The Viareggio Prize is an Italian literary prize, first awarded in 1930. Named after the Tuscan city of Viareggio, it was conceived by three friends, Alberto Colantuoni, Carlo Salsa and Leonida Rèpaci, to rival the Milanese Bagutta Prize.
Juan Rodolfo Wilcock was an Argentine writer, poet, critic and translator. He was the son of Charles Leonard Wilcock and Ida Romegialli. He adopted a son, Livio Bacchi Wilcock, who translated Jorge Luis Borges' work into Italian.
Roberto Carifi, is an Italian poet, philosopher, and translator, supported since the beginning from Piero Bigongiari, one of the major exponents of Florentine Hermeticism. Considered one of the most important poet and intellectual of his generation he has been influenced by having a very difficult illness to cope with.
Giorgio Caproni was an Italian poet, literary critic and translator, especially from French. His work was also part of the literature event in the art competition at the 1948 Summer Olympics.
Giovanni Raboni was an Italian poet, translator and literary critic.
Beppe Costa is an Italian poet, novelist and publisher.
Franco Fortini was the pseudonym of Franco Lattes, an Italian poet, writer, translator, essayist, literary critic and Marxist intellectual.
Fabio Barcellandi is an Italian poet and translator.
Giorgio Orelli was an Italian-speaking Swiss poet, writer and translator.
Maria Isabella Vincentini is an Italian poet, essayist and literary critic.
Maria Luisa Gabriella Epifani, better known as Muzi Epifani, was an Italian writer and poet.
Barbara Carle is a French-American poet, critic, translator and Italianist. She is currently a Professor of Italian at Sacramento State University.
Helle Busacca was an Italian poet, painter, and writer.
Guido Ceronetti was an Italian poet, philosopher, novelist, translator, journalist and playwright. He was born in Turin, Italy.
Claudio Damiani is an Italian poet. He was born in San Giovanni Rotondo in the south of Italy (Puglia) in 1957 though at an early age he moved to Rome, where he still lives. He made his debut in 1978 in Nuovi Argomenti, the magazine directed by Pasolini, Moravia and Bertolucci. In the first half of the ‘80s he was among the founders of the magazine Braci, where a new classicism was proposed. Inspired by ancient Latin poets and by the Italian Renaissance, his themes are mainly nature and cosmos, with a side attention to current scientific research. "If the Horatian scenes of Sabina refer to a type of modern Arcadia, their specific quality is above all to approach a voice that is internal and literally poetic, refounded and reguarded like an unexpected and precious gift" . His poems have been interpreted by important actors such as Nanni Moretti (see) and Piera Degli Esposti (see). Main prizes and awards: Premio Montale, Premio Luzi, Premio Lerici, Premio Volterra, Premio Laurentum, Premio Brancati, Premio Frascati, Premio Alpi Apuane, Premio Camaiore.
Mario Benedetti was an Italian poet. He was among the founders of the contemporary poetry magazines Scarto minimo and Arsenal littératures.
Franco Loi was an Italian poet, writer, and essayist. He was born in Genoa, and died in Milan, aged 90. He made his debut in 1973 as a poet using dialect and had a good success with the work I cart, and the following year, 1974, with Poems of love. In 1975 the poet proves to have reached complete maturity of expression with the poem Stròlegh, published by Einaudi with a preface by Franco Fortini. In 1978 Einaudi published the collection Teater and in 1981 the work L'Angel followed by Edizioni San Marco dei Giustiniani. Also in 1981, thanks to the collection L'aria, he won the "Lanciano" national prize for dialectal poetry. In 2005 he published L'aria de la memoria for Einaudi, in which he collected all the poems written between 1973 and 2002. He has been Honorary President of the Contemporary Arts Centre of Cilento and Milan founded in 2019 by Menotti Lerro, and, starting from 2020, member of the Empathic School Movement / Empathism. In 2019 he won the Cilento Poetry Prize conferred to him at Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera.
Menotti Augusto Serse Lerro is an Italian poet, writer, playwright, librettist and academic, born in Omignano, Salerno. His work explores matters of social alienation and existentialism, the physicality and vulnerability of the body, the interpretation of memories, the meaning of objects and the philosophical importance of human identity. In 2015 he published Donna Giovanna, l'ingannatrice di Salerno, an innovative feminine and bisexual version of the mythical figure of Don Juan, El Burlador de Sevilla, while in 2018 he wrote Il Dottor Faust, an original version of the character of Faust. In addition, he is the founder of Salento – "The Poetry Village", Omignano – "The Aphorisms Village", the Contemporary Center of Arts of Vallo della Lucania, the Cilento Poetry Prize and The Cultural Pyramid of Cilento. Furthermore, he is the author of a New Manifesto of Arts and the founder of the Empathic movement (Empathism) that arose in the South of Italy at the beginning of 2020. Also, about his critical work, he offered – in contrast to the essential, and by now classic, definition of Philippe Lejeune – an increased and innovative effectiveness of the poem to express the narrative purposes of autobiography, recognizing poetic writing that has the extraordinary ability to say what “the mortal language [the prose] does not say,” to quote Giacomo Leopardi.
Tiziano Rossi is an Italian poet. He is well known for his published books of poetry, but in 2020 he also published a collection of short tales.
Omero Vecchi, known by his pen name Luciano Folgore, was an Italian poet.
