AUTHOR Gina Barbone Azzi Clifton Library Lit Her Passion!

By Tom Szieber

Gina Azzi’s weekly trips to the Clifton Public Library with her mother are some of her fondest childhood memories. They also ignited a passion that developed into a prolific career as a writer and steamy storyteller.

“I fell in love with books at a young age,” recalled Azzi, née Barbone. “I always wanted them around me. I had my own card, and having a safe space that fostered reading and allowed you to be creative, I feel like that was very much the foundation [of my becoming an author].”

A CHS Class of 2005 graduate, Azzi, 36, had an attraction to creative writing since her youth, but the possibility of it being more than a hobby never seemed realistic.

Today, though, she boasts 29 novels and three novellas as part of her curriculum vitae (not to mention 16 audiobooks), carving out her niche in the contemporary romance and sports romance genres.

Being an author wasn’t always her career plan, though. Like any good story, Azzi’s had some twists and turns.

“I always loved reading and writing stories,” said Azzi, who attended School 2 and Woodrow Wilson Middle School before CHS. “But I never thought it was a viable career option. It seemed like a hobby.”

After graduating from CHS, she attended St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, double-majoring in International Relations and Italian and minoring in economics.

She earned her bachelor’s in 2009 and then pursued an M.A. at Syracuse University, also in International Relations.

At Syracuse, she got her master’s, then made the big move to New York City. She found her first job as an intern at a publication called MIC.com (then policymic.com), gaining experience and making connections while waitressing to pay bills.

“I was writing these policy pieces that were internationally focused or debated things happening in U.S. politics at the time,” Azzi recalled. “I started taking a writing class just as something I wanted to do and to connect with likeminded people.”

Jersey Shore Inspiration

She began writing flash fiction pieces, many of which were inspired by her childhood summers at the Jersey Shore. Family, friends and peers encouraged her to expand on her entertaining narratives, but Azzi initially had no serious plans to treat her writing as more than a pastime.

In 2012, she received a job offer in human resources with Qatar Airways, so she shelved her writing exploits altogether and moved to Doha.

About a year later, missing the avocation, she began taking online writing courses, developing her prior work and expanding it into a novel.

The story—about two girls entering their senior year of high school who spend the summer at one of their aunt’s beach houses—was young adult and had romance elements, but wasn’t a romance novel, per se.

Azzi married her husband, Tony, at the end of 2014, and the couple moved to Dubai the following January. Soon after, Azzi became pregnant with her first child. The pregnancy turned out to be high-risk, and Tony encouraged her to change careers and refocus on writing.

So, in 2015, Azzi self-published Corner of Ocean and Bay, a young adult coming-of-age story of changing friendships and first love.

Author Gina Barbone Azzi

She wrote her first true romance book, The Last First Game, in 2015, about four college best friends who, in their final year, make a pact to have an adventure before graduating and moving on to their next phases of life.

Each book in the “College Pact Series” has alternating points of view between a male and a female.

The Last First Game was released two days after the birth of Azzi’s first daughter.

In February 2016, an opportunity in Tony’s career resulted in a move to Canada. Azzi had no work visa, but by then, she had fallen in love with writing, and there was no looking back.

Azzi’s 29th book, Bad Boy’s Downfall, was released on March 2.

“I figured out a little more each year how to grow it and make it a viable career path,” she said. “And it gives me the flexibility to be home with my kids.”

The Romance of Sports

Fully immersed in the contemporary romance genre, she has written a number of sports romances, influenced largely by her residence in St. Catharines, Canada, a hockey-loving town in Ontario in which she lives with Tony and their children Aiva, Rome and Luna.

She will be releasing a spinoff football series, the Knoxville Coyotes Football Series, in 2024.

“I had just been reading a lot of it,” Azzi said of how she zeroed in on romance writing. “I figured I would want to write what I want to read. It seemed like a natural segue. It’s also the biggest segment of fiction. I felt like the people I was connecting with were all romance readers.”

Azzi has traveled to over 50 countries, including Scotland, Singapore, South Africa, and Myanmar. Her travels have no doubt influenced her writing, as have her roots.

“In eighth grade [at WWMS], Mrs. Annmarie Sheridan gave us this sort of sequel assignment for The Outsiders and this poetry anthology,” she remembered. “I think it was the first time I really experienced creative writing. Then, when I started at CHS, I took creative writing with Mr.

[John] Notari as one of my first electives.” The rest, as some may write, is history.

“Just growing up in Clifton, with the diversity of cultures, languages and religions, it made me so open to moving abroad and then writing about characters who have [those qualities],” she continued. “For a lot of people who don’t have exposure to all those things, they don’t know how to incorporate those things into storylines. It gave me such a foundation to celebrate things about people who do things differently than you.”

Today, Azzi marvels at the myriad of ways young writers can pursue their dreams. As she did, young writers can find inspiration in the library or take creative writing courses. They can also get their feet wet as storytellers by creating audiobooks or short videos through social media. They can hone their skills as bloggers and journalists or in writing workshops (like The Writers Studio in New York City) or “meetups” (like Jersey City Writers).

“I think there are so many options now,” Azzi said. “I think if you’re someone who loves to write and loves storytelling, at the core, and if you want to weave that into a career path, there are so many ways.”

Find out more about Azzi at ginaazzi.com.