Amy Cacciola was born on Staten Island and is a graduate of Vassar College and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. She lives in Brooklyn with her daughter and husband, the former winemaker and proprietor of Carpé Vino Tasting Room. Amy works professionally in internal communications. Her fiction has been published in Epiphany Magazine, Marrow Magazine, and The Writing Disorder, and her essays in The Staten Island Advance.

In her recently completed memoir, Me, Moon!, Amy plays second fiddle to her sassy, artistically-inclined, exhausting five-year-old daughter. It’s a tender, hilarious relationship in which the walking speed of sloths is debated alongside the origins of Trump’s family separation policy and the meaning of death. Set in an old Italian neighborhood now burgeoning with a Whole Foods Market and the penthouse culture it brings with it, the book describes a more modest life lived in a basement where, like analysts for the NSA, her family lives and breathes the comings and goings of their neighbors.

As one of Write America’s new and emerging writers, Amy read from “Me, Moon!” on the June 28, 2021 Crowdcast previously hosted by BookRevue, and now by Byrd’s Books. Roger Rosenblatt, who dreamed up and spearheaded this series, has called it a writer’s gamble. “We are betting on the power of language to repair a riven country. Not only do we have no sure idea if it will work, we have no historical evidence that it has ever worked. This whole venture is a process of discovery, not unlike writing itself. Collectively, we are writing ourselves into being.” The reading, with writers Cornelia Channing and Suchita Nayar, is no longer available online, but you can view a PBS feature about the endeavor here with a glimpse of Amy and several of her fellow writers. The first season’s full listing of authors can be found here.

This site contains excerpts from Amy’s 55,000-word manuscript, which shows the powerful effect of these times on our children. The full manuscript is available to agents and editors upon request.

“Sundays at the Tasting Room” was a weekly blog about her family’s experiences running a wine bar in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn during the pandemic.