Marcia DeSanctis

About Marcia DeSanctis

Marcia DeSanctis is the author of the international bestseller 100 Places in France Every Woman Should Go. She spent two decades as a news producer for ABC, NBC and CBS News 60 Minutes. She has written for Travel + Leisure, Vogue, Town & Country, Air Mail, Departures, BBC Travel, Lit Hub, Marie Claire, Off Assignment, Departures, Tin House, O the Oprah Magazine, Roads & Kingdoms, The New York Times and The New York Times Magazine, among many other publications. She has won five Lowell Thomas Awards for excellence in travel journalism, including one for Travel Journalist of the Year, as well as the Grand Prize Solas Award in 2021 for Travel Story of the Year. She holds a degree from Princeton University in Slavic Languages and Literature and a master’s in Foreign Policy from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. She lived and worked for several years in Paris, and resides in northwest Connecticut.

A Hard Place to Leave

A Hard Place to Leave

Vogue's Best Books of 2022

Restless to leave, eager to return: this memoir in essays captures the unrelenting pull between the past and the present, between traveling the world and staying home.

Starting in a dreary Moscow hotel room in 1983, weaving back and forth to rural New England, and ending on a West Texas trail in 2020, Marcia DeSanctis tells stories that span the globe and half a lifetime. With intimacy and depth, over quicksand in France, insomnia in Cambodia, up a volcano in Rwanda, spinning through the eye of a snowstorm in Bismarck, and atop a dumpster in her own backyard, this New York Times bestselling author, award-winning essayist and journalist for Vogue and Travel + Leisure immerses us in places waiting to be experienced and some that may be more than we’re up for. She encounters spies, angels, leopards, shoes, the odd rattlesnake, a random head of state, and many times over, the ghosts of her past. Each subsequent voyage leads to revelations about her search for solitude, a capacity for adventure, and always, a longing for home.

A Hard Place to Leave2022-05-02T18:16:45-07:00

100 Places in France Every Woman Should Go

100pfrance_s "A necessary indulgence for even the most jaded Francophile." —Kate Betts, author of Everyday Icon: Michele Obama and the Power of Style With intelligence, style, and depth, Marcia DeSanctis offers insight and advice to every France-obsessed woman, whether she's a first-time traveler to Paris or the most sophisticated Francophile. In 100 luminous vignettes on the country's most alluring places, DeSanctis leads us through vineyards, markets, architectural treasures, beach idylls, and contemplates hikes from Biarritz to Normandy, Antibes to Chamonix. Along the way, she tells of fascinating women who have changed the destiny of France—from Marie Curie, Empress Josephine, and Joan of Arc to Audrey Hepburn and Édith Piaf. From sexy to literary, spiritual to gorgeous, 100 Places in France Every Woman Should Go is for the smart and curious traveler who wants to see France, her way.

100 Places in France Every Woman Should Go2020-05-12T13:22:05-07:00

Masha

by Marcia DeSanctis

Two women, one skirt, and an untold story.

The first time I met Maria Konstantinovna, she was wearing a black leather skirt. It was Italian, brand new, and it was mine.

Masha, as I would come to know her, was a dejournaya in Moscow. Women like her sat on every floor in every hotel

Masha2017-04-24T02:32:26-07:00