WEEK OF ITALIAN LANGUAGE IN THE WORLD
Tuesday, October 14 | 6:30 PM
Italian Cultural Institute
710 Sansome St, San Francisco
CAMILLERI 100
On the occasion of the centennial of Andrea Camilleri‘s birth, the Italian Cultural Institute of San Francisco is hosting an event featuring Italian author Nadia Terranova in conversation with Michael Subialka, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and Italian at the University of California, Davis.
The program includes a prerecorded video contribution by Steven Sartarelli, the American translator of the Inspector Montalbano series, presented in memory of the renowned Sicilian writer who recently passed away in 2019.
The event is open to the public by reservation.
In collaboration with the Leonardo da Vinci Society of San Francisco.
NADIA TERRANOVA
Born in Messina in 1978, Nadia Terranova lives and works in Rome. After graduating in Philosophy from Messina and earning a doctorate from Catania, she moved to Rome in 2003. There, she devoted herself to writing her first novel, Gli anni al contrario (The Years in Reverse), published in 2015 by Einaudi. The novel was well received by both readers and critics, winning numerous awards, including the Bagutta Opera Prima, the Brancati Prize, and the American The Bridge Book Award.
In 2012, she published Bruno. The Boy Who Learned to Fly, inspired by the life of the writer Bruno Schulz, for which she won the Laura Orvieto Prize and the Napoli Prize in the Children’s and Young Adult Books category.
In her literary output, Terranova alternates classic novels with books for young adults. After the publication of Gli anni al contrario (The Years in Reverse), also in 2015, Einaudi Ragazzi published Le nuvole per terra (shortlisted for the Bancarellino Prize); In 2016, Mondadori Ragazzi published Casca il mondo (a finalist in the national children’s literature awards Premio Cento and Il Gigante delle Langhe).
On September 25, 2018, Einaudi published the novel Addio fantasmi, which in December of the same year was listed among the top ten books of 2018 in the quality ranking of the cultural magazine La Lettura (a Sunday supplement of the Corriere della Sera). The novel was among the final five for the 2019 Strega Prize. With Addio Fantasmi, she also won the seventh edition of the Subiaco Città del Libro National Literary Prize, the 25th edition of the Alassio Centolibri Prize, the 41st edition of the “Città di Penne-Mosca-America” Prize, and the 33rd edition of the Martoglio Prize.
In March 2019, Homer Was Here was published (Bompiani Ragazzi), with illustrations by Vanna Vinci. The book was among the 12 finalists for the fifth edition of the Strega Ragazze e Ragazzi Prize. Also in 2019, she translated Letter to My Son’s Teacher by Abraham Lincoln (Einaudi Ragazzi) and wrote the introduction to Company Parade by Margaret Storm Jameson (Fazi Editore). In November of the same year, her first essay, An Idea of Childhood: Books, Children, and Other Literature, was published by Italo Svevo.
In May 2020, Giulio Perrone Editore published her short story collection, Come una storia d’amore, which was among the short stories nominated for the 91st edition of the Viareggio Prize in the Fiction section that June.
In November 2020, Aladdin and the Magic Lamp (Orecchio Acerbo), illustrated by Lorenzo Mattotti, was published.
In 2022, he won the 21st edition of the Elio Vittorini National Literary Prize with Trema la notte.
MICHAEL SUBIALKA
Before joining the UC Davis faculty, Michael Subialka taught at the University of Oxford, where he was a Powys Roberts Research Fellow in European Literature at St. Hugh’s College, and a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Cultures, Civilizations, and Ideas Program at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey. He earned his PhD from the Committee on Social Thought and the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Chicago.
His work focuses on the rich interplay between literature and philosophy: how philosophy informs and shapes literature, and how literary form, in turn, shapes philosophy. His approach to these topics is to explore their mutual interaction and to question how this interaction shapes the way we imagine ourselves, both as individuals and as societies.
Subialka also studies modern performance and film, focusing in particular on the early twentieth-century Italian avant-garde and with an interest in the critical theory responding to that period. His research in this field is combined with a practical involvement in theater. At Oxford, he co-directed two Italian plays, Serata Futurista! and Fiabe Italiane. While studying at the University of Notre Dame, he also performed in foreign-language theater in works by writers such as Dario Fo.
He has published essays on Italian thinkers and writers of the Renaissance and Baroque periods, including Tommaso Campanella and Lucrezia Marinella. His research focuses on the theory and practice of translation, which Subialka also teaches in the classroom, and encompasses both literary and philosophical texts.
His latest collaborative project is a shared endeavor with co-editor Lisa Sarti: a digital edition of Luigi Pirandello’s complete collection of 245 short stories, Novelle per un anno. This digital edition will be the first complete translation of Pirandello’s short stories into English, making them available to readers and scholars with a new editorial apparatus. The project is ongoing, but dozens of stories are already online: Stories for a Year.