Chiara Barzini

Chiara Barzini (born 1979) is an Italian writer known for her semi-autobiographical novel Things that Happened Before the Earthquake set in the San Fernando Valley section of Los Angeles in the early 1990s.

Early life and education Chiara Barzini was born in 1979 in Rome, Italy, the oldest child of film director Andrea Barzini and Stephania Barzini. The novel, which received positive reviews from newspapers and magazines such as the New York Times and Vogue, She has been published in a wide variety of magazines including Noon, Bomb Magazine, the New Review of Literature, the Village Voice, Rolling Stone Italy, Italian Vanity Fair, and Marie Claire.

Barzini's non-fiction book, Aqua: A Story Of Water And Lost Dreams was published by Canongate Books in October 2025. One reviewer called it "timely and excellent," "brilliant," and "a modern day parable." Another describes it as the "fascinating" and "impassioned" story of how "William Mulholland transformed an unimportant desert town into the city of angels", and a warning "that LA might dry up again."

Awards In 2019 Barzini won the San Fernando Valley Award for Fiction from the Friends of the Library at California State University, Northridge.

Personal life Barzini's partner is Luca Infascelli.