The QCC Fund, Inc. - Eleanor Imperato
Eleanor Imperato
Author
A published author, Eleanor M. Imperato’s professional career includes positions in public relations, fundraising and writing. A graduate of Marymount Manhattan College (1968), she served as the college’s Major Gifts Officer during this past decade. She also earned her M.A. degree at New York University (1978).
Eleanor has traveled extensively. As a college student spending her junior year in London, England, she toured Great Britain from Land’s End to the Scottish Highlands and trekked all over Europe. Eleanor continued to explore far-flung parts of the world: Timbuktu, Macau, Beirut, Tehran, Nairobi…. not to mention Greenland, the Faroe Islands, and Nome, Alaska, where she ran in a dog sled race! Antarctica is her next destination.
All those experiences have fed her creativity and she has expressed it in her work. Her latest endeavor, Doors of Memory, Porte della Memoria was published in September, 2015. It is a memoir in prose, poetry and photography of her early years in Italy written in both English and Italian.
She is also the author of Woman’s Work, her first collection of poems. Her second collection, Purple Sins, is in preparation. In addition, she is collaborating with her sisters Patrizia Maiella, translator of Doors of Memory, and Tonia Maiella on a book about their Italian-American experiences during the late 1950s and 1960s in New York City. After doing field research in Kenya, Eleanor co-authored a biography of wildlife photographers Martin and Osa Johnson, They Married Adventure, with her husband, Pascal James Imperato.
Possessing an avid interest in African Art, Eleanor and Pascal have been faithful supporters and contributors to the QCC Art Gallery for over ten years. In 2012, the couple sponsored the QCC Art Gallery exhibit BUNDU, Headpieces of the Sande Society of West Africa with an accompanying scholarly book written by Pascal and their son Gavin H. Imperato. In 2014, they again sponsored an exhibit entitled Victor Forestier Sow: A Pioneer Malian Painter which was enhanced by a book by the same title. This was authored by her husband and their younger son, Austin C. Imperato.
Eleanor was elected to the QCC Fund Board of Directors in 2010 and has previously served as Chair of the QCC Art Gallery Advisory Council. She is also a member of the Board of the Dance Department at Marymount Manhattan College.