Gwen Florio grew up in a 250-year-old brick farmhouse on a wildlife refuge in Delaware, with a sweeping view across a mile of tidemarsh to the waters of the Delaware Bay. In addition to ponies, dogs and chickens, her childhood also included raising and releasing a number of wild animals, from raccoons and fawns to owls and hawks, and a skunk whose personality was even worse than his smell. Her parents banned television and instead filled the house with books.
She majored in English at the University of Delaware, largely as an excuse to continue reading as many books as possible, until her father urged her, in the interest of being able to someday support herself, to take a journalism course. With her first byline, she was hooked. A decades-long career followed, taking her around the United States and to more than a dozen countries, including several conflict zones, toting books to each place.
In the interest of finally writing books in addition to reading them, she signed on with Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Writers’ Group and, later in Montana, the 406 Writers’ Workshop. Two manuscripts that serve as perfectly effective doorstops preceded her first published novel Montana (The Permanent Press, 2013).
About Montana – the state, that is. There, Florio rediscovered those long sight lines she fell in love with back in Delaware, the difference being that instead of tidemarsh bordered by bay, Montana featured prairie edged by mountain and sky. She lived there seventeen years, and the state and its people hold a place in her heart as big as Montana’s sky.
In 2022, she and her husband Scott – retired executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Montana – moved for ten blissful weeks to Marsala, Sicily, starting a love affair with the Italian language and culture and continuing one with Italian food. They now live in South Jersey, just outside Philadelphia, with easy access to family and a direct plane flight to Rome.
She’s an avid baker, which necessitates being an avid runner-turned-walker, and will readily hop a plane to just about anywhere. Bucket list destinations? Iceland. Newfoundland. The Faroe Islands. Anywhere above the Arctic Circle and the Antarctic, too. And lest that appear too thematic, please, God, back to Napoli and its pizza to die for.
Florio has received prose grants from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, and writing residencies at the Ucross Foundation and Brush Creek Ranch Arts Foundation, both in Wyoming, as well as 360 Xochi Quetzal in Mexico, Willapa Bay Artists in Residence in Washington state, the Storyknife Writers Retreat in Alaska, L’Appartamento Napoli in Naples, Italy, and Arte Studio Ginestrelle in Assisi, Italy.
Her first novel, Montana, won the inaugural Pinckley Prize for Crime Fiction, and a High Plains Book Award, both in the debut category. It was a finalist for a Shamus Award, an International Thriller Award and a Silver Falchion Award. It launched a five book series featuring journalist Lola Wicks, recently re-released by Open Road Media.
Her literary novel set in Afghanistan, Silent Hearts (Atria) was released in July 2018. Best Laid Plans (Severn House), launched a four-book mystery series in December 2020, while two legal thrillers from Crooked Lane Books, The Truth of It All (2021) and The Least Among Us (2022), feature public defender Julia Geary.
Her work also is featured in anthologies, including A Million Acres: Montana Writers Reflect on Land and Open Space, Montana Noir (Akashic Books) and The Night of the Flood , a novel in stories and its sequel, The Swamp Killers, both from Down and Out Books.
She’s a member of International Thriller Writers, Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers and the America-Italy Society of Philadelphia. She worked with Judy Sternlight Literary Services in the initial editing of Montana, Dakota and Silent Hearts, and is represented by Richard Curtis and Sarah Yake.