Adriana Trigiani

With me today on Writers at Work is Adriana Trigiani, who has amid a remarkable career in the arts, primarily as a writer. Her current novel is THE VIEW FROM LAKE COMO, which she describes as a story of a woman who decides to build a life she can live in, and the house that goes along with it.

The woman is an Italian-American from New Jersey. The house is in Carrera, Italy. And if you know anything about me and my work, you can pretty much guess that I love this novel.

Adriana first drew notice as a playwright, then wrote for such TV programs as The Cosby Show. Her first screenplay, Three to Get Married, was produced in 1986. Almost 30 years later, she wrote and directed the major motion picture Big Stone Gap based on her novel of the same name. She adapted her novel Very Valentine for Lifetime and directed the feature film Then Came You. Adriana wrote and directed the award-winning documentary Queen of the Big Time, the story of her father's hometown of Rosetto, Pennsylvania.

She hosts the podcast You Are What You Read and is the co-founder of the Origin Project, an in-school writing program in Appalachia that serves more than 1700 students in her home state of Virginia. As a bestselling novelist, Adriana may be best known for her Big Stone Gap series and also her Valentine trilogy.

As I understand it, Adriana has published a novel in each of the past 20 years. Many of those books celebrate her Italian heritage and working women who are tireless in the pursuit of their ambitions. I should add here that Adriana is tireless in her commitment to her readers. I'm very eager to meet and converse with a writer after my own heart.