Among her publications were a study of Italian-American writers, titled The Italian American Novel: A Document of the Interaction of Two Cultures (1974), and several volumes of poetry, specializing in the sonnet form.

Her father's family migrated to the United States from the town of Calitri in southern Italy.

She grew up on a farm in Harwinton, Connecticut, where she and her siblings went to school in a one-room schoolhouse.

In 1975, she published The Italian American Novel: A Document of the Interaction of Two Cultures, which examines the work of 70 Italian-American writers.

It was the first major scholarly work of its kind, and laid the groundwork for analysis of recurring themes in Italian-American literature, such as the "isolated immigrant" and the "alien marginalized by the established society.