Friday 23 October, 6.30pm
Once Upon a Time in Italy #3: the 90s. Goliarda Sapienza’s The Art of Joy
A conversation between Dr Alberica Bazzoni (CIEE Florence) and Katrin Wehling-Giorgi (Durham University)
Chaired by Olga Campofreda
Reading by Chiara Goldsmith
Goliarda Sapienza completed The Art of Joy in 1976, yet it took almost twenty years for the novel to see print. Only the first part appeared in 1994, and the complete book became available in 1998, thanks to Stampa Alternativa, an independent publisher with ties to the counterculture. The novel entered the literary landscape as an anomaly: Modesta’s voice, set in Sicily at the beginning of the twentieth century, stood as a monument to desire, rebellion and female emancipation.Today, The Art of Joy is internationally recognised among the greatest modern classics of our time. But what does the story of the novel’s publication reveal about the Italian society that rejected it so many times? And where does The Art of Joy stand today within the Italian literary tradition? This talk will take us through a literary journey from rejection to recognition, in search of answers to these questions and, above all, in celebration of a novel that Italy was not yet ready to read.
Once Upon a Time in Italy: a series curated by Olga Campofreda. From the turbulent seventies – years of political violence, social fracture and ideological passion – through the glossy contradictions of the eighties, the disorienting transitions of the nineties, and into the fragile new landscape of the early two thousands, Italy’s recent history is rich with ruptures and reinventions. Its literature has met each of these turns with singular force, capturing the texture of everyday life, the weight of upheaval, the shifting tides of identity, memory and belonging. This series of conversations travels back through four decades of Italian history, culture and society by returning to those novels that did not simply reflect their time, but helped shape the way an entire country understood itself. Once Upon a Time in Italy is a literary time machine, a collection of postcards from a past that is asking now to join a conversation with the present.
Book your place HERE
Dr Alberica Bazzoni is a Lecturer in Cultural Studies at CIEE Florence and a Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Languages, Cultures and Societies (ILCS), University of London. She holds a PhD in Italian literature from the University of Oxford. Her research explores questions of performativity, temporality, translation, and literary imaginaries of trauma and resistance. Among her publications: Performing Embodiment. Choreographies of Affect, Language, and Social Norms (co-edited with F. Buongiorno, ICI Berlin Press 2026); Il presente vivo. Temporalità del divenire e del trauma in Lispector, Ortese e Philip (Mimesis 2025); and Writing for Freedom. Body, Identity and Power in Goliarda Sapienza’s Narrative (Peter Lang 2018).
Katrin Wehling-Giorgi is Professor of Italian Studies in the School of Modern Languages and Cultures at Durham University, where she is also Co-Director of the Institute for Medical Humanities. Her research focuses on Italian and comparative women’s writing, with particular interests in gender, motherhood, trauma and cultural memory, and the medical humanities. She has co-edited six volumes and special issues on modern and contemporary Italian women authors, including Goliarda Sapienza in Context: Intertextual Relationships with Italian and European Culture (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2016); Trauma Narratives in Italian and Transnational Women’s Writing(Sapienza Università Editrice, 2022); Elena Ferrante in a Global Context (MLN, 2021); and special issues marking the fiftieth anniversary of Elsa Morante’s La Storia. She is currently completing the monograph Maternal Legacies: Women, Trauma, and the Empathic Imagination (Palgrave Macmillan, under contract), which draws on the medical humanities, cultural memory studies and epigenetics to explore women’s narratives of transgenerational trauma. Her first book, Gadda and Beckett: Storytelling, Subjectivity and Fracture (Routledge, 2014), was awarded the Gadda First Prize.
Olga Campofreda is a writer, curator and Honorary Research Fellow at University College London. She is the author of the novel Ragazze perbene (NN Editore, 2023) and Camerette (Quanti Einaudi 2023). Her latest work is Vorrei trascorrere una domenica da uomo (Oscar Mondadori 2026), an edited volume of letters and articles on women’s emancipation issues written by Alba de Céspedes in the Italian post-war years. Alongside her writing, she builds spaces where books and people meet, most notably as curator of the Miu Miu Literary Club, founded and directed by Miuccia Prada. She is a contributor for Harper’s Bazaar Italia, d la Repubblica and Domani Editoriale/Finzioni, among others.
Chiara Goldsmith is a bilingual British and Italian actress. Working in voiceover, comedy, tv, radio and theatre in the UK and Spain over the last two decades. One half of cult comedy duo Róisín & Chiara, recently seen on 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown on Channel 4 they have written, directed and performed five hit Edinburgh Festival shows and 3 sold out runs at Soho Theatre, London. Chiara’s voice can often be heard on BBC radio 4, Audible, Channel 4, national advertising campaigns and various hit video games including Elden Ring and Final Fantasy Tactics.
Important: Welcome to Our New Venue
We’re excited to welcome you to our new venue and can’t wait to see you at the event.
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Thank you for your understanding and cooperation. We look forward to welcoming you and hope you have a fantastic time.