Please join us for a reading by Tania Romanov from her book , I WILL BE THE WOMAN HE LOVED: LEARNING TO LIVE AGAIN ON THE THAMES PATH A MEMOIR, organized by Left Coast Writers and hosted by Book Passage in Corte Madera.
Saturday, March 8, 2025 2pm
Book Passage-Corte Madera|| 51 Tamal Vista Dr. Corte Madera ||
One of the first women CEOs in tech, in this, her fourth and most personal memoir, Tania Romanov chronicles her search for a new identity after the end of her career and the loss of her soulmate, her husband Harold. Over a two-week walk along England’s Thames Path, Tania reflects on her love story with Harold and their battle against cancer—reflections that reveal a lifelong fight to be herself.
Tania Romanov
A child immigrant ostracized for being a “Communist” and a white girl at a mostly Black school, in “I Will Be the Woman He Loved”, Tania revisits past lives, loves, and lessons. She recounts her challenges as a trailblazer in a pre-#MeToo, male-dominated workplace, as well as the joys of her adventures around the world with Harold. All the while, she struggles to come to terms with a future very different from what she imagined—one in which she must rediscover her love of life and redefine herself yet again.
Tania Romanov Amochaev is the author of Mother Tongue: A Saga of Three Generations of Balkan Women (Travelers’ Tales, 2018), also published in Serbian as Po Našemu (Akadems Kaknjiga, 2020); Never a Stranger (Solificatio, 2019), a collection of award-winning travel essays; One Hundred Years of Exile: A Romanov’s Search for Her Father’s Russia (Travelers’ Tales, 2020), published in Russia as СТО ЛЕТ ИЗГНАНИЯ (Rosspen Publishers, 2021) and winner of Gold for Memoir in the Northern California Publishers and Authors Book Awards; and San Francisco Pilgrimage (Solificatio, 2022).
Tania’s work has been featured in multiple travel anthologies, including The Best Travel Writing and The Best Women’s Travel Writing series. Born in the former Yugoslavia, Tania spent her childhood in a refugee camp in Italy, before emigrating to the United States, where she grew up in San Francisco’s Russian community. A graduate of San Francisco public schools, she went on to serve as CEO of three technology companies: Comserv (NYSE), QRS (NASDAQ), and Natural Language, a start-up acquired by her board member Bill Gates’ Microsoft. Tania subsequently served on the boards of numerous companies, including Symantec.
Matthew Félix is the author of four books, a certified life coach, and a speaker. Publishers Weekly called his debut novel, A Voice Beyond Reason, “(a) highly crafted gem.” Former host of the San Francisco Writers Conference Podcast, Matthew regularly conducts interviews at San Francisco Bay Area bookstores and cultural institutions. He also ghost-writes, edits, designs, publishes, and markets books for other authors. matthewfelix.com
“The thread tying together Romanov’s story is the determination to be herself. Her tale reminds us that no matter the challenge, we always have the choice to reinvent ourselves.” —Eva Auchincloss, former executive director Women’s Sports Foundation
“Tania’s walk proves full of insights as she struggles to envision a future in the wake of devastating loss. I Will Be the Woman He Loved is a book to which every woman—single, married, divorced, or widowed—can relate.” —The Hon. Julie M. Tang, retired San Francisco Superior Court Judge