Loredana Cunti
Still deciding what she wants to do when she grows up.
Professional Biography
Loredana Cunti is an author, speaker, producer, and cultural storyteller whose career bridges multicultural media, international film and television, children’s literature, and musical theatre.
She began her career as a DJ and Promotions Manager at CHIN Radio and TV and CIAO Radio before spending 25+ years in international film and television — as Head of Foreign Film Sales at Malofilm and then relocating to London, England to launch the children’s programming division at PolyGram Filmed Entertainment. She went on to become Head of Children’s Programming for Universal Studios, producing animated series, specials and digital games for worldwide brands including Maisy Mouse, Sitting Ducks and Pink Panther and Pals. Animation Magazine named her one of the Top 25 Women in Animation and has been quoted in several media articles including The Wall Street Journal.
In 2002 she founded Loreworks Ltd., developing original intellectual property and consulting for Universal Studios, Weta Workshop, MGM, Fremantle Media, and Atlantyca Entertainment. She has served on the TIFF Industry Advisory Board, mentored at the Singapore and Ontario Media Development Corporations, and juried at Giffoni, Kidscreen, and Cartoons on the Bay.
Her 8 picture books have earned a Junior Library Guild Selection, multiple Forest of Reading nominations, a TD Summer Reading Club pick, a 2025 World Cookbook Award, and recognition from the Reuben Awards of the National Cartoonists Society. How Gogo Found Her Groove has been adopted into every elementary school in the Toronto Catholic District School Board and has been used by the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education to demonstrate the power of picture books to teacher candidates. Loredana has been published by top children's publishers Annick Press and Kids Can Press and also publishes under her own imprint, Loreworks Press.
She speaks at elementary classrooms, secondary schools, and women’s conferences on creativity, confidence, resilience, and the art of reconnecting with the kid inside. She has partnered with Girl Guides of Canada, the National Ballet School of Canada, Women in STEM initiatives, OISE, and StepStones for Youth.
She is currently writing and producing Neapolitan Ice Cream: The Musical — a three-person jukebox musical and love letter to the immigrant experience.
Loreworks Ltd. develops original books, events, and musical theatre that build confidence in kids, courage in adults, and connection across generations.
Who Is Loredana?
Loredana Cunti grew up in an Italian immigrant family — the middle child between two brothers, born in Toronto and raised in the countryside of Kleinburg, Ontario. Her first language was the Neapolitan dialect. The first in her family to graduate from university.
There were no bedtime books in the Cunti household — but there were always stories of back home, of the journey over, of the life they were building and the one they had left behind.
Where many children’s authors cite a lifelong love of books, Loredana’s relationship with reading had a slower start. Her parents were still learning English themselves, so no one read her bedtime stories. She still remembers the first book that stopped her in her tracks: WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE by Maurice Sendak.
She was more social butterfly than bookworm, regularly getting into trouble for talking too much. The smelly Italian sandwiches that marked her as different. The teasing. The daily reminder that her family was different and she didn’t quite fit in.
Italy winning the World Cup in 1982 was the turning point. For the first time, being Italian felt like something to be proud of — and she never looked back.
When a musical theatre troupe visited her high school she knew immediately that she wanted in. She enrolled in Radio and Television Arts and discovered something unexpected. She loved being in front of the camera. She was just more interested in being behind it.
From the Screen to the Page
It turned out that talking too much was a competitive advantage. A career at CHIN Radio and CIAO Radio — among Canada’s first multicultural broadcasters — surrounded her with the voices of immigrant communities finding their place. She found hers too. The girl who once blended in to survive was now amplifying the voices that didn’t always get heard.
Radio led to film. Film led to a life she hadn’t imagined. In 1997 she left her tight-knit Italian family and moved to England as Head of Children’s Programming for PolyGram. She travelled the world, immersed herself in languages and cultures, and took cooking courses everywhere she landed.
She was blindsided when restructuring came but the same company called back within days with a consulting contract. She took it and instead of looking for the next executive role, she built her own company. Loreworks Ltd. was founded in 2002.
Motherhood then shifted everything and she had to pivot to find ways to be closer to home. With a newborn in tow, she applied to Le Cordon Bleu in Paris fulfilling a lifelong dream and rediscovering that her own cultural inheritance was what she was interested in. Growing up Italian, every season in the Cunti household had its food ritual — from sausage to sauce to struffoli — and her desire to document and encourage others to put down the cookbooks and ask their own families for their own treasured recipes.
After five years in Paris with her husband and almost two decades, she moved back to Toronto with her young children and, inspired by their dreams of going to space, cold-called Canadian astronaut Dr. Dave Williams with a TV show idea. After a year of trying she finally reached him. Their partnership produced her first published books.
She was in her late 40s and had just become a children’s author. That belief in the kitchen as classroom and teaching a young person to cook is teaching them to believe in themselves would later find its fullest expression in The Reindeer Café Cookbook — her World Cookbook Award winning title whose proceeds she uses to support StepStones for Youth, a foundation helping youth age out of foster care.
Food, Family &
Fun In Functioning
Even after winning awards with her first five books, the rejection from publishers and agents kept coming.
Then came a major family event which changed her professional and personal life forever — the sudden, untimely death of her brother. Back in her hometown, she stepped in to help run the family business, launched Loreworks Press, and kept writing.
Gogo Flamingo from her picture book HOW GOGO FOUND HER GROOVE began as a male character — until Loredana realized she was Gogo. A woman who had spent years losing confidence, second-guessing herself, wondering if she was in the right room. Now, How Gogo Found Her Groove is more than a picture book — it is a reminder, wrapped in feathers and humour, that breathing, moving, and dancing are some of the most powerful tools we have for finding our way back to ourselves.
The girl who once hid her Italian sandwiches at school is now making videos with her "SuperMa" and writing and producing Neapolitan Ice Cream: The Musical — giving the immigrant journey that shaped her, and the kitchen that fed her, a stage.
What drove her there through radio and film, Paris and and pastry chef, and loss and reinvention, was not a plan but a curiousity and an awarenes that it is neccesary to keep adapting at every turn. Her goal is to keep learning, make conscious choices to jind the joy in everday and and practice "Playful Resilience" to cope with life's ups and downs.
