Shayla Lawson grew up in a small town environment with her writing as an anchor to help keep herself steady day to day. Shayla has always had a love for writing, but did not think she could make a serious and meaningful career out of it. She finally began to take writing seriously at the young age of sixteen and does it “because it’s useful to me to understand the world, how to exist, and how to be human” Her book, Ti Ador(n)o is set in Venice, Italy. She originally went to Venice for a fellowship to be an architect, ended up loving life there, and came back several times to live and visit. When she came back to Italy to visit in 2011, she “met a woman who had gone to school in Venice, but this time they were there because they had lost their baby soon after birth and wanted to reflect of its life.” This made Shayla think deeply about what she wanted and about Venice, “it’s the idea of care, Venice is a place that wants to look after you”. …show more content…
She soon realized that writing was her true passion and decided to write her first book. For her research, she based her story on the seven different types of facemasks from Italy--each represents a different culture or person in that society. Many times in the duration of the black plague people would wear the facemask with something nice smelling such as flowers so they didn’t get the black plague. The theory relating to this, miasma, is medically incorrect, but of coarse they didn’t know this at the time. In her research, Shayla was looking for true history where there was none. Venice, “surrounded by mystery, what is underneath this water?” is a valid question that she seeked the answer to from many, but she soon found out that many Venetians like a good story, rather than the