A writer’s journey: Ferrante &…Alba de Céspedes
Wednesday 19 February, 6.30pm
Selby Wynn Schwartz in conversation with Nadia Terranova
Chaired by Rachel Cooke
First in the series of three events ‘A Writer’s Journey: Ferrante &… ‘ curated by Olga Campofreda for ICI London
In the New York Times list of the 100 Best Books of the 21st Century, Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend is the top title. This fact not only confirms the importance of Ferrante’s book but also the impact of a novel that has been loved by readers all over the world. The ‘Ferrante Fever’ – the global success of Ferrante’s riveting four-book series – has been an amazing phenomenon which has managed to secure a renewed interest in female writers and in literary translation, including some classic authors that had been overlooked until then, both in Italy and abroad.
As we mark 10 years since publication of the Neapolitan Quartet was completed, the series ‘A writer’s journey: Ferrante &…’ intends to focus on the female Italian writers that have been acknowledged as important sources of inspiration by Elena Ferrante.
The series of three encounters dedicated respectively to Alba de Céspedes, Elsa Morante and Natalia Ginzburg, will engage each time different Italian and international contemporary female writers, in conversation about a classic book.
First appointment, Wednesday 19 February at 6.30pm, Selby Wynn Schwartz and Nadia Terranova, chaired by Rachel Cooke, talk about Alba de Céspedes and her book There’s no Turning Back (out soon in a new English translation by Ann Goldstein with Pushkin Press).
The young women studying at the Grimaldi yearn for new kinds of life. Monitored by the nuns who run the college, eight of them form a close group, sharing confidences and hopes for the future. But each, too, has her private secrets – a child from an early love affair, frustrated artistic ambitions, burning desires and petty jealousies. With the passing months, their paths begin to diverge, as each woman struggles towards her own idea of freedom. A virtuosic group portrait, There’s No Turning Back broke radical new ground in representing modern women’s lives when it first appeared in 1938, facing immediate censorship by the Fascist authorities. Published in a new translation by the acclaimed Ann Goldstein, it is a powerfully moving story of women coming of age in a turbulent world.
Following in the series: 27 March, Cristina Marconi and Tim Parks, chaired by Lucy Popescu, discuss Elsa Morante’s Arturo’s Island (Pushkin Press); and on 22 May, Giulia Caminito and Thea Lenarduzzi, chaired by Olga Campofreda, discuss Natalia Ginzburg’s The City and the House (Daunt Books)
Book your place HERE
Selby Wynn Schwartz is the recipient of the 2025 Joseph Brodsky Rome Prize in Literature at the American Academy in Rome and a 2024 Fellowship from the Dora Maar Cultural Center. She is the author of After Sappho, which was longlisted for the Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Orwell Prize in Political Fiction, the James Tait Black Prize in Fiction, and the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction. Her other two books are A Life in Chameleons and The Bodies of Others: Drag Dances & Their Afterlives, and her articles on Alba de Céspedes appear in the anthology Feminismo(s) y/en traducción and the journal Altrelettere. She holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from UC Berkeley.
Nadia Terranova was born in Messina in 1978, she lives in Rome. She is the author of the novels Gli anni al contrario (Einaudi 2015, winner of the Prize Bagutta Opera Prima and of the Bridge Book Award), Addio fantasmi (Einaudi 2018, finalist at Premio Strega 2019), Trema la notte (Einaudi 2022, Premio Vittorini 2022, Premio internazionale del mare Piero Ottone 2023) and several books for a younger audience including Aladino (Orecchio Acerbo 2020, illustrations by Lorenzo Mattotti), Il segreto (Mondadori 2021, illustrations by Mara Cerri, Premio Andersen 2022; Premio Strega ragazze e ragazzi 2022), Il cortile delle sette fate (Guanda 2022, illustrations by Simona Mulazzani; finalist at Premio Campiello Junior), Scintilla (Mondadori 2024, illustrations by Mariachiara Di Giorgio). Her latest novel is Quello che so di te (January 2025, Guanda Editore). She is translated all over the world.
Rachel Cooke is an award-winning journalist. She is a writer and columnist at the Observer, and the television critic of the New Statesman. Her essays are regularly broadcast on BBC Radio 3, including the series The Odd Woman and, more recently, On Disappointment. In 2024, she curated Provocations, a series of live events at the Freud Museum, in Hampstead. She is the author of Her Brilliant Career: Ten Extraordinary Women of the Fifties (Virago) and Kitchen Person (W&N). The Virago Book of Friendship, of which she is the editor, came out last
year, and will be published in the US in 2025 by Norton.
Olga Campofreda is an Italian writer, researcher and curator. She is the author of Ragazze perbene (NNE, 2023) and Camerette. Un racconto sulla giovinezza dalle pareti delle nostre stanze ai social media (Quanti Einaudi, 2023), while her articles featured on D – la Repubblica delle donne and Domani editoriale. Since 2024 she is the curator of the Miu Miu Literary Club.