Dear Readers,
Read in Italian/Leggi in italiano
Upcoming Event
📅 Sunday, June 21, 2026 | 10:30 AM
📍 Piazza Giuseppe Garibaldi, Menaggio
📚 Menaggio in Scena – Festival of Art and Culture on Lake Como
Join us on Sunday, June 21, in Menaggio for Menaggio in Scena, the Festival of Art and Culture on Lake Como. The event begins at 10:30 AM in Piazza Giuseppe Garibaldi.
The whole world knows Menaggio as one of the jewels of Lake Como, a place celebrated for its extraordinary beauty and timeless elegance. For generations, it has captivated travelers, artists, writers, and some of the world’s most distinguished figures, drawn by the serenity of its waters and the majesty of the surrounding mountains. I will be participating in Menaggio in Scena, a literary and cultural festival held along the beautiful waterfront of Menaggio. The event brings together writers, artists, and readers to celebrate art, literature, culture, and the power of ideas in a setting that has inspired generations of travelers and artists. See you there!
Press coverage:
This week, the Italian edition of Digital Citizenship: Language, Ethics and Identity in Cyberspace arrives in bookstores
The reflections I would like to share today are directly connected to the themes I explored in my book The Bricks of the New Babel: Identity, Language, and the Ethics of Digital Citizenship. In the pages of my book, I sought to describe how our lives now unfold simultaneously in different spaces: the physical one, made of places, bodies, and face-to-face encounters, and the digital one, made of language and imagination. These are not two separate worlds, but two dimensions of the same human experience.
Perhaps for this reason I have never perceived any contradiction between my love of theatre, community life, and real-world encounters, and my interest in digital worlds. In my family, theatre is a shared passion: we enjoy attending it, experiencing it, and practicing it. I have often written about the importance of being together, of building relationships, and of participating in communal life. Yet none of this excludes the value of digital spaces. On the contrary, I believe that understanding contemporary society means learning to recognize the value of both dimensions.
The theatre itself teaches us something important: human beings have always needed to enter imaginary worlds in order to better understand themselves and the world around them. We have always created stories, games, performances, and symbolic spaces in which to explore emotions, possibilities, and identities. Today, part of this experience also takes place in the digital realm.
All of us, in different ways, carve out moments in which to inhabit our inner world. It is a space made of imagination, memories, plans, fantasies, and possibilities. This inner refuge is often viewed with suspicion, as though it represented an escape from reality. Yet this is not necessarily the case.
Every creative act begins there. Writing a book, imagining a solution to a problem, planning a journey, painting, inventing a story, or simply dreaming of a different future all require the ability to spend time within one’s own mental space. Each person builds that space differently: some possess vast and intricate inner worlds, while others experience them in a simpler and more immediate way. Yet for everyone there exists an invisible place where creativity finds its home.
This space often takes the form of play: individual play, social play, role-playing, and today, digital gaming as well. Video games, like every form of immersive storytelling, allow the mind to travel elsewhere for a time, to adopt different perspectives, and to explore worlds that do not exist and yet generate real experiences. For a few hours, one inhabits a different reality without losing touch with one’s own.
Naturally, excesses exist, as they do in all things. Yet I believe that discussions about video games often overlook their relational dimension. As the mother of three sons, I can say that the world of gaming has, at many moments, made them more social rather than less. During the Covid pandemic, when opportunities for in-person interaction were drastically limited, they spent time playing online with other young people. It was not merely a game: it was companionship, sharing, and friendship. Many of those relationships continue today in the physical world, and they often meet in person to play together.
For this reason, I view online communities, virtual worlds, and collaborative video games with great interest. I do not see them merely as technological tools, but as places where relationships are built, experiences are shared, and creativity develops. The true challenge of digital citizenship is not choosing between the real and the virtual, but learning to understand and inhabit both spaces with awareness, responsibility, and humanity.
The image below captures one of these very moments. Starting from a photograph I happened to take of my sons playing together - as often happens at the end of the day, during those relaxed hours when they are simply enjoying each other’s company- In both images I find something precious: not an escape from reality, but a moment of shared imagination, companionship, and play. Whether on a stage, around a table, or within a digital world, the beauty of being human lies in our capacity to create meaning, stories, and relationships together.
Perhaps it is precisely in that suspended space between reality and imagination that creativity and community life find one of their most fertile grounds. And the challenge is not to demonize it, but to learn how to live with it wisely.
📍 Menaggio, Lake Como (details above)
📍 Spazio Aperto, Via dell’Arco 38, Santa Margherita Ligure
🗓️ July 10, 2026
🕔 6:00 PM
Presentation of my book The Bricks of the New Babel: Identity, Language, and the Ethics of Digital Citizenship.
The event is hosted by the Vago Municipal Library of Santa Margherita Ligure and will feature a conversation with journalist Rossella Galeotti.
Held under the patronage of the Municipality of Santa Margherita Ligure and the Fondazione Il Mondo, the evening will explore the challenges and opportunities of digital citizenship, identity, language, and community in the contemporary world.
Today, June 16, at 5:00 PM, the double issue (Nos. 10–11) of the Bollettino Flegreo: Journal of History, Art, and Science will be presented at Palazzo Migliaresi in Pozzuoli.
I am delighted that among the contributions gathered in this volume there is also space for my reflections on poetry in the contemporary world, together with a commentary on my poetry collections Coffee Stains on My Books and Poetry i s Cyberpunk. It is an honor to be included in an issue that brings together scholars and authors from a wide range of cultural and research fields.
My heartfelt thanks go to the editorial team of the Bollettino Flegreo for their attention to my work and for their ongoing commitment to fostering cultural dialogue and intellectual exchange.
📍 Palazzo Migliaresi, Rione Terra – Pozzuoli
🗓️ June 16, 2026
🕔 5:00 PM
The fourth volume in the Italian Women Poets translation series has now been published, featuring my translations. Poets of the Italian Renaissance includes translations and commentary on selected poems by Veronica Gambara, Gaspara Stampa, and Lucrezia Marinella. The volume is enriched by original paintings by Francesca Draetta, featured on the cover and throughout the book, as well as biographical essays by Virginia Coral.
Italian Women Poets Collections
Italian women poets were long forgotten and excluded from literary history, and it is a great pleasure to see these books being so warmly received and appreciated by English-speaking readers.
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