Mountain stories

Journalist, writer, television host, and author for Italian radio and TV, she has made her mark on the media landscape with a unique voice and countless creative projects. Throughout her career, she has contributed to prestigious magazines and newspapers such as Sipario, Pianotime, Il Giornale della Musica, L'Unità, Il Secolo XIX, and L'Espresso. Since 1990, she has written for the cultural pages of La Repubblica and Il Venerdì, while also being one of the hosts of the popular radio show Fahrenheit on Radio Tre. Her blog Lipperatura, a beloved digital space among readers, serves as a go-to reference for those wishing to explore literature and the worlds surrounding it, with a sharp and passionate perspective.

Andrea Pau has been cluttering up Sardinia since 1981. He writes comics, children’s novels, cartoons, books under other people’s names. He has collaborated, among others, with Einaudi Ragazzi (Fiume Europa [River Europe] co-written with Andrea Atzori, 2019); DeAgostini (Dinoamici, 2013); Solferino (Nome di Battaglia Magda, 2019); Sergio Bonelli Editore (Bonelli Kids: il Re dei Troll [The King of Trolls], 2020); and Lapis Edizioni (Lorenzo Lodato e il conto alla rovescia [Percy Praised and the Countdown], 2021).

Giada Pavesi is a writer from Cremona, where she lives with her snobbish cat and a few too many plants, but whenever she can, she takes her yellow suitcase and travels. So she could read all day, she started studying foreign languages and literature at the University of Milan and then Leicester, in England. She has worked as a waitress, entertainer, translator, librarian and probably more.

Christian Antonini is an author of books for both children and adults, with a passion for history, adventure, and fantasy. He grew up surrounded by books, comics, and games. His novel Fuorigioco a Berlino (Giunti) won the Premio Bancarellino in 2017 and the Premio Il Gigante delle Langhe. In 2023, he was included in the Italian IBBY Honour List with La Musica nelle Ossa (Mondadori).

Valentina Federici lives in Switzerland, surrounded by mountains and Lake Geneva, but she grew up in Perugia, in a home with only one children's book. As an avid reader, she solved this problem by inventing her own stories, a passion she's never abandoned, even after becoming a lawyer. Her first book, Viaggio Oltre l'Ignoto ("A Journey Beyond the Unknown"), was an experiment where she challenged Artificial Intelligence to a writing contest.

Christian Hill is an author and screenwriter. He has written many children’s stories including Il Ladro dei Ceili (The Sky Thief), Rizzoli, winner of the Cento Children’s Literature Prize in 2019, and Olga, una Storia di Pace in Tempo di Guerra (Olga, A Story of Peace in Wartime), Rizzoli, which entered the Italian IBBY Honour List in 2023. His works have been translated into several languages, some of which he can recognise and some of which he can’t. He loves music, role-playing games and his armchair.

Marco Ponti is a writer, director and screenwriter. His films include the cult movie Santa Maradona (winner of two David di Donatello awards), the great successes with audiences Io che amo solo te and La cena di Natali based on the novels by Luca Bianchini, and La Bella Stagione (winner of a Nastro d’Argento), created with Gianluca Vialli, Roberto Mancini and the Sampdoria players who achieved the epic feat of winning the football championship in 1991 and remained lifelong friends. He has also published the novels Alice resta a casa (Alice Stays at Home) with Manlio Castagna, winner of the Watty 2020 for the best Young Adult story on Wattpad, R – Ribelli, revoluzione e rock ‘n’ roll (R – Rebels, Revolution and Rock ‘n’ Roll) with Christian Hill, and the ghost book series that began with Ombre che camminano and continues with La città delle streghe.

An author whose books have been translated into 25 languages, in Italy Davide Morosinotto won the Super Andersen Prize in 2017 with Il Rinomato Catalogo Walker&Dawn (The Pocket Watch Gang), Mondadori, and the Strega Children’s Prize 2021 with La Più Grande (The Greatest), Rizzoli, with which he also entered the IBBY Honour List 2021. A finalist at the prestigious Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis and winner of the Penzberger Urmel in Germany, he has also won the Prix des Bouquineurs en Seine and the Grand Prix des Lecteurs du Journal de Mickey in France, the Vlag en Wimpel and the Zilveren Griffel in Holland, the KJV in Flanders, the Protagonista Jove prize in Catalonia and he was nominated for the Carnegie Medal 2022 in the United Kingdom.

Gisella Laterza lives in Bergamo, or more precisely, in a cafe in the centre of Bergamo where she spends her time writing. When she’s not writing, she teaches Italian and Latin in a high school in the city and runs creative writing courses for boys and girls aged 6 to 99. She has published novels, short stories for school anthologies, biographies and a rewriting of The Divine Comedy for boys and girls for the I Classicini series (EL, 2022). Streghetta (My Friend is a Witch), Salani 2022, is her most successful series and has also been translated into Spanish (Duomo Ediciones).

Elena Peduzzi lives in Milan. She has a degree in Classics with an archaeological specialisation and has worked in editing children's books for Mondadori. She is a ghostwriter and author of novels published by the main Italian publishing houses and translated into numerous languages. She has recently published Uomini d’amore (Men of Love) for Solferino and Amore, sesso e altre cose così (Love, Sex and Other Such Things) with Fiore Manni for Rizzoli.

Marco Magnone is one of the children’s authors who is most appreciated and requested by schools, events and reading groups, thanks to which he meets thousands and thousands of young readers throughout Italy every year. He also teaches at Scuola Holden in Turin and the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan, as well as collaborating on the artistic direction of the Mare di Libri festival in Rimini and Storie in Cammino in Firenzuola.

Andrea Tullio Canobbio is a researcher and Italian language teacher. He currently works at the University of Pavia. Since 2013, he has been combining his research and teaching activity with working as a children’s author, collaborating with the Book on a Tree circle of authors. His latest books include La nascita del computer (EL) and Il merlo canta libero (Solferino), co-written with Alessandro Gatti.

Pierdomenico Baccalario has been writing children’s novels since 1997, when he won the Il Battello a Vapore literary prize with La strada del Guerriero (The Way of the Warrior) using his neighbour’s name. Since then, his bestsellers have been written under as many pseudonyms (the best known being Ulysses Moore and Irene Adler), translated into more than thirty languages and published with major Italian and foreign publishers. He has collaborated with Lucca Comics & Games for more than twenty years, has written for Repubblica, and is a columnist for the newspaper Corriere della Sera’s La Lettura literary supplement. In 2014, he founded the Book on a Tree creative agency in London.