Tom Perrotta
American novelist
Who is Tom Perrotta?
Thomas R. Perrotta (born August 13, 1961) is an American novelist and screenwriter best known for his novels Election (1998) and Little Children (2004), both of which were made into Academy Award-nominated films. Tom Perrotta was born in Newark, New Jersey, where he spent his entire childhood, and was raised Roman Catholic. His father was an Italian immigrant postal worker, whose parents emigrated from a village near Avellino, Campania, and his mother is an Albanian-Italian immigrant former secretary, who stayed home to raise him along with his older brother and younger sister. Perrotta enjoyed reading authors such as O. Henry, J. R. R. Tolkien, and John Irving, and decided early in his life that he wanted to be a writer.
Historical significance
Perrotta co-wrote the screenplay for the 2006 film version of Little Children with Todd Field, for which he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. He is also known for his novel The Leftovers (2011), which was adapted into the critically acclaimed TV series on HBO, co-created by Perrotta and Damon Lindelof.