Anthony Giardina

Anthony Giardina at the 2012 Texas Book Festival.

Anthony Giardina is an American novelist, short story writer, essayist and playwright. Giardina started his professional career as an actor. He switched to play writing, and eventually began writing novels.

His work is particularly influenced by American culture in the 1950s. He was born in 1950 and grew up on a street in Waltham, Massachusetts, a largely Italian and Irish working class "sleeper" suburb of Boston on the trolley line to Cambridge. The protagonist's childhood neighborhood and schools in Recent History were largely modeled on Waltham.

According to the author, Recent History was marketed toward the "gay market". Though Giardina himself is not gay, he possesses a remarkable ability to express the internal dialogue and emotional motivations of a diverse range of characters.

Career

Giardina's plays have been produced in New Haven, New York City, and Washington, D.C. He is a regular contributor to publications such as The New York Times Magazine, GQ, Esquire, and Harper's. His books include Men With Debts, A Boy's Pretensions, Recent History, The Country of Marriage, and White Guys.

Two plays, Black Forest and Custody Of The Eyes, are published by Broadway Play Publishing Inc.

His most recent novel, Norumbega Park, was released by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on January 31, 2012.

Teaching

He has held teaching positions at Mount Holyoke College, the University of Rochester the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and The University of Texas at Austin. Giardina currently teaches at Smith College.

Quote

Anthony Giardina on writing: "When I write fiction, I become the character I'm writing about, just as an actor becomes a character he's playing. You use parts of yourself, people you have known, things that have happened to you, but you're always aware that these things are being used to create a persona that's distinctly not you. Otherwise it wouldn't be any fun."

See also

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