The Writers’ Season II / La Stagione degli Scrittori II

Jun 17, 2016 / 18:00 – 21:00 / Villa La Pietra, Garden

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Event Details

Fri, June 17, 2016

18:00 – 21:00

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Villa La Pietra, Garden
VILLA LA PIETRA
Via Bolognese, 120
50139 Firenze, ITALIA

Dialogues and readings with contemporary American and Italian writers curated by Alessandro Raveggi, writer and member of the NYU Florence faculty.

Dialoghi e letture con Scrittori Contemporanei Americani e Italiani curati dal Prof. Alessandro Raveggi, scrittore e membro docente di NYU Florence.

Mark Bibbins meets/incontra Franco Buffoni (Poetry/Poesia)
moderated by Diego Bertelli

Maaza Mengiste meets/incontra Claudia Durastanti (Fiction/Narrativa)
moderated by Vanni Santoni

Featured Biographies

Mark Bibbins

AUTHOR

Mark Bibbins is the author of three books of poems: Sky Lounge (Graywolf Press), which received a 2004 Lambda Literary Award, The Dance of No Hard Feelings (Copper Canyon Press), and They Don’t Kill You Because They’re Hungry, They Kill You Because They’re Full (Copper Canyon), which was named one of the best poetry books of 2014 by Publishers Weekly magazine and a standout book by The Academy of American Poets. He has taught in the graduate writing programs of The New School, where he co-founded LIT magazine, and Columbia University, and at Purchase College and the 92nd Street Y. A recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship, Bibbins edits the poetry section of The Awl. His poems have appeared in such venues as The New Yorker, Poetry, The Paris Review, and four editions of The Best American Poetry. He lives in New York City.

Franco Buffoni

AUTHOR

Franco Buffoni was born in Gallarate (Lombardy) in 1948. He lives in Rome. He is a professor of literary criticism and comparative literature. For 30 years he has taught in the universities of Parma, Bergamo, Milano IULM, Torino, and Cassino. His books of poetry include Suora Carmelitana (Montale Award, Guanda, 1997), Songs of Spring (Mondello Award, Marcos y Marcos, 1999), Il Profilo del Rosa (Betocchi Award, Mondadori, 2000), Guerra (Dedalus Award, Mondadori, 2005), Noi e loro (Marino Award, Donzelli, 2008), Roma (Giuseppe Giusti Award, Guanda 2009), Poesie 1975-2012 (Oscar Mondadori, 2012, pp 400), and Jucci (Castello di Villalta Award, Mondadori 2014). Selections from his books have been published in Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, and England. Two full-length collections have appeared in the United States and in France. In 1989 he founded the review Testo a Fronte, dedicated to the theory and the practice of literary translation (Marcos y Marcos), of which he is still the editor. As a translator he edited I Poeti Romantici Inglesi (Mondadori, 2005). As an essayist he published Ritmologia (Marcos y Marcos, 2002), La traduzione del testo poetico (Marcos y Marcos, 2005), Con il testo a fronte. Indagine sul tradurre e l’essere tradotti (Interlinea, 2007), and Laico Alfabeto (Transeuropa 2010). As a novelist he published Più luce, padre (Luca Sossella Editore 2006), Zamel (Marcos y Marcos 2009), Il servo di Byron (Fazi 2012), and La casa di via Palestro (Marcos y Marcos 2014). As a journalist he collaborates with several magazines and radio programs.

Maaza Mengiste

AUTHOR

Maaza Mengiste is a novelist and essayist. Her debut novel, Beneath the Lion’s Gaze, was selected by the Guardian as one of the 10 best contemporary African books and named one of the best books of 2010 by Christian Science Monitor, Boston Globe and other publications. Her fiction and nonfiction can be found in The New Yorker, Granta, the Guardian, the New York Times, BBC Radio, and Lettre International, among other places. She is a Fulbright Scholar and was awarded Runner-up in the 2011 Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Maaza writes fiction and nonfiction dealing with conflict, migration, the relationship between photography and violence. She was a writer on the documentary project, GIRL RISING and recently completed work on another documentary film, THE INVISIBLE CITY, which focuses on unaccompanied children refugees living in Kakuma, one of the world’s largest refugee camps. Her second novel, set during the Fascist invasion of Ethiopia in 1935, is forthcoming.

Claudia Durastanti

AUTHOR

Claudia Durastanti was born in Brooklyn in 1984. She moved to Italy with her family when she was six and completed her education there. She now lives and works in London as a translator. She is a regular contributor to Italian cultural magazines and newspapers. Her first novel Un giorno verrò a lanciare sassi alla tua finestra (Marsilio 2010) won the Premio Mondello Giovani and Premio Castiglioncello Opera Prima awards, and was shortlisted for the John Fante Prize. Her second novel A Chloe, per le ragioni sbagliate (Marsilio 2013) was shortlisted for the Premio Fiesole and Premio Maria Teresa di Lascia awards. In 2015, she was included in L’ Età della Febbre (minimum fax), an anthology of the best Italian writers under 40. The short story called Cleopatra va in prigione received national praise and will eventually be published in a longer version by minimum fax in October. She was the Italian Affiliated Fellow in Literature at the American Academy in Rome in 2015.

Alessandro Raveggi

AUTHOR

Novelist and poet, Raveggi teaches Modern Italian Literature at New York University Florence. He held a Postdoc in Italian Studies at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México for two years. He wrote, among other works, the collection of short stories Il grande regno dell’emergenza (LiberAria, 2016), the novel Nella vasca dei terribili piranha (Effigie, 2012), the essays Calvino Americano (Le Lettere, 2012) and the first Italian introduction to David Foster Wallace (Doppiozero, 2014), the collections of poems La trasfigurazione degli animali in bestie (Transeuropa, 2011), Disney contro le metafisiche (Zona, Level48, 2008), the series of short stories Talenti da export / Le vite illustri for the Italian newspaper La Repubblica (2012-2013) and the series Romanzo da Spiaggia (in Italian and English) for the Tuscan edition of Corriere della Sera. He is the curator of an anthology of Italian tales on Latin America Panamericana (La Nuova Frontiera, Roma, 2016) and director of TheFLR, the first Italian bilingual literary magazine in Italian and English. He wrote stories and non-fiction for the Italian magazines Minima&Moralia, Doppiozero, Alfabeta2′, Carmilla, Club Dante, La Repubblica, Nazione Indiana, Nuova Prosa, Corriere della Sera, and poems for Luvina, Poesia, Il verri, Versodove, Le parole e le cose, among others.