Anna Maria Kahan-Guidi was born in Rome and lived for several years in India. After World War II she graduated with honours from Rome's British Institute of Literature and Language. She then took a one-year course at Florence College of Humanitarian Studies. She published a diary of travels in Uttar Pradesh and teaching English and classic poetry at the Rabindranath Tagore School of Literary Studies in Calcutta. In Australia she has been been a founding member and editor of the Women's Redress Press publishing collective (1982), and on the editorial committee of the Italo-Australian Writers Association. She has been a full member of the Australian Society of Women Authors, an associate member of the Australian Writers Guild, a member of the Fellowship of Australian Writers (FAW), a member of the Australia Authors and Editors Society, of the Societa' Italiana Autori Editori (SIAE) since 1945 and has been made a life member of the Accademia San Marco di Belle Arti (Italy). In 1983 she won the Giuseppe Ungaretti Poetry Prize, and she has also received an honourable mention in the Writer Magazine (Boston USA) competition. Her work was read and discussed on the program Renzo Colla on Radio 2EA in 1989. She has read at the Sydney Dante Aligheri Society in 1984 and 1985, at the Harold Park Hotel in 1987, at the University of Wollongong in 1988 and on numerous occasions with the Italo-Australian Writers Association.
