The Stone Witch of Florence

Book Presentation
The Stone Witch of Florence
(2024, HarperCollins / Park Row)

A novel by
Anna Rasche

The author in conversation with:
Stefanie Lieberman, Janklow & Nesbit Associates
Alison Cornish, NYU

In ENGLISH

Join Anna Rasche, author of The Stone Witch of Florence and Stefanie Lieberman, Senior Literary Agent at Janklow & Nesbit Associates, for a lively conversation on how debut novels get published, the current market for historical fiction, and how a medieval Italian setting fits into all of this. Discussion will be moderated by Dr. Alison Cornish, NYU Professor of Italian Studies.

About the novel:
1348. As the Black Plague ravages Italy, Ginevra di Gasparo is summoned to Florence after nearly a decade of lonely exile. Ginevra has a gift—harnessing the hidden powers of gemstones, she can heal the sick. But when word spread of her unusual abilities, she was condemned as a witch and banished. Now the same men who expelled Ginevra are begging for her return.

Ginevra obliges, assuming the city’s leaders are finally ready to accept her unorthodox cures amid a pandemic. But upon arrival, she is tasked with a much different mission: she must use her collection of jewels to track down a ruthless thief who is ransacking Florence’s churches for priceless relics—the city’s only hope for protection. If she succeeds, she’ll be a recognized physician and never accused of witchcraft again.

But as her investigation progresses, Ginevra discovers she’s merely a pawn in a much larger scheme than the one she’s been hired to solve. And the dangerous men behind this conspiracy won’t think twice about killing a stone witch to get what they want…

About the speakers:
Anna Rasche is an author, gemologist, and historian who has previously worked in the jewelry collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her debut novel, The Stone Witch of Florence, was an October 2024 Indie Next pick, and was recommended by the Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly, Publisher’s Weekly, BookRiot and many others. Her writing has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, CrimeReads, and elsewhere. For more information visit www.annarasche.com.

Stefanie Lieberman joined Janklow & Nesbit Associates as Senior Counsel after practicing law at New York’s Guggenheim Museum and boutique entertainment firm Frankfurt Kurnit. She has degrees from Yale and Northwestern University School of Law. As an agent, Stefanie focuses primarily on upmarket fiction with commercial appeal. She is looking for love stories, literary thrillers, quick-witted beach and book club reads, and anything plot-driven with a distinctive voice and a smart, high-concept hook. Stefanie also gravitates towards novels with a strong sense of time and place, a unique atmosphere, or gripping, edge-of-the-seat suspense. She loves books with spooky undertones and magical elements, and she’s always on the hunt for writers who make her laugh.

Alison Cornish joined the Italian Studies faculty at NYU first as Visiting Professor in Fall 2017 and then as Professor in Fall 2018. She is currently President of The Dante Society of America. Professor Cornish’s research interests are primarily in the fields of Medieval and Renaissance Italian Literature, especially Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio, with particular concern for scientific, philosophical and theological issues and their translation into the vernacular. Before coming to NYU, she taught in the Department of Italian at Yale University and in the Department of Romance Languages at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She has held a University of Michigan Institute for the Humanities Fellowship, a Harvard University Villa I Tatti Fellowship, and a Fulbright Grant to Italy.