Literature between storytelling, popularization and engagement. The third day of the literary program of Italy Guest of Honour 2024 at the Frankfurter Buchmesse, curated by the Italian Publishers Association (AIE) with the consultancy of Ex Libris and the coordination of the Extraordinary Commissioner of the Government, will feature a series of appointments addressing some of the most relevant functions of books and publishing. Alessandro Baricco will be entrusted with the second "solo" of the program, which the Turin-based writer – master of storytelling across
multiple forms (novels, essays, monologues, articles) and languages (books, TV, theater, digital universes) – will devote to the relationship between literature and civic engagement (Arena, 3 p.m.). Two champions of popularization – historian Alessandro Barbero and journalist Aldo Cazzullo – will discuss the intertwining paths of history and stories (Arena, 12 p.m.). It will instead move into the territory where memory, current events and literature meet, with a comparison between the situation in Italy and Germany, the second event by the authors who signed the open letter, which AIE is hosting in the Italian Collective Exhibition ("The Return of the Ghosts," 5:30 p.m., with Donatella Di Pietrantonio, Helena Janeczek, Katja Lange-Müller and Birgit Schönau).
Major awards and international bestsellers
Already winner in 2017 of the Campiello Prize with L'Arminuta, Donatella Di Pietrantonio triumphed this year at the Strega Prize with L'età fragile, obtaining both the main award and the Strega Giovani, confirming herself as one of the contemporary authors most loved by the public and critics. At 4 p.m. in the Arena, the Abruzzese writer will be the guest speaker at a meeting dedicated precisely to the Strega Prize in the company of Stefano Petrocchi, director of the Bellonci Foundation, in which the history of the prize and its influence on both domestic sales and translations abroad will be explored. Speaking of publishing realities born in Italy that have been able to conquer millions of young readers around the world, the second chapter of the focus that the program reserves every day for children's publishing will be dedicated to the secret formula for writing a bestseller, revealed at 10 a.m. in the Arena by the creators of characters beloved on a global scale: Elisabetta Dami (Geronimo Stilton), Pierdomenico Baccalario (Ulysses Moore) and Elisabetta Gnone (Fairy Oak, W.I.T.C.H.).
Of love, contingencies and other stories
Among the 86 voices that make up the team of Italian authors featured in Frankfurt, there are many who like to push the frontiers of fiction, often contaminating fiction with memoir and historical reworking in original ways. Like Claudia Durastanti and Helena Janeczek, expected at 12:30 p.m. at the Caffè Letterario, authors with a cosmopolitan DNA and writing always in search of new horizons in space and time, from the mysterious South of Durastanti's Missitalia to the polyphonic Novecento of Janeczek's Il tempo degli imprevisti. Amid generational confrontations and restless obsessions, delicately balancing the aspirations and dissatisfactions of the 21st century, Marco Missiroli and Valeria Parrella will move ("Having it All and Other Small Miracles", Caffè Letterario, 2:30 p.m.), while with Cristina Caboni and Kira Shell we will enter a dimension in which immersions in nature and romance will play to tease the sense of smell and the feeling of love ("The Scent of Flowers and Kisses", Caffè Letterario, 10:30 a.m.).
Writing it in verse
Friday is also the day of poetry, the protagonist of two encounters united not only by writing in verse but also by their international scope. At 5:30 p.m. at the Caffè Letterario, the itinerary that the literary program of Italy Guest of Honour at the Buchmesse dedicates to some of the most beloved contemporary Italian poets will open: it starts with Vivian Lamarque, engaged in a duet between love and the Anthropocene with German poet, philosopher and musician Asmus Trautsch. It will instead be a rende-zvous on the border between Italy and Switzerland that organized by the Pro Helvetia Foundation, which in the early afternoon will involve Genoese poet Laura Accerboni and Swiss poet and cultural worker Marko Miladinović (Caffè Letterario, 1:30 p.m.).
360-degree publishing: art and science, translation and fantasy
The kaleidoscopic wheel of publishing today will pause on many other worlds, always told through unprecedented perspectives. Beginning with the feminine side in art and literature, explored by journalist Karen Krüger and Annalena Benini, writer and since this year the director – the first woman in history – of the Salone Internazionale del Libro di Torino (Caffè Letterario, 11:30 a.m.). To illustrators Beatrice Alemagna and Olimpia Zagnoli will be reserved the daily focus on storytelling through images (Caffè Letterario, 3:30 p.m.); to Marco Balzano and Paolo Nori, the former highly acclaimed in Germany for his novel Resto qui and the latter the Italian voice of great Russian literature, the task of enriching the program menu with an initial reflection on literary translation (Caffè Letterario, 4.30); and to geneticist Guido Barbujani and popularizer Massimo Sandal that of delving into the realms of science "between freedom and responsibility" (Arena, 5 p.m.). In the Venice International University hall, Fondazione Lia's "Reading in the Dark®" will continue at 2 p.m., while at the same time in the Arena Loretta Cavaricci will give voice to stories in a meeting on audiobooks curated by Audible. All appointments in the literary program are available in Italian, English and German thanks to simultaneous translation through headphones, with the exception of the one at the Italian Collective Exhibition, which will be in Italian and English.
Innocenzo Cipolletta, president of AIE: "From historical and scientific popularization to the women writers who invented the great characters of young people's literature, passing through the Strega prizes beloved by critics and the general public, poets and poets, illustrators and much more, the third day of the literary program tells of a publishing and literature in continuous exploration, where quality of proposal and sales success are two terms of an equation that do not elide one with the other, but rather add up."
www.aie.it
