Anthony Giardina is an American novelist, short story writer, essayist and playwright. Anthony Giardina started his professional career as an actor. He switched to playwriting, and eventually began writing novels. His work is particularly influenced by American culture in the 1950s. He was born in 1950 and grew up on a street in Waltham, Massachusetts, a largely Italian and Irish working class "sleeper" suburb of Boston on the trolley line to Cambridge. The protagonist's childhood neighborhood and schools in "Recent History" were largely modeled on Waltham. According to the author, Recent History was marketed toward the "gay market". Though Giardina himself is not gay, he possesses a remarkable ability to express the internal dialogue and emotional motivations of a diverse range of characters.