I live in Marlboro, Vermont. I grew up in Jackson Heights, Queens a block and a half from the Roosevelt Avenue el. A half-block in the other direction was the Orchid Room, a mob owned supper club. The Public Library was next door. One day while perusing the stacks I pulled up a kid's version of The Trojan War. I read it standing. I took the book home and read it again. I was a fourth grader at the public school just up the street. This was my writer's foundation, the library, the el, the Orchid Room, Public School 69, whose schoolyard was the stage for my early life drama.

I graduated from Brooklyn Technical High School with the half-hearted intention of becoming an engineer. It was the age of Sputnik. But I was always reading fiction, westerns, pulp, never enough Homer. I graduated from Carnegie Mellon and worked as an engineer for two years, still reading but beginning to write, bad poetry, tales of callow youth, looking for my writer's legs.

I left engineering and studied English at Pennsylvania State University, and later, fiction writing at the Iowa Workshop. I worked as news reporter for the Dubuque Telegraph-Herald and have taught writing of all kinds. In 1979 Doubleday published my memoir, The Other Side, Growing up Italian in America. My first published novel is Cutter's Island, (Academy Chicago, 2000) which won a ForeWord fiction award. Lost Hearts, my story collection, is published under my imprint, Apollo's Bow.