella Contestabile is the author of the novel, 'The Artisan's Star' and 'Sass, Smarts and Stilettos; How Italian Women Make the Ordinary Extraordinary. She is also an educator, and the founder of SU MISURA JOURNEYS, a boutique travel company connecting people to the artisans of Florence. She emigrated from Italy to Ottawa in 1953 and to New York City in 1959 where she currently resides with her husband. In her pre-writer life as a foreign language teacher, management development specialist, and a fragrance/cosmetics executive, she visited the fields and perfume laboratories of Grasse and worked in a family-owned perfumery in Florence. It was there that her passion for perfume and artisanship took hold. Gabriella is a strong advocate of the arts, of multiculturalism, and of social justice-a passion inspired by reading Dickens, Dante, and Louisa May Alcott at a very young age."