Alumna and New York Times best-selling author Adriana Trigiani '81 returns to campus to host The Saint Mary's College National Literary Festival. Join fellow readers, writers, and lovers of the written word this fall as we celebrate the various forms of literature. Guests will be up close and personal with novelists, poets, screenwriters, and more as they enjoy readings from the authors, hear stories about the writers and their process, and meet them during book signings.
Save the Date • November 8 & 9, 2019
Friday, November 8 | 6–8 p.m.
Student Dinner and Meet & Greet
By invitation only
Adriana and 10 best-selling authors of fiction and nonfiction, acclaimed poets and dramatists in theater and film join Saint Mary's students for dinner and meet & greet in a unique opportunity for students to engage with successful writers.
Saturday, November 9 | Noon
Luncheon and Conversation
Please contact Campus and Community Events for assistance at (574) 284-4625. Seats may be available, pending cancellations.
Join us for an entertaining afternoon hosted by noted alumna and best-selling author Adriana Trigiani, along with some of the most noted authors, for a special program and luncheon on the campus of Saint Mary’s College. Guests will hear authors in lively conversation about their work and book signing by all 11 authors to follow.
Luncheon Schedule
11:00 a.m. – Registration
12:00 p.m. – Welcome and Lunch
1:15 p.m. – Program
2:15 p.m. – Book Signing
Books by featured authors will be on sale at the event.
Proceeds of the event will support future literary events for students at Saint Mary's College.
Angela Athletic & Wellness Complex | Fieldhouse
Tickets $65
Additional Sponsorship Opportunities Available
- 11Accomplished Authors
- 2Days
- 1stAnnual
Meet Your Host Adriana Trigiani
Beloved by millions of readers around the world for her "dazzling" novels, (USA Today) Adriana Trigiani is “a master of palpable and visual detail” (Washington Post) and “a comedy writer with a heart of gold” (New York Times). She is the New York Times best-selling author of 18 books in fiction and nonfiction, published in 38 languages, making her one of the most sought after speakers in the world of books today.
Adriana is also an award-winning film director and screenwriter, playwright, and television writer and producer. Her screen adaptation of her best-selling novel Very Valentine premiered on Lifetime television in June 2019, launching their National Book Club. In 2018, she directed the feature film Then Came You, filmed on location in the Highlands of Scotland. She wrote and directed the award-winning major motion picture Big Stone Gap, based on her debut novel, filmed entirely on location in her Virginia hometown. Big Stone Gap spent 11 weeks in theatres in the fall of 2015 and was the #2 top-grossing romantic comedy of the year. She wrote and directed the documentary film, Queens of the Big Time, winner of the Audience Award at the Hamptons and Palm Springs International Film Festivals. Adriana co-founded The Origin Project, an in-school writing program which serves over 1,700 students in the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia. She lives in Greenwich Village with her family.
About the Authors
Douglas Brinkley
Douglas Brinkley is the Katherine Tsanoff Brown Chair in Humanities and Professor of History at Rice University, a CNN Presidential Historian, a New York Times best-selling author and a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. In the world of public history, he serves on boards, at museums, at colleges, and for historical societies. The Chicago Tribune dubbed him “America’s New Past Master.” The New-York Historical Society has chosen Brinkley as its official US Presidential Historian. His recent book Cronkite won the Sperber Prize, while The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast received the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. He was awarded a Grammy for Presidential Suite and is the recipient of seven honorary doctorates in American studies. His two-volume, annotated Nixon Tapes recently won the Arthur S. Link–Warren F. Kuehl Prize. He is a member of the Century Association, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the James Madison Council of the Library of Congress. He lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife and three children.
