About Janice

Janice Therese Mancuso Writer, Author, Researcher

Contact Janice jtm@jtmancuso.com JTMancuso www.jtmancuso.com

My earliest jobs were in retail, food service, professional photography, and home decorating. In an entrepreneurial class in college, I wrote a paper about opening a gift shop and retail floral design business and used the research to open a gift shop and floral design business. While working on my MBA, I sold the gift shop and started a wholesale floral design business. After graduating, I taught floral design and business classes. Once settled in the South, I continued with floral design – providing seminars, classes, and custom instruction; worked as a contract designer for one of the top florists in the area; and kept in touch with former customers and students in New York by sending a printed newsletter. Within a year, I started a catering and specialty food business, and was teaching business courses at a local college.

A New York native, a move south, and now home again.

After joining an Italian American women’s group, I created a monthly newsletter writing articles about Italian and Italian American history and culture. Around the same time, I also wrote for various online and print publications (including some ghostwriting) and edited and co- authored several local guidebooks; and I began working on Con Amore, a novel combining Italian history, food, and romance. Fascinated with Italian history and realizing there was too much information to include in my book, I started writing Tutto Italiano, an e-newsletter about everything Italian. Shortly after Con Amore was published, I became a contributing writer for La Gazzetta Italiana, a print and web media source for the Italian American community; and founded Thirty-One Days of Italians, a project that promotes Italian American heritage and culture. Fast forward five years: I was selected by the owner of the Italian American Press to become the IAP’s new owner. I

Through a chance meeting with an editor, I was asked to write a book about flavoring wine and cooking with the flavored wines. A few years later, Herbed-Wine Cuisine was published and I began teaching cooking classes and seminars, developing recipes for specialty food manufacturers, and researching and writing about food.

Culture and Heritage Give Substance to Life

Throughout these endeavors, I continued to teach business courses and lifestyle classes at a community college, and became a certified food safety instructor. For every class, I developed the curriculum and the lesson plans. Now in New York, I continue to research, write, and develop educational resources. In 2018, with a grant from the Italian Historical Society of America, I founded the Italian American Heritage Project, established to provide fact-based educational resources about Italian American history, heritage, and culture. My varied interests have led me on the path of entrepreneurship in several fields, on the path of an author, on the path of an educator, and on the path of a researher.

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