bio

Born in 1969 near Milan, I currently live in Greece. For the past thirty years, I have been translating fiction, mainly from English into Italian, working on contemporary writers—Jenny Offill, Teju Cole, Sarah Manguso, Siri Hustvedt, Mary Ruefle, Hanif Kureishi, Deborah Levy, and others—as well as classics such as Iris Murdoch, Wilfred Thesiger, and Saki. NN editore, Einaudi, Adelphi, Bompiani, and Feltrinelli are some of the publishers I collaborate with.

My longish stays in urban India from around 1990 to 2010 led me to pitch and translate several local writers – Altaf Tyrewala, Manjushree Thapa, Kiran Nagarkar, Amruta Patil, etc. Between 2011 and 2015 I started to explore some ASEAN countries. In 2008 I edited and translated an anthology of fiction, non-fiction and graphic short stories by under 40 Indian writers (Annie Zaidi, Sarnath Banerjee and many others) for ISBN publisher. Given the successful reviews, it has been reprinted in May 2013. In 2009 the anthology was published in India by Delhi-based Westland Books Ltd.

I love hunting for good books – sometimes managing to translate what I pitch – and I freelance as consultant for several Italian publishing houses, reading manuscripts and writing reports. I also enjoy leading or facilitating workshops on translation and publishing, a few years ago for the Lontar Foundation in Jakarta with the support of Goethe Institute and at LUMS University in Lahore and in Karachi with the BCLT.

I have been a grateful recipient of the writers/translators residency program at ArtOmi, NY (2013), I had the Kim and Jeff van Steenbergen Artist Award for the residency in Banff, Canada (2018) and in 2024 I was accepted at the prestigious Michalski Foundation.

I have curated a series on African literatures for Brioschi publishing house and I worked as guest editor for the issue India of the The Passenger magazine, which was published in Italian and English.

I often participate in literary festivals and conferences as a moderator or panelist. Some events – last one is the most recent:

I like

  • Contemporary art – I translate catalogues for Museion, Castello di Rivoli, Gam and many others
  • Social media – I worked for NN as social media manager for the initial strategy
  • Reality TV shows – I occasionally work for Discovery as a consultant
  • Design – I collaborated with design companies, until 2023 for Punkt
  • Stories – sometimes I write about places and translations
  • Teaching translation online at Langue&Parole (2013-2023) and since 2018 for Belleville
  • Writing for grownup children (or maybe childish adults)