About this Event
Rizzoli Bookstore is delighted to partner with the Bridge Book Award to host a conversation with Chiara Benetollo (Center for Educational Justice), Alessandro Giammei (Yale University), and Iuri Moscardi (The Graduate Center, CUNY), in celebration of the first English translation of the championed Italian novel, A Fictional Inquiry by Daniele Del Giudice, translated by Anne Milano Appel. The novel is a mysterious story of a narrator tracing the life of a long dead writer, bringing to light the sublime connection between literature and life. The conversation will be followed by a signing.
This particular event is a part of the NYC Art and Craft in Translation Meetings and Dialogues on Literary Translation festival from April 13th to 15th — a three-day program, curated by Maria Ida Gaeta, with organizational support of Cathe Giffuni, Maria Gliozzi, Maria Letizia Rossi, and the collaboration of the representatives of the Institutions and Universities hosting the events, including the Italian Cultural Institute in New York, FUIS (Federazione Unitaria Italiana Scrittori), the CUNY Graduate Center, Hunter College — CUNY, Casa Italiana Zerilli Marimò at NYU, Hunter College, the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute at Queens College, and Rizzoli Bookstore.
Art and Craft in Translation was created to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Bridge Book Award (which over the course of its 10 editions has promoted 200 titles and as many authors, financing the translation of 40 books from Italian into English and vice versa) and to continue the reflections developed within the Festival “Multipli Forti — Voices from Contemporary Italian Literature” (which in its recent editions has presented more than 60 authors with their unpublished works to the New York public).
PLEASE NOTE: RSVPs are encouraged but not required. Seating is limited and will be first come, first served. Doors open at 3:45 pm.
Can't attend? (please specify that you would like it signed in the comments box at checkout).
This haunting novel was championed by Italian author Italo Calvino who called it a “very simple book, straightforward to read, but at the same time possessing great depth and extraordinary quality.”
First published in 1983 and never before translated into English, A Fictional Inquiry tells of an unnamed narrator visiting Trieste and London to retrace the footsteps of a fabled literary figure. The narrator is intrigued by the elusive, long dead man of letters whose career proved decisive to the culture of his native Italy despite his apparently never having written a line.
There are encounters with those who once loved him, walks along the streets he frequented, and visits to his favored cafés, bookstores, and a library in search of an answer. Why did he leave no written trace? In the end, as Calvino wrote when this book originally appeared in Italian, who the legendary author manqué actually was is beside the point.
What really matters are the questions and the disquiet running through these luminous pages, the dialectic between literature and life playing out just below the surface. A Fictional Inquiry—which includes notes from both Calvino and translator Anne Milano Appel—is a gem of unparalleled writing appearing in English for the first time.
Chiara Benetollo is a literary scholar and educator with a passion for expanding access to high-quality education. As the Executive Director of the Puttkammer Center for Educational Justice, she oversees the organization’s grantmaking strategy and generates funded expansion opportunities. She has also developed the PGP College Bridge Program and is responsible for its evaluation and implementation at scale. Prior to joining the PGP, Chiara completed her PhD in Comparative Literature at Princeton University, where she also served as the BA Academic and Personnel Coordinator at the Pr*son Teaching Initiative. In this capacity, she piloted the organization’s first set of BA-level courses, offered to incarcerated students across New Jersey through a partnership with Princeton and Rutgers University. Chiara has extensive experience teaching and designing courses on subjects ranging from Comparative Literature and Italian language to academic writing, having taught in several New Jersey correctional facilities as well as at Princeton University and Bryn Mawr College.
Alessandro Giammei (he/him lui/tu) is Assistant Professor of Italian Studies at Yale. As a cultural philologist, he specializes in modern and contemporary literature and art, queering their fantasies of genealogical roots in renaissance, chivalric, and classical traditions. He is the author of several books, including Ariosto in the Machine Age (University of Toronto Press 2024), which won both the Howard R. Marraro Prize of the MLA and the AAIS Book Prize; Gioventù degli antenati: Il Rinascimento è uno zombie (Einaudi 2024); and Nell’officina del nonsense di Toti Scialoja (edizioni del verri 2014), which won the Edinburgh Gadda Prize. He curated and/or translated editions of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s writings on painting, Dario Villa’s and Giulia Niccolai’s poems, Lytton Strachey’s letters to Virginia Woolf, Arthur Conan Doyle’s treatise on spirit photography, and Michela Murgia’s posthumous books. His public-facing work on masculinity includes the children’s book Cronache e leggende di ragazzi strani (il battello a vapore 2024) and the essays Cose da maschi (Einaudi 2023) and Parlare fra maschi (Einaudi 2025). He is completing a monograph on Shakespeare’s ghost in the philology, translatology, and spiritism of fascist Italy for Cambridge University Press.
Iuri Moscardi holds a PhD in Comparative Literature (The Graduate Center, CUNY) and teaches Italian language and literature in New York City. He edited the collection of essays Cesare Pavese Mythographer, Translator, Modernist (2023) and, with Julian Sachs, the first complete English translation of Pavese’s journals, The Craft of Living (University of Toronto Press, 2026). An expert of Cesare Pavese, for the Fondazione Pavese he created the interview series "Dialogues with Pavese" (in Italian and English). As a freelance journalist, he contributes to Corriere della Sera, La Lettura, Giornale di Brescia, Il Foglio, La Stampa, and il manifesto. With Clara Ramazzotti, he translated Kerry Howling’s Reality (NR Edizioni, 2024) and Garrett Graff's UFO (forthcoming). He is a member of the Jury of The Bridge Literary Award (non-fiction section).
Iuri Moscardi è Dottore di ricerca in Letterature comparate (The Graduate Center, CUNY) e insegna lingua e letteratura italiana a New York. Ha curato la raccolta Cesare Pavese Mythographer, Translator, Modernist (2023) e, con Julian Sachs, la prima traduzione inglese completa del Mestiere di vivere di Pavese (The Craft of Living, University of Toronto Press, 2026). Specialista di Cesare Pavese, collabora con la Fondazione Pavese con la rubrica di interviste in italiano e inglese "Dialoghi con Pavese". Come giornalista culturale freelance collabora con Corriere della Sera, La Lettura, Giornale di Brescia, Il Foglio, La Stampa e il manifesto. Ha tradotto con Clara Ramazzotti Reality di Kerry Howling (NR edizioni, 2024) e UFO di Garrett Graff (in lavorazione). È membro della giuria non-fiction americana del Premio Letterario The Bridge.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Rizzoli Bookstore, 1133 Broadway, New York, United States
USD 0.00
