Biographical notes
Stefano Salis, 39, from Sant’Antioco in Sardinia, is a journalist with the Sunday supplement to Il Sole 24 Ore. He works in the fields of publishing, literature and music. He edited the issue of the Quaderno dell’Associazione Amici di Sciascia devoted to Sciascia as a heretic of the crime genre (La vita felice, 2006) and the preface to the Italian edition of Il controllo della parola by André Schiffrin (Bollati Boringhieri, 2006). In his work Nero su giallo, Salis argues that Sciascia, more than any other twentieth century Italian writer, contributed to legitimising the crime novel as a literary genre. Sciascia’s entire work, he argues, can be read in terms of an investigation, of a mystery to be solved: there is not a single book of his that is not in some way also a crime novel.He lectures at the Culture and journalism profession workshops at the University of Milan and teaches on the Cultural journalism Master’s course in publishing at the Fondazione Mondadori.

Biographical notes
Fulvio Irace is a full professor of “History of Architecture” at Milan Polytechnic, where he holds the History of Contemporary Architecture chair at the Faculty of Civil Architecture and the Faculty of Design; he is also a visiting professor at the Academy of Architecture in Mendrisio, and a member of the board of teachers for the PhD course in “History of Architecture and Town Planning” at Turin Polytechnic.
He is a member of the scientific committee of the Vico Magistretti Foundation and is on the board of trustees of the Piano Foundation.
In 2008-2009 he was a member of the jury for the Mies van der Rohe European Prize.
From 2005 to 2009 he was a member of the Scientific Committee of the Milan Triennial and curator of the Architecture and Territory sector.
One of the founders of the national association AAI (Archivi di Architettura Italia – Italian Architectural Archives), he is one of the promoters of the “Architecture and Design” section of CASVA (Centro alti studi e valorizzazione delle arti – the Centre for Higher Studies and Valorisation of the Arts) of the Municipality of Milan.
Architectural editor for the publications “Domus” and “Abitare”, he has worked with the most important national and international magazines in the sector, and in 2005 was awarded the Inarch Bruno Zevi Prize for architectural criticism. Since 1986 he has been an opinionist in the field of architecture for the Sunday Supplement of “Il Sole 24 Ore”.
Attentive to the historiographies of Italian architecture between the two World Wars, to which he has dedicated much work through various exhibitions and publications, more recently his studies have concentrated on contemporary Italian architecture, and the figure of Renzo Piano, the subject of various monographs and an important exhibition at the Milan Triennial.
In the field of criticism and historical methodology he is the author of the following works:  Dimenticare Vitruvio, 2001 and 2008;  Le città visibili: Renzo Piano 2006; Divina Proporzione, 2007; Gio Ponti, 2009.
He has curated a number of architectural exhibitions.

Biographical notes
Born in Turin in 1965, Giuseppe Culicchia made his literary debut with five short stories in the anthology Papergang Under 25 III edited by Pier Vittorio Tondelli. His first novel Tutti giù per terra (1994, Premio Grinzane Cavour, Premio Montblanc) was adapted as a film directed by Davide Ferrario. This was followed by Paso doble (1995), Bla bla bla (1997), Ambarabà (2000), A spasso con Anselm (2001), Liberi tutti, quasi (2002), Il paese delle meraviglie (2004), Torino è casa mia (2005), Ecce Toro (2006), Ritorno a Torino dei signori Tornio (atto unico, 2006), Un’estate al mare (2007), Brucia la città (2009) and Sicilia, o cara (2010). Since 1994 he has worked as a contributor to the daily newspaper La Stampa. For Einaudi he has translated Bret Easton Ellis’s novels American Psycho, Luna Park and Imperial Bedrooms (for forthcoming publication).

