About Christopher
Christopher Castellani has published five books, most of which center on the Italian, Italian-American, and/or queer experience. His first novel, A Kiss from Maddalena (Algonquin, 2003) won the Massachusetts Book Award in 2004; its follow-up, The Saint of Lost Things (Algonquin, 2005), was a BookSense (IndieBound) Notable Book; the final novel in the trilogy, All This Talk of Love (Algonquin, 2013), was a New York Times Editors' Choice and a finalist for the Ferro-Grumley Literary Award.
The Art of Perspective: Who Tells the Story, a collection of essays on point of view in fiction, was published in 2016 by Graywolf Press, and is taught in many creative writing workshops.
His most recent novel is Leading Men, for which he received Fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, MacDowell, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Leading Men was published in February 2019 by Viking Penguin. Leading Men is currently being adapted for film by Peter Spears (Oscar-winning producer of Nomadland) and acclaimed Italian director Luca Guadagnino (Call Me By Your Name).
Christopher is the current Writer-in-Residence at Brandeis University. He is also on the faculty and academic board of the Warren Wilson MFA program and the Bread Loaf Writers Conference. Since 2019, he has chaired the Writing Panel at YoungArts, formerly the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts. For nearly twenty years, Christopher was in executive leadership at GrubStreet, where he founded the Muse and the Marketplace conference and led the development of numerous literary programs for adults, teens, and seniors; he continues to work with GrubStreet in the role of Senior Advisor to the national conference.
The son of Italian immigrants and a native of Wilmington, DE., Christopher was educated at Swarthmore College, received his Masters in English Literature from Tufts University, and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Boston University. He lives in Boston and Provincetown, MA.
Selected Awards, Honors, and Affiliations
- Authors' Guild Council, 2023 - present
- St. Botolph Club Fellow, 2019-2022
- Massachusetts Cultural Council Level I Fellowship, 2016
- Barnes & Noble/Poets & Writers 'Writer for Writers' Award, 2015
- MacDowell Fellowship, 2014
- Guggenheim Fellowship, 2014
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Photo by wowe, 2012 -
Photo by wowe, 2012 -
Photo by wowe, 2012 -
Reading at Porter Square Books, Cambridge, MA, 2013 -
Speaking at the PEN/Faulkner Gala, 2013 -
With Tom Perrotta and Alice Hoffmann at AWP Conference, Boston, 2013 -
Reading at Melbourne Writers Festival, Melbourne, AUS, 2003