For the series: authors that speak about their ties with Italy, the Institute presents, author and novelist, Peter Cameron in conversation with Stefano Albertini, Professor of Italian, Director of Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò at NYU.
Peter Cameron was born in Pompton Plains, New Jersey in 1959 and grew up there and in London, England. He spent two years attending the progressive American School in London, where he discovered the joys of reading, and began writing stories, poems, and plays. Cameron graduated from Hamilton College in New York State in 1982 with a B.A. in English Literature.
He sold his first short story to The New Yorker in 1983, and published ten more stories in that magazine during the next few years. This exposure facilitated the publication of his first book, a collection of stories titled One Way or Another, published by Harper & Row in 1986. One Way or Another was awarded a special citation by the PEN/Hemingway Award for First Book of Fiction. In 1988 Cameron was hired by Adam Moss to write a serial novel for the just-launched magazine 7 Days. This serial, which was written and published a chapter a week, became Leap Year, a comic novel of life and love in New York City in the twilight of the 1980s. It was published in 1989 by Harper & Row, which also published a second collection of stories, Far-flung, in 1991.
Beginning in 1990, Cameron stopped writing short fiction and turned his attention toward novels. His second novel, The Weekend, was published in 1994 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, which also published a third novel, Andorra, in 1997. FSG published Cameron’s fourth novel, The City of Your Final Destination, in 2002, and his fifth novel, Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You, in 2007. FSG published Cameron's most recent novel, Coral Glynn, in February of 2012. His work has been translated into a dozen languages, and many of his books have been adapted for the big screen.
