Irene Wittig was born in Rome to a Viennese mother and Italian father, ten days after it was liberated by Allied forces. She arrived in the U.S. via Argentina, and grew up in New York, in a neighborhood of Holocaust survivors and fellow Europeans displaced by war whose stories she absorbed. After studying in New York, Germany and Maryland she worked for the Dept. of Defense in Washington, DC before moving to Naples, Italy where she lived for five years. Later, she and her husband spent six years in Switzerland. After twenty years as a ceramic painter and teacher, Irene turned to writing. She and her husband have two children and four grandchildren and live in Arlington, Virginia. She enjoys hearing from her readers.