Elena Varvello

ELENA VARVELLO was born in Turin, Italy, in 1971, and grew up in a small village in the woods not far from her birthplace. In 1996 she completed a Master Degree in Creative Writing at the Scuola Holden in Turin. Since 1999 she has been teaching Creative Writing at the same school. Elena has published two collections of poetry, Perseveranza è salutare and Atlanti, a collection of short stories, L’economia delle cose (nominated for the Premio Strega, the Italian equivalent of the Man Booker Prize, winner of the Settembrini Award and the Bagutta Opera Prima Award), and two novels, La luce perfetta del giorno and La vita felice, translated into English as Can you hear me?, published in UK (English PEN Award 2017), USA, France, Spain and Poland and soon to be published in Portugal and Greece. She still lives in that small village with her husband and their two sons. elenavarvello.com ALEX VALENTE is a half-Tuscan, half-Yorkshire, all European freelance teacher and translator. He is the co-editor of online publication The Norwich Radical, has a penchant for comics, poetry, and speculative fiction, and can be found on Twitter as @DrFumetts.