Until January 16, 2025 New York City hosts the new edition of “Multipli Forti: Voices from Contemporary Italian Literature”, an event that for years has explored the relationship between Italian stories and international audiences. In a city that never sleeps, can a literary festival really stand out? The answer is yes, if the project presents current Italian fiction through the very voices of the authors who are writing it.
“I believe in the power of literature, in its ability to define and embody spaces of freedom, to create a universal language,” says Maria Ida Gaeta, curator of the festival. Such topics can be difficult to disentangle, but that is exactly the point: there are panels about the relationship between autobiography and history, about locations and theirs influence on intellectual identities, about the fine line between public and private.
Translation, like any art, is about insight and effort, choices that illuminate or obscure, compromise and daring. “Translating is not just about transferring words,” Gaeta says. “It is a complex act, where you transport thoughts and emotions from one language to another, from one world to another. Of course, something is lost, but new perspectives are gained. It is an act of rewriting – and rewriting requires fury, precision and vision.”
The structure of the festival remains the same as in previous editions: three days, three places, three ways to connect with stories and protagonists of literature. Fordham University, the Italian Cultural Institute and Rizzoli Bookstore become meeting points where translation, storytelling and ideas intertwine to open new paths between Italy and the United States. “I always look for authentic, intense and courageous voices,” Gaeta explains, almost like a programmatic manifesto. “Voices capable of releasing the full potential and strength of literary discourse, making writing into a living laboratory, in dialogue with distant cultures and languages.”
Donatella Di Pietrantonio, winner of the 2024 Strega Prize with The Fragile Age, returned to New York with her prose that delves into silences and absences to explore the unspoken and the fragility that define human relationships. Nicoletta Verna, an emblem of a generation that combines introspection and collective anxieties, offered a fresh look at the future of Italian fiction. Matteo Nucci, a philosopher of writing, reflected on the role of memory and forgetting in the construction of stories. Vincenzo Trione, art critic, offered an interdisciplinary look at the dialogue between literature and the visual arts, revealing how every text is a landscape.
A highlight came in a meeting with Mariangela Gualtieri, a poet capable of transforming every reading into an almost mystical experience. Gaeta describes Gualtieri reading her verses in Italian as a “sound rite”, while the translations of Olivia Sears, translator extraordinaire and founder of the Center for the Art of Translation in San Francisco, are flowing on the screen.
In four years, the festival has brought nearly sixty authors of Italian literature to New York, to which can be added this year’s 18, many of whom are setting foot in the city for the first time. And it is not just a journey: for many, traveling to New York Ctiy means coming face to face with an energy capable of transforming the way they live and write their stories. For the curator, it is precisely the contrast between the deep silences evoked by literature and the noisy vitality of New York City that leaves a mark on participants. “I’m even thinking about a publication collecting their impressions and stories about the experience.”
Strengthening the festival’s identity is a significant presence of female voices, including African and Asian authors. Alongside established names are many newcomers, some with works already translated, others yet to be discovered. It is not a cosmetic choice, but an invitation to rewrite the rules of storytelling and make Multipli Forti a springboard for new routes in Italian literature.
