Maria Marotti is an author and retired academic who lives in Santa Barbara, California. Scholarly publications include Italian Women Writers from the Renaissance to the Present, The Duplicating Imagination: Twain and the Twain Papers, and Gendering Italian Fiction. Works of fiction include, A Question of Class (2006) and many short stories. Memoirs of a Scoundrel Dog (2017) is a book of canine humor based on her own life with an entertaining rascal of a dog.