Leading Men

Join author Christopher Castellani for a presentation of his book Leading Men and the real-life characters who feature in it.

Go behind the scenes of Christopher Castellani's critically-acclaimed novel, Leading Men, which dramatizes the tempestuous relationship between Tennessee Williams, his longtime partner Frank Merlo, and their protégé, an aspiring Swedish actress named Anja Bloom. Set in 1950s Italy as well as contemporary Boston, the novel features a collision of fiction and reality that Castellani will illuminate with a brief reading as well as archival photos and audio. Leading Men is both a queer love story about the greatest American playwright of the 20th Century and an unsentimental investigation of fidelity, the burdens of fame, and the complex negotiations of life in the shadows of greatness. It is currently being adapted to film by the producer-director team that made Call Me by Your Name.

"In July of 1953, at a glittering party thrown by Truman Capote in Portofino, Italy, Tennessee Williams and his longtime lover Frank Merlo meet Anja Blomgren, a mysteriously taciturn young Swedish beauty and aspiring actress. Their encounter will go on to alter all of their lives. Ten years later, Frank revisits the tempestuous events of that fateful summer from his deathbed in Manhattan, where he waits anxiously for Tennessee to visit him one final time. Anja, now legendary film icon Anja Bloom, lives as a recluse in the present-day U.S., until a young man connected to the events of 1953 lures her reluctantly back into the spotlight after he discovers she possesses the only surviving copy of Williams's final play."

* This program will NOT be recorded

Register at:
https://us06web.zoom.us/.../tZIvcOqorjIjHdX3vcaZJ0Q79Yf...

Christopher Castellani has published five books, most of which center on the Italian, Italian-American, and/or queer experience. 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 and 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).

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 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.

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, aka 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 national literary conference and led the development of numerous programs for adults, teens, and seniors; he continues to work with GrubStreet in the role of Senior Advisor to the 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

• National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, 2024
• Authors’ Guild Council, 2023 - present
• St. Botolph Club Fellowship, 2019-2022
• Massachusetts Cultural Council Level I Fellowship, 2016
• Barnes & Noble/Poets & Writers ‘Writer for Writers’ Award, 2015
• MacDowell Fellowship, 2014
• Guggenheim Fellowship, 2014

This program is sponsored by the Friends of the Joshua Hyde Public Library in Sturbridge, Charlton Public Library and the Jacob Edwards Library in Southbridge, and partnered by a multitude of MA libraries (including Athol) for this event.