I’m an Italian psychologist and writer living in the south of England with my husband, our three children, and a dog who remains firmly convinced that he runs the household (he may have a point).
Before turning primarily to writing, I spent several years working as a psychologist in Genoa, Italy. Throughout my training and clinical work, I became particularly interested in the relationship between psychology and narrative: in metaphor, in the stories through which we make sense of experience, and in how those stories can shape the way we see ourselves and the world around us. I also explored therapeutic metaphor and Ericksonian approaches — influences that have stayed with me and continue to shape the way I think, write and create.
Over time, psychology and storytelling stopped feeling like two separate paths. At their heart was the same fascination: the way stories, metaphors, imagination and attention can shift our perspective on our own experience.
Living with dyslexia and ADHD has also played a defining role in shaping that perspective. Learning, working and creating in ways that did not always fit conventional routes meant finding alternatives, approaching problems from different angles and learning to build my own way forward. What I once experienced mainly as an obstacle gradually became part of what drives my curiosity and creativity. It taught me something I now carry into everything I make: there is rarely only one path, one perspective, or one way of understanding and telling the world around us.
It was at the meeting point of these experiences — and from a desire to give them room to take different forms — that I founded ExGeo Publishing, an independent editorial studio created to explore the intersection of storytelling, psychology, curiosity, imagination and discovery. Different projects and different creative languages can begin with the same question: what might we discover when we learn to look from a different perspective?
That vision now takes shape in several directions.
In fiction, through Vibrations – Children of Atlantis, a Young Adult novel blending mythology, adventure and science fiction, with its sequel currently in progress. My background in psychology — particularly my interest in Milton Erickson’s use of metaphor and storytelling — also shapes the way I write fiction. I weave themes of resilience, inner strength and perseverance into the stories I create, using narrative and metaphor to open possibilities and new perspectives while keeping the experience firmly story-first, never instructional.
In guided planners and journals, beginning with The Secret Atlas, a 16-month illustrated planner that brings together planning, reflection and personal discovery. The Secret Atlas is the first in a developing collection of creative tools designed to do more than organise time. They invite us to slow down, notice, imagine, ask questions and pay attention to the things that can so easily disappear into the rush of everyday life.
In Meaning, psychology, metaphor and storytelling meet even more directly. Rooted in my long-standing interest in metaphor and its ability to open new perspectives on experience, Meaning is being developed primarily through guided journals and experiences of personal exploration, alongside books and stories that approach the same metaphors through different creative forms. The idea is not simply to read a story or encounter a metaphor, but to pause with it, question it, make it personal and discover what meaning it might hold within our own experience.
And in literary rediscovery, through an editorial project devoted to forgotten Italian women writers and their work. Its purpose is to bring back into the light stories and voices that time has pushed to the margins — because no good story deserves to be lost.
Fiction, planners, guided journals, metaphor and literary rediscovery may seem like very different worlds. To me, they grow from the same belief: stories, words and metaphors are ways of exploring — ourselves, one another, and the world around us.
If someone had told me thirty years ago that I would become a psychologist, then a writer, and eventually the founder of an editorial studio, I probably would have laughed out loud. And yet, here I am: I earned my degree, worked as a psychologist, wrote and published books, and founded ExGeo Publishing. It turns out that some of the paths we can least imagine ourselves taking are the ones that end up taking us the furthest.
To discover more about ExGeo Publishing and its projects, you can search for ExGeoPublishing()com
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