Franca Mancinelli

Franca Mancinelli was born in Fano, Italy, in 1981. She is widely considered to be one of the most compelling new poetic voices in Italian poