[1] Octavia Cecilia Capuzzi Waldo was born on April 25, 1929 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the eighth child of Italian-American parents.
She graduated with honors from the Tyler School of Fine Arts at Temple University, and from 1949 to 1950 was a Fulbright fellow at the American Academy in Rome.
Her artwork has been shown in galleries and is included in private collections; she taught art for many years in Washington D.C.
[2] In A Cup of the Sun, the Italian-American female protagonist struggles "to achieve a level of autonomy unknown to her mother.
[4] Waldo died in Santa Barbara, California on April 22, 2011, at the age of 81.