For author Christopher Castellani, the proud son of Italian immigrants, the desire to tell the Italian American story through his writing has been a constant motivation. Yet, despite his abundant talent, irrepressible passion, and keen sense of his ethnic experience in America, upon entering the literary world, Christopher encountered one deep-seated — and often discouraging — preconception about Italian Americans: that we are people who don’t read!

So, Christopher set out to dispel that myth with a body of work in which the Italian American experience is a driving force behind his story.  The first of his five critically-acclaimed novels, “A Kiss from Maddalena,” winner of the Massachusetts Book Award in 2004, was inspired by the story of his Italian immigrant mother.