Giulia Torre reads, writes, and thinks about books. She lives in a small town with a thriving Main Street in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York, where she plays with her neighbors in lakes, yards, and barns. Wishing she could kiss them all, just once.

Giulia has her Ph.D. in Reading/Writing/Literacy from the University of Pennsylvania, where she focused her research on reader-response and the social life of literature. Before earning her Ph.D, she completed doctoral coursework in eighteenth-century literature at the University of Washington in St. Louis, where she studied literary community and the quixotic principle.

All that to say, she likes to read romance novels, and she can tell you why.

A good romance novel is a gift, a delicious haunting present to carry with you throughout your day, to return to again and again when bored during meetings at work, when overwhelmed at elementary school open houses, or when floating on the river beneath a straw hat.

Thanks to this guy for all the sticky photos on this site.