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Best-selling author kicks off book tour in Valley
Adriana Trigiani calls Youngstown her second home
POLAND
Best-selling author Adriana Trigiani, at The Lake Club on Thursday kicking off the book tour promoting her 17th novel, “Kiss Carlo,” thinks of Youngstown as her second home.
She also is scheduled to appear today at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church hall, 343 Via Mount Carmel, Youngstown.
“It’s family here,” Trigiani said of the Youngstown area during an interview while signing books before the banquet.
She said many people in Youngstown have their roots in Italy as does the family in “Kiss Carlo,” which is set in Philadelphia in 1949 just after World War II.
Trigiani described her latest book as a story about a family schism and how the family comes back together.
“I wanted something uplifting in this very trying time,” she said.
Trigiani, who grew up in Big Stone Gap, Va., is at her core a writer. She says she works at her craft seven days a week and has published a novel a year since 2000.
But she also is a television writer, film director and entrepreneur based in Greenwich Village, New York City.
The setting and the people of Big Stone Gap provided fodder for her first novel; and she directed the movie “Big Stone Gap,” an adaptation of her novel that starred Ashley Judd, Patrick Wilson and Whoopi Goldberg.
One of Trigiani’s major interests outside of writing is The Origin Project, which she co-founded with her friend Nancy Bolmeier Fisher. The project is a writing program involving about 1,000 kids in Appalachia.
Each student receives a journal in which they talk about the Appalachian heritage.
“I physically talk to them and also communicate with them via Skype. I teach them there is an emotional connection between their feelings and their pencil ... and that there are a lot of practical applications for writing,” Trigiani said.
“The kids are brilliant. They try to express their ideas without trying to impress you. I love it. It is very rewarding,” she said.
Trigiani said it is her goal to get better as a writer and that she would continue to write as long as people liked her work.
“It’s better to spend your days and minutes doing what you love,” she said.