About Me

      I lived my earliest years in the Little Italy neighborhood of the Bronx. On those streets, I was kept honest by tough nuns and an even tougher mother. As teenagers, my parents moved us to their small hometown in southern Italy to start a new life near the Amalfi Coast. Worried that a productive future for their children would be elusive in Italy, my parents decided to return to New York just in time for their children to start high school. While there, I learned to speak Italian and Neapolitan fluently. I traded baseball for soccer, graffiti for oils on canvas, comic books for Greek and Roman Mythology, and ham and cheese on white bread for Prosciutto Panini. I returned to the States as a very changed young man, forced to jump-start an almost forgotten lifestyle. It was 1969, and I was a fifteen-year-old being shaped by all the social upheaval of that period. I continued living in the Bronx, attending Fordham Prep and Fordham University on the Rose Hill Campus, battling authoritarian and unyielding Jesuits. It was all for the better. I moved on to Fordham Graduate School to complete my M.A. in American Government and Comparative Politics. I was invited to return to the Prep to teach Italian and Political Science. I decided to stay in the teaching field, eventually landing in a suburban school district in Westchester. 

I presently make my home in Mahopac, New York. I have four children and remain very happily married to my wife, Adelaide. My passions have always been to travel, oil painting on canvas, read as many books as I can before my eyesight goes, and to write novels.

 I have published three books thus far- Bronx River North (2016), Americano (2021), Leylah (2022). They are all listed on Amazon. Proceeds from sales are donated to the Alzheimer’s Association in memory of my mother, Maria.

My fourth book, Kiss the Midnight Rain, will be out in the summer of 2025, and my fifth, Goat Island, will be published at the end of 2025. My new website, johndolgettaauthor.com, is up and functioning. You can read excerpts from the three novels. Poems I have written can also be found on the website, as well as my artwork. I enjoy sharing my life and my work with others.

I can be reached at johndolgettaauthor@gmail.com, johndolgetta@yahoo.com, or at 914-330-1727.

I have published three books thus far- Bronx River North (2016),

Americano (2021), Leylah (2022). They are all listed on Amazon. Proceeds from sales are donated to the

Alzheimer’s Association in memory of my mother, Maria.

My fourth Kiss the Midnight Rain will be out for the summer of 2025, my fifth, Goat Island, will be

published at the end of 2025.