Biographical notes
Marcello Fois (Nuoro, 1960) is an Italian writer, playwright and screenwriter.
In 1986 he graduated in Italian studies from the University of Bologna. In 1989 he wrote his first novel, Ferro Recente, which thanks to Luigi Bernardi at Granata Press was published in 1992 in a collection of works by young Italian authors which also included the first books by Carlo Lucarelli and Giuseppe Ferrandino.
Also in 1992 he published Picta, which won (jointly with Mara De Paulis) the Premio Italo Calvino; in 1997 he won the Premio Dessì for Nulla (which marked the beginning of his collaboration with the publisher Il Maestrale).
In 1998, Il Maestrale published Sempre caro, the first novel of a trilogy (which continued with Sangue dal cielo and L'altro mondo) set in Nuoro in the late nineteenth century and centring on the figure of a lawyer, Bustianu, a character that Fois based on the real-life Nuorese lawyer and poet Sebastiano Satta. With Sempre caro he won the Premio Scerbanenco in 1998. With Dura madre he won the Premio Fedeli in 2002 and in 2007 he received the Premio Lama e trama career award.
Alongside fiction, Fois has also written television screenplays (Distretto di polizia, L'ultima frontiera) and scripts for both the cinema (Ilaria Alpi. Il più crudele dei giorni) and the theatre, including L'ascesa degli angeli ribelli, Di profilo, Stazione (a single act in memory of the victims of the terrorist bomb at Bologna station), Terra di nessuno and Cinque favole sui bambini (broadcast in episodes by Radio 3 Rai). His short story Disegno di sangue, published in 2005 in the collection Crimini, was adapted for an episode of the eponymous television drama broadcast in 2007 on RAI 2.
He has also written an opera libretto based on the novel Tanit by Valerio Evangelisti.
In 2007, with the novel Memoria del vuoto, published by Einaudi in 2006, he won the Premio Super Grinzane Cavour for Italian fiction, the Premio Volponi and the Premio Alassio 100 libri.
Works
The list does not include collections in which his works appear along with those of various other authors.
Ferro Recente (Granata Press, 1992; reprinted by Einaudi in 1999)
Picta (Marcos y Marcos, 1992; reprinted by Frassinelli in 2003)
Meglio morti (Granata Press, 1993; reprinted by Einaudi in 2000)
Falso gotico nuorese (Condaghes, 1993; later published in “Materiali”, Il Maestrale 2002)
Il silenzio abitato delle case (Moby Dick, 1996)
Gente del libro (Marcos y Marcos, 1996)
Sheol (Hobby & Work Publishing, 1997)
Nulla (Il Maestrale, 1997; "Premio Dessì")
Sempre caro (with preface by Andrea Camilleri, Il Maestrale 1998; subsequently jointly published by Il Maestrale/Frassinelli, 1999)
Radiofavole (stories in music with CD; with Fabrizio Festa, Moby Dick, 1998)
Gap (Frassinelli, 1999)
Sangue dal cielo (with preface by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, Il Maestrale/Frassinelli, 1999)
Sola andata (EL, 1999)
Cerimonia (CLUEB, 2000)
Compagnie difficili (with Albert Sánchez Piñol, Literalia, 2000)
Dura madre (Einaudi, 2001)
Piccole storie nere (Einaudi, 2002)
L'altro mondo (Il Maestrale/Frassinelli, 2002)
Materiali (Il Maestrale, 2002; reprint of various previously published works)
Ilaria Alpi. Il più crudele dei giorni (with Ferdinando Vicentini Orgnani, Frassinelli, 2003)
Tamburini. Cantata per voce sola (Il Maestrale, 2004)
Memoria del vuoto (Einaudi, 2006)
L'ultima volta che sono rinato (Einaudi 2006; poems)
In Sardegna non c'è il mare. Viaggio nello specifico barbaricino (Laterza 2008) Stirpe (Einaudi 2009)

Biographical notes
Filippo La Porta, critic and essayist, born on 3/9/1952 in Rome, where he currently lives.
Currently is teaching :a course in contemporary Italian literature at the Luiss University in Rome, a masters course in creative writing at the Sant’Orsola University in Naples and he teaches writing and analysis of language at the European Design Institute and at the Montecelio Institute for communicators and a introductory course to genres as visiting professor at the University of Cagliari (March 2010)
He regularly contributes to Corriere della sera, Repubblica XL, Messaggero and Riformista. He also has a column in Left.
La Porta is member of the publishing committee of Gaffi Editore of Rome
Publications:
La nuova narrativa italiana (1995 and new edition 1999) Bollati Boringhieri
Non c’è problema. Divagazioni morali su modi di dire e frasi fatte Feltrinelli 1997
Manuale di scrittura creatina Minimum Fax 1999
Narratori di un Sud disperso L’Ancora 2000
Pasolini, uno gnostico innamorato della realtà Le Lettere 2002
L’autoreverse dell’esperienza. Euforie e abbagli della vita flessibile (Bollati Boringhieri 2005)
Maestri irregolari (Bollati Boringhieri 2007); winner of the De Lollis award in Chieti
Dizionario della critica militante, with Giuseppe Leonelli (Bompiani 2007)
Diario di un patriota perplesso negli Usa e/o 2008
E’ un problema tuo, Gaffi, 2009
Uno sguardo sulla città (Donzelli) – 23 interviews with Italian writers about their cities (Donzelli 2010)
July 2010: reprint (with new note) of Pasolini, uno gnostico innamorato della realtà (Le Lettere)
October 2010: Per favore, meno letteratura (Bollati Boringhieri)
He has also edited
Racconti italiani d’oggi Einaudi Scuola 1997
Il dovere della felicità Baldini & Castoldi
His essays appear in the collections
Patrie impure, Rizzoli, 2002
Il banco dei cattivi (Donzelli 2006)
E’finita la controra (Manni 2009), anthology of new Apulian fiction
In English:
“The Horror Picture Show and the Very Real Horrors: about the Italian Pulp” in Stefania Lucamante, ed. The New Narrative of the Giovani Cannibali Writers 57--75 (Fairleigh UP, 2001).
An essay about Elsa Morante and Pasolini in a miscellaneous book that will be published by Purdue UP in 2004.
In the second half of the 1990s he spoke at conferences in various American universities (Georgetown, NYU, Yale…) and cultural institutes (New York, Washington).
From March to August 2007 he won a Fulbright research fellowship at the Fordham University in New York.