Dialogues and readings with contemporary American and Italian Writers curated by Prof. Alessandro Raveggi, writer and NYU Florence professor, in collaboration with the Estate Fiorentina 2015, Comune di Firenze. (Second edition)
Featured Biographies
Meghan O'Rourke
Author
Meghan O’Rourke is the author of The Long Goodbye (Riverhead), a memoir about grief, and the poetry collections Once and Halflife (W.W. Norton). A former poetry editor for The Paris Review, she is also a culture critic for Slate magazine and a founding editor of the web site Double X. She was awarded the inaugural May Sarton Poetry Prize, the Union League Prize for Poetry from the Poetry Foundation, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Radcliffe Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Fellowship, two Pushcart Prizes, and a Front Page Award for her cultural criticism. Her essays and poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, The Kenyon Review, Best American Poetry, 32 Poems, and more. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, where she grew up.
Heidi Julavits
Author
Heidi Julavits is the author of The Folded Clock: A Diary, published in April 2015, as well as four critically acclaimed novels (The Vanishers, The Uses of Enchantment, The Effect of Living Backwards, and The Mineral Palace). She co-edited, with Sheila Heti and Leanne Shapton, the New York Times bestseller Women in Clothes. Her fiction has appeared in Harper’s Magazine, McSweeney’s, and The Best American Short Stories, among other places. She’s a founding editor of The Believer magazine and the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. She lives in Manhattan, where she teaches at Columbia University. She was born and raised in Portland, Maine.
Maria Grazia Calandrone
Author
Born in Milan in 1964 and now living in Rome: poet, writer, performer, and broadcaster of Radio 3 cultural programs, literary critic for Poesia and for the newspaper Il Manifesto. Books of poetry: Pietra di paragone (Tracce, 1998 – published as the winner of the New Writers Award, 1997), La scimmia randagia (Crocetti, 2003 – Pasolini Award for the Debut Work) Come per mezzo di una briglia ardente (Atelier, 2005) La macchina responsabile (Crocetti, 2007) Sulla bocca di tutti (Crocetti, 2010 – Napoli, Sassari and Prata Awards), Atto di vita nascente, La vita chiara (Transeuropa, 2011), Serie fossile (Crocetti, 2015 – Marazza Award) and the pseudo-novel L’infinito mélo, with Vivavox – first CD of her reading her own poems (Sossella Editions, 2011). She has written three monologues for the actress Sonia Bergamasco. Her series of poems are in Nuovi poeti italiani 6 (Einaudi, 2012) and appear in anthologies and magazines of several European and American countries.
Viola di Grado
Author
Viola di Grado was born in Catania in 1987. She lived in Kyoto, Leeds and London, where she earned her MA in East Asian philosophies. Her widely translated first novel, 70% Acrylic 30% Wool – published when she was 23- was the winner of the 2011 Campiello First Novel Award and the Rapallo Opera Prima Award. It was also longlisted for the Strega Award and for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award 2014. Her short stories and essays have been published in numerous magazines and journals. Her second novel, The Hollow Heart, came out in Italy in 2013 and will be published in English in June 2015.