Ethnicity Italian American Education Saint Mary's College Spouse Tim Stephenson | Role Novelist Name Adriana Trigiani | |
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Occupation Novelist, television writer, producer, film director Website www.adrianatrigiani.com Movies Big Stone Gap, Queens of the Big Time Nominations Goodreads Choice Awards Best Historical Fiction Books The Shoemaker's Wife, Very Valentine, Lucia - Lucia, The Supreme Macaroni, Big Cherry Holler Similar People Jenna Elfman, Ashley Judd, Patrick Wilson, John Benjamin Hickey, Donna Gigliotti Profiles | ||
Author adriana trigiani on viola in the spotlight
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.
Contents
- Author adriana trigiani on viola in the spotlight
- Meet the author adriana trigiani
- Early life and career
- As novelist and filmmaker
- Media appearances
- Novels
- Memoirs
- Professional recognition
- References
Meet the author adriana trigiani
Early life and career
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.
As novelist and filmmaker
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.
During the 1990s, Trigiani wrote and directed an award winning documentary Queen of The Big Time (1996), the story of her father’s hometown of Roseto, Pennsylvania, shown in film festivals in London and Hong Kong, co-produced Green Chimneys, and later contributed to PBS documentary The Italian Americans. In 2014, Trigiani directed the major motion picture Big Stone Gap (film), a romantic comedy film adaptation of her namesake bestselling novel, produced by Donna Gigliotti for Altar Identity Studios, a subsidiary of Media Society. Big Stone Gap (film) is a story of family secrets and self-discovery in an Appalachian coal-mining town of the late 1970s. The award-winning ensemble cast includes Ashley Judd, Whoopi Goldberg, Jane Krakowski, Jenna Elfman, and Patrick Wilson. Released on October 9, 2015 by Picturehouse (company), Trigiani's narrative directorial debut arrived nearly 30-year after the sale of her first screenplay, Three to Get Married, produced by Kate Benton in 1986. Opening the Virginia Film Festival, Big Stone Gap (film) was ranked among the top 250 grossing women directed films of 2014.
Media appearances
Trigiani and her work have regularly been featured on NBC's Today Show, CBS This Morning, WNYC’s The Leonard Lopate Show, and the Diane Rehm Show on National Public Radio. Trigiani's community service works include guest speaker at New York University and the New School for Social Research, commencement speaker at University of Virginia at Wise, and University of New Haven, Connecticut, and for 10 years, host of the Library of Virginia Literary Awards, and also the Poets and Writers Gala of New York City, The Audio Publishers Association Audies Gala, the Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Awards, and co-host of the Arizona Women's Board Annual Authors Luncheon.