Claude Nougat Profile

Born in Brussels, educated in the French system, I have an economics degree from Columbia University, NY and I have lived in Italy for the past 35 years. That means I am trilingual (English, French and Italian) and have a foot on both sides of the Atlantic! In addition, I have travelled all over the world (over 80 countries!) first following my nomadic family (Dad was a diplomat) and then working for the United Nations for 25 years. I retired in 2004 and since then, I am actively pursuing my two lifelong passions: writing and painting. In the course of my working life, I had written mostly non-fiction as a project evaluator. That experience served as the basis for an essay on development(entitled The Development Dilemma) published by ICEPS, an Italian NGO in 1987. My fiction work includes a book of tales for children (written in Italian) « Le Avventure di Guendolina e Casimiro» published by Lucarini Ellemme, Rome, 1991. It was awarded several Italian prizes: Premio Vanvitelli, Premio Mediterraneo per la letteratura infantile,and Premio Presidenza del Consiglio. In 2007, I tried my hand at adult fiction with a historical novel set in Sicily (also written in Italian). With the title Un Amore Dimenticato (A forgotten love) it was published by Emanuele Romeo Editore, Syracuse. It was well received in Sicily and widely commented in the local press. As a painter, I participated since 2004 in 15 group shows and have had two personal shows (in Paris 2007 and Rome 2008).