Susan Fales-Hill
Susan Fales-Hill is a television writer-producer, author, and arts advocate. Currently, she serves as Executive Producer/Show Runner of the upcoming series, “Twenties.” She began her career as a writer’s apprentice on the “Cosby Show.” At twenty-eight, she became the head writer of its spin-off, “A Different World.” She co-created Showtime’s first scripted series, “Linc’s” starring Pam Grier. She’s the author of two novels, and an acclaimed memoir about her mother the late actress/singer/dancer Josephine Premice, Always Wear Joy. Her writings have appeared in Vogue, Glamour, Essence, Ebony, Architectural Digest, Town and Country (where she is a Contributing Editor) and The New York Times. She hosted a podcast on NYPR, Icons and Innovators, celebrating creators who have influenced world culture (guests have included Anna DeVeare Smith, Isaac Mizrahi, Judith Jamison and Robert Battle, among others) her TED Talk is available at Ted Ex Met. She is a graduate of the Lycee Francais de New York and Harvard College. She lives in New York with her husband, her daughter, her dog, Prince, a rescue, and a large brood of handbags.
Jean Kwok
Jean Kwok is the award-winning, New York Times and international best-selling author of Searching for Sylvie Lee, Girl in Translation and Mambo in Chinatown. Her work has been published in 20 countries and taught in universities, colleges, and high schools across the world. An instant New York Times bestseller, Searching for Sylvie Lee was selected for the Today Show Book Club and featured in The New York Times, Time, Newsweek, CNN, the New York Post, The Washington Post, O Magazine, People, Entertainment Weekly and more. Jean has been chosen for numerous honors including the American Library Association Alex Award, the Chinese American Librarians Association Best Book Award, and The Sunday Times Short Story Award international shortlist. Jean immigrated from Hong Kong to Brooklyn when she was five and worked in a Chinatown clothing factory for much of her childhood. She received her bachelor's degree from Harvard and completed a MFA in fiction at Columbia University. She currently lives in the Netherlands.
Jean Hanff Korelitz
Jean Hanff Korelitz the New York Times best-selling author of six novels: The Devil and Webster; You Should Have Known (Coming to HBO in spring 2020 as “The Undoing,” written by David E. Kelley, directed by Susanne Bier and starring Nicole Kidman, Hugh Grant and Donald Sutherland); Admission (adapted as the 2013 film of the same name, starring Tina Fey, Lily Tomlin and Paul Rudd); The White Rose; The Sabbathday River; and A Jury of Her Peers, as well as a middle-grade reader, Interference Powder, and a collection of poetry, The Properties of Breath. With Paul Muldoon she adapted James Joyce’s “The Dead” as an immersive theatrical event, THE DEAD, 1904. The play was produced by Dot Dot Productions, LLC, for the Irish Repertory Theatre and performed at New York's American Irish Historical Society for seven week runs in 2016, 2017, and 2018.
Korelitz was born and raised in New York City and educated at Dartmouth College and Clare College, Cambridge. She is the founder of Book the Writer, a New York City based service that offers "Pop-Up Book Groups" where readers can discuss books with their authors. She and her husband, Irish poet Paul Muldoon, are the parents of two children and live in New York City.
Val Emmich
Val Emmich is a novelist, singer-songwriter, and actor who was called a "Renaissance Man" by the New York Post. He's the author of the instant New York Times best seller Dear Evan Hansen: The Novel and the Barnes & Noble Discover New Writers selection The Reminders. He's released over a dozen albums and has appeared in numerous TV shows including 30 Rock and Vinyl.
Laurie Eustis
Laurie Eustis is a poet living in Brooklyn, NY. She began her professional career in theatre working at the Goodman Theater in Chicago and the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles. While in Los Angeles, she also worked as a casting director collaborating with directors such as Joan Micklin Silver and Michael Cimino. After moving to Brooklyn with her husband and two children in 2005, she served as Development Director for The Paris Review and for Lapham’s Quarterly. A serious reader all her life, she began writing poetry in 2014 in response to the death of her beloved son, Jack. Her poem “Walter” was published by The New Yorker in their June 26, 2017 issue.
