Tuesday 18 June, 6.30pm
ICI London and Foundry Editions present
Your Little Matter by Maria Grazia Calandrone
Translated by Antonella Lettieri
Book launch
The author in conversation with Rosie Goldsmith and Antonella Lettieri
We are delighted to welcome acclaimed writer Maria Grazia Calandrone talking with Rosie Goldsmith and Antonella Lettieri about her book Dove non mi hai portata, recently published in the UK by Foundry Editions in the English translation by Antonella Lettieri.
First of two events dedicated to Maria Grazia Clandrone: on Wednesday 19 June at 6.30pm, stage reading of her play Few events, total happiness, for the first time read in English in Antonella Lettier’s ttranslation specifically for this occasion. All details HERE
Rome 1965. A man and a woman, excluded from Italian society, abandon their eight month old daughter in the Villa Borghese and take extreme action. In 2021, that child, author Maria Grazia Calandrone, sets out to discover the truth of what took place, examining the places that her mother lived, suffered, worked and loved.
Your Little Matter is an intimate reconstruction of the life of a parent, a shocking insight into the real lives of marginalised women from the Italian South in the relatively recent past, and the revelation of a cause celebre that was a catalyst for the legalisation of divorce in Italy. Combining poetic insight with cool, journalistic investigation, the completely personal with the very public, the book tells a devastating story of how the institutionalised callousness of state and society can lead to tragedy.
Your Little Matter was shortlisted for the 2023 Premio Strega.
Book your place HERE
Maria Grazia Calandrone is a poet, writer, journalist, playwright, visual artist, teacher, author, and host for RAI, Italy’s national public broadcaster. She writes for Il Corriere della Sera and Sette. She has written numerous books of poetry for Mondadori’s ‘Specchio’ series and Crocetti. Her prose works include a memoir about her adoptive mother, Splendi come vita (Ponte alle Grazie, 2021), which was a finalist for the Strega Prize, the Premio Strega Giovani, and the Bergamo and Comisso awards.
Rosie Goldsmith is an award-winning journalist and presenter, specializing in arts and foreign affairs. As a BBC broadcaster for twenty years, she travelled the world. Today she combines journalism with presenting and curating cultural and literary events. As well as being Director of the European Literature Network and Editor-in-Chief of The Riveter magazine, Rosie is also the Artistic Director of the European Writers’ Festival in the UK.
Antonella Lettieri is a London-based translator working into English and Italian. She was the 2023 National Centre for Writing Emerging Translator Mentee for Italian and worked with Howard Curtis. Her translations have appeared in Asymptote, The White Review Writing in Translation Anthology and La Piccioletta Barca. She won first prize in the 2023 John Dryden Translation Competition and her translation for Your Little Matter won the 2024 PEN Grant for the English translation of Italian Literature.