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ABOUT ME

I have been living and working in Italy’s Northern part, called Monferrato, an Unesco world heritage site, where I was born.

As a child, I was a passionate reader. Fairy tales, stories for children, the first novels: I was enchanted. I dreamt of spending my life among books. When I was a teenager, I started writing my own stories but I was’nt satisfied. It was really hard!

I was fashinated by the way the stories worked and I decided to study it. I graduated in Italian Literature from the University of Genoa and then obtained a PhD in Literary Sciences from the University of Pavia.

After my degree, I finally tried to write my first novel, L’amante di città. It is a detective story set in the Monferrato hills, published by Fratelli Frilli in 2017. From that moment, I have never stopped writing stories.

Besides my writing activities I still teach in secondary school my two favorite subjects: Italian Literature and History. I teach also creative writing at Officina Letteraria and Bottega di storie e di parole.

NOVELS

Di luce propria (Mondadori, 2021- Pisa prize – Giuditta-Ricola prize)

Dutch edition by Signatuur. German edition by Diogenes Verlag. Greek edition by Minoas.

Pisa prize 2021 – Giuditta Ricola prize 2022

A great fresco from the years following the unification of Italy, an intense love story. The extraordinary life of photographer Antonio Casagrande: he has an uncanny power to foresee what the future holds for the subject sitting in front of him waiting to be photographed for a portrait. Is this a gift or a curse? With her powerful imagination and writing ability to welcome the tumult of reality, Raffaella Romagnolo gives us a civil and intimate novel at the same time.

Respira con me (Pelledoca, 2019) – shorlisted for Strega Prize Ragazze e Ragazzi – soon translated into German.

Amedeo has no doubt: his father is a bastard and the walking excursion on the top of Punta Libertè sounds like a punishment. He has been missing school since one month but at home nobody knows. And now his father’s weird idea: two days toghether, just the two of them. Behind the lock of his long hair Amedeo stares at the valley, the summit at 3.400 mt and the starting point of the trail, until the Fontanafredda refuge, the first stop of the climb. A backpack, boots, some extra clothes, a heavy jacket and above all… no mobile.

The mountain is a jail, only ascent and stones, and he is dead tired. The memory of her mother, dead in an accident, is always with him and the annoyance to her father’s company is growing more and more. The only relief is thinking of Lucilla, the new school mate, quiet and solitary. An overnight stop in an old hut and then again on the track all the way to the top, walking among the cliffs. The way back is an abyss of stones. A landslide breaks his father’s leg. Without a mobile it’s impossible to call for help and Amedeo starts running against time and above all against his fears: he must find aid and rescue his father.

Destino (Rizzoli, 2018)

March 1946. Giulia Masca returns to Borgo di Dentro, a farming town between Italy’s Piedmont and Liguria regions from which she had fled on a ship bound for New York forty-five years earlier, alone, pregnant and penniless. A betrayal drove her hasty departure, and now she’s back from America with a few axes to grind.

Giulia’s return to her home town offers a chance to shed some light on her past – but it also provides the perfect backdrop for a superb description of the social changes and great historical upheaval that swept over this small corner of the Italian provinces in the “Short Twentieth Century” by Eric Hobsbawn.

La figlia sbagliata (Frassinelli 2015) – longlisted for Strega Prize; Lucca’s Premio dei Lettori

Ines and Pietro have been married for forty years, with two children and seemingly normal life. One uneventful Saturday night, Pietro has a sudden heart attack while watching TV. But Ines doesn’t behave quite as one might expect her to. She does not call for help. She does not tell the family. Thus begins a journey into their past lives and the secrets of their family. Resentment, reticence and pain fester behind a facade of forced, false normality.

Tutta questa vita (Piemme, 2013)

La masnà (Piemme, 2012)

L’amante di città (Fratelli Frilli, 2007)

ESSAYS

Manuale per scrittori di successo – Wie man einen Bestseller schreibt (Diogenes Verlag, 2021). Dutch edition by Signatuur.

Portraits of famous authors and their recipes for success. It contains short essays on J.K. Rowling, Elisabeth Strout, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Stephen King and others.

FOREIGN RIGHTS

Please contact Agenzia Grandi & Associati