Julie Klam
Julie Klam is the New York Times best-selling author of The Stars in Our Eyes, You Had Me at Woof, Love at First Bark, Friendkeeping, and Please Excuse My Daughter. Her writing has appeared in many publications, including O: The Oprah Magazine, Rolling Stone, and The New York Times Magazine. She lives in New York City.
Anna Monardo '77
Anna Monardo is a Saint Mary’s alumna, and the author of Falling In Love with Natassia and The Courtyard of Dreams, which was translated into German, Norwegian, and Danish and nominated for a PEN/Hemingway Award. Her stories, essays, and poems have appeared in Hotel Amerika, The Sun, More, Prairie Schooner, Huffington Post, Cimarron Review, among others. She is a three-time recipient of Nebraska Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowships in fiction and creative nonfiction, and recipient of a Regents/Foundation Professorship at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, where she teaches in the Writer’s Workshop. Her family memoir, After Italy, is forthcoming in 2020.
Anna Scotti
Anna Scotti is a poet, writer, editor, and public speaker. Her poetry can be found in The New Yorker, Sequestrum, and Nimrod. Anna’s short stories are regularly featured in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and other commercial and literary journals. Her novel, Big and Bad, is forthcoming from Texas Review Press early 2020. Anna has been the recipient of the Orlando Prize for Short Fiction (AROHO), the Pocataligo Prize for Poetry (Yemassee), and The Mark Fisher Prize for Poetry (Telluride Institute) and has received many honors and nominations for her work. She holds an MFA from Antioch University, and teaches at a French international school in Southern California
Rossella Rago
Rossella Rago the bestselling author of Cooking with Nonna and Cooking with Nonna: A Year of Italian Holidays. Rossella is the host of the popular web TV series Cooking with Nonna. On each episode, Rossella invites an Italian-American nonna to cook with her and share traditional Italian recipes and fond memories of the grandmother’s childhood in Italy. Rossella, a graduate of St. John’s University, has traveled the country and performed cooking demonstrations in numerous cities across the United States with local nonne as her partners.
Rossella spent her childhood in the kitchen with her maternal Nonna Romana, learning the long legacy of recipes from Puglia passed down through the generations. Launching Cooking with Nonna TV has allowed Rossella to expand her culinary expertise to much of the rest of Italy too. Rossella, together with her mother and her Nonna Romana, won the “Italiano Battle” episode of the Food Network's 24-Hour Restaurant Battle in 2010. Rossella lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Sponsorship Levels
Adri's Circle - $7,500
Please note that we have only one table available for this sponsorship level. This sponsorship includes a table that seats you, eight guests, and author Adriana Trigiani. You personally will receive a full set of books of all authors presenting at the Literary Festival, an invitation to a private reception with our Literary Festival authors, and recognition in the program. You and your guests will also each receive a signed copy of Adriana's book as well as a book bag.
Author's Circle - $5,000
Please note that we have only ten tables available for this sponsorship level. This sponsorship includes a table that seats you, eight guests, and one of our featured authors. You personally will receive a full set of books of all the authors presenting at the Literary Festival, an invitation to a private reception with our Literary Festival authors, and recognition in the program. You and your guests will also each receive a signed copy of your featured author's book as well as a book bag.
Best Seller - $1,000
Please note that we have only nine tables available for this sponsorship level. This sponsorship includes premier seating at a table that seats you and nine guests. You will receive recognition in the program and you and your guests will also each receive a book as well as a book bag.
Bookworm - $65
This sponsorship includes one seat, one book, and a book bag.
Literary Angel - $65
This sponsorship allows you to sponsor a student or Sister of the Holy Cross to attend this luncheon. The sponsored student and/or sister will receive one seat, one book, and a book bag.
"Tony's Wife is a bit of a misnomer, as the strength of the book is Chi Chi's story, but Trigiani is the master of writing complex Italian families, full of characters who love and live with passionate (and sometimes fractured) hearts ... Trigiani delivers another solid historical saga, and her readers will be pleased."
– Library Journal
