Where were you born?
Brooklyn NY
Which is your favorite childhood memory?
Playing on the sidewalks and street I grew up on.
As a teenager, what were you obsessed with?
I was obsessed with relationships with people with whom I was trying to understand -where I fit in this thing of life.
Why did you decide to graduate with a B.F.A. in Art and Design?
I didn’t. It happened. It’s when you strip yourself bare that you gain direction from the deepest part of you. No one in my peer family had ever earned a living as an artist. I grew up at a time all you were taught was to “get a job”. After dropping out of my first college and walking out of the US Postal Service test I decided to follow my passion for the visual arts, design and photography. I always felt though that I wanted to author a book.
When did you receive your first design world's highest honors?
I guess it was working on The NBC Olympics in Atlanta earned me a National Emmy Award for design.
When did you decide to become a published writer? How has the journey been?
I feel I never decided any of it. It arrived to me somehow; I took it to its fruition. I’ve always had a fascination for our family’s culinary culture and felt the road less traveled Italian American story had yet been written. Being an unpublished author had its big upstream challenges. Luckily PowerhouseBooks being a Brooklyn centric publisher became interested in the authenticity of my memoir.
Why did you decide to write a cooking book?
I wanted to document the notion of food linked to memory. Like my Mom’s first effort to document in her beautifully annotated recipe cards, so did I follow up with a book that memorialized her diligence to our culinary culture. I felt the road less traveled Italian American story had yet been written. Being an unpublished author had it’s own upstream challenges. Luckily PowerhouseBooks being a Brooklyn centric publisher became interested in the authenticity of my memoir. My prototype presentations became a key to conveying my message.
How much did you research while writing your first novel, Feast of the Seven Fishes?
I spent a good five or six years writing to photographs I had taken on film over those years.
Which is your favorite recipe in the book, Feast of the Seven Fishes: A Brooklyn Italian's Recipes Celebrating Food and Family?
My personal favorite is bacalla with fried red peppers because of the smell taste and holiday memory it brings me.
What is the toughest criticism you've ever received as an author and how did you take it? What about the best compliment you've ever received?
The hardest one was one review that my book did not include the wider expanse of the neighborhood I grew up in. The book is a very macro intimate view of a small radius of where we shopped. I guess it’s a compliment in a way. The biggest compliment was in an online review. It was something like –yes it’s a beautiful book but it also reads like a novel… It meant something to me because I was a failure at grade school. I was not a conventional learner.
What are some things that haven't been done in the writing world that you hope to introduce through your books?
I would love to continue to write about the continuity of food and memory provides in your life. I’m now formulating second book that spins off the Feast of The Seven Fishes that is more of day to day recipe book. We need to keep pace with the constraints life puts on our need for satisfying nutrition.
What is your ideal setting to write in?
I don’t have one. I don’t think I can ever sit down and write like we were so programed to think. I write in my head while I’m in motion and then transcribe it in “Notes”.
Who is the most supportive person in your life when it comes to your writing?
It was actually my publisher who later became a collaborator and friend. We had children in the neighborhood school where we both parent volunteered.
If you could tell your younger writing self anything, what would it be?
Don’t listen to the grammar police so readily. Write from the feelings that come to mind. Start with simple thoughtful sentences or phrase. Then see if you can string them together to create a paragraph adding transition thoughts to read from one thought to another.
Which is the next book you are working on? Is it a series or a stand-alone book?
People who have my book are asking for more of the same. I also want to create a book about fatherhood.
When did you join AllAuthor? How has your experience been?
Sometime in March. My friend Michele Di Pietro of @MangiawithMichele who introduced me to AllAuthor also thinks It’s a great resource for folks who are not equipped or have no experience creating their own book promotion. All Author can make a difference.
