Adriana Trigiani | |
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Born | Big Stone Gap, Virginia |
Education | B.A., Saint Mary's College, Indiana, USA |
Occupation | novelist, television writer, producer, film director |
Website | www.adrianatrigiani.com |
Adriana Trigiani is an Italian American best-selling author of sixteen books, television writer, film director, and entrepreneur based in Greenwich Village, New York City. Trigiani has published a novel a year since 2000.
Inspired by her Italian American heritage and Appalachian childhood in Big Stone Gap, Virginia, Trigiani arrived in New York in 1985 after attending Saint Mary's College in Indiana. Trigiani made her off-Broadway debut in New York City as a playwright in 1985 at the Manhattan Theater Club with Secrets of the Lava Lamp, directed by Stuart Ross. From 1988-98, she created scripts for television sitcoms, including The Cosby Show (1984) and its spin-off A Different World (1987). She was the writer and executive producer of City Kids for ABC/Jim Henson Productions, and she oversaw Growing Up Funny, a television special for Lifetime, and Linc's, a Showtime comedy series. Trigiani has written best-selling novels, screenplays, and two memoirs, and she has written and directed documentaries and a major motion picture. Trigiani co-founded The Origin Project, a writing education program for school children.
Trigiani authored the best-selling Big Stone Gap series, including Big Stone Gap (2000),Big Cherry Holler (2001), Milk Glass Moon (2002), and Home to Big Stone Gap (2006), set in her Virginia hometown; and the bestselling Valentine trilogy, the tale of a woman working to save her family's shoe company in Greenwich Village. Trigiani also wrote the Viola books, about a clever teenage filmmaker from Brooklyn, for young adults. Trigiani's acclaimed stand-alone novels include Lucia, Lucia (2003),The Queen of the Big Time (2004), and Rococo (2005). Trigiani's book The Shoemaker's Wife is the fictional account of the lives of her own grandparents after emigrating to America from Italy in the early 20th century. Regularly on the New York Times Bestsellers list, critics have noted Trigiani's ability to "create distinctive voices for each of her characters." Millions of copies of Trigiani's books are in print in the United States and published in 36 countries around the world. Overlapping themes include self-perception, social identity, the universal immigrant story, personal loss, working class life, and contemporary social and environmental issues. Since 2012, Adriana Trigiani Tours, and AT Escapes, have offered travel tours to Italy, Scotland, Spain and Gibraltar inspired by the novels of Adriana Trigiani.