Rosina Lippi, a former linguistics professor, is the author of the critically acclaimed, award-winning literary novel Homestead, which won the 1999 PEN/Hemingway Award and was shortlisted for the 2001 Orange Prize. The New York Times Book Review called it "[A] novel of great depth, compassion, and tenderness." Under the name of Sara Donati, she has written the highly praised and commercially successful historical fiction series Into the Wilderness.