Peter Chiarella

Peter Chiarella started life in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn in 1932. He was educated in the New York public school system and at St. John's University. Retired from the corporate world, Peter lives in Napa, California and enjoys the life of a gentleman farmer as a winegrape grower and vintner. He was widowed and remarried and has four children.

Peter has written two family historical novels, each documenting one side of his family. In his first book, Calabrian Tales, he writes about his paternal side, an intensely dramatic depiction of a family beleaguered by events that are at times hard to imagine as being true. Contained in the pages of the book are revelations of what it was like to be living in southern Italy in the late 19th century and into a more modern era. At times, Calabrian Tales is reminiscent of certain aspects of Puzo's The Godfather and McCourt's Angela's Ashes.

Peter's second book, Out of Calabria, describes the virulent experiences of the coming to America of his maternal family. It is a story of independence and assertiveness of the women in the Zinzi family and their unwavering defiance of age old precepts and outdated expectations placed upon them in a changing world.