MY STORY
I consider myself a free-spirited citizen of the world.
My first journey, to Italy in 1943 when I was six-years-old, was that of a refugee fleeing from World-War-II torn Yugoslavia. My next move, at the age of eleven, was that of emigrant to apartheid South Africa.
In the early sixties, I came back to Rome to enjoy the Dolce Vita and be an actress. One of my most fun roles was playing a handmaiden to Elizabeth Taylor in the film Cleopatra.
Two years later, I fully experienced the sex-drugs-&-rock-&-roll era in Swinging London, and worked at the Playboy Club as a Bunny croupier.
In 1972, I wrote Female Sexual Fantasies -- the first book in our times on the subject. It was published in America (where it sold 250,000 copies), England and Australia.
This gave me the financial freedom to realize one of my childhood fantasies, which was to see the USA. So I took an over-land journey (dragging my feisty six-year-old daughter behind me) which culminated with me wearing flowers in my hair in San Francisco.
I found the Goddess in a temple in India and this took me on a spiritual journey.
In 1973, I met William Berger: a non-conforming, charismatic American actor who lived in Rome. Although I knew that if I took him on I would, at some point, be living in a ménage a trois with him, I couldn’t do without him.
We had a son, made a commune in Sardinia, and eventually moved to Rome. Here I ran a lively household, wrote songs, worked as an actress in films and performed a one-woman show -- Story of a Life in 21 Songs.
In 1987, I landed a major part in Ettore Scola's, La Famiglia. The film was selected by the American Academy of Motion Pictures as one of the best foreign language films of that year. As the director did not want to go to Los Angeles, the production sent me, and so I got to go to the Oscars. We did not win, but for a moment I reveled in stardom.
In 1991, I was certified as an aromatherapist by the Shirley Price School of Aromatherapy in England, and established the first aromatherapy studio in Rome.
In 2010, I moved back to London. Here, I continue writing my memoir Now and Then.
I have also recently finished a roman a clef, The Second Time Around, a sizzling love story between two septuagenarian. The novel is looking for an agent or publisher.
Publishing History
Freely Female: Women's Sexual Fantasies, published by Ace Books (USA) 1972. (It received a glowing review in Ms Magazine by Susan Sontag and was on the reading list for women’s studies in several American universities.) Aim Books (Australia) 1975; Granada Publishing Ltd. (UK) 1977
Encounter. An Interview with Judith Malina, Harpers & Queen, July 1979.
Sexual Mythology.Resurgence, December 1979
The Group, New Observations. 1983
July 1989 Interview with R. D. Laing, R. D. Laing: Creative Destroyer
Via Della Scala, www.pilgrimjournal.com (Advent/Christmas 2010)
Goodbye Butterfly, published in Best of Fiction on the Web Anthology (2018)
PUBLICITY
'My St Tropez Summer with Christine Keeler.' The Sunday Telegraph 19.01.2020
On July 2012 I was on a panel discussing bohemia on the program Off the Page, on BBC Radio 4.
From 10 March to 19 June 2011 a photograph of me taken by Ida Kar was displayed at the National Portrait Gallery.
June 2011 Eddie Mair interview for iPM. : https://gpodder.net/.../ipm.../ipm-04-jun-11-from-bunny-girl-to-feminist.
Islington Tribune on 6 May 2011. Portrait of the Refugee. Ms Kochansky spoke to the Tribune this week about her colourful life.
In June 2014 artist Geoff Francis shot a video of me: https//www.dropbox.com/s/iydowm6ngeqpb5e/hanja.mov?dl=0
You can download my revised edition of Women's Sexual Fantasies on Amazon Kindle, or buy it as an e-book from Amazon Createspace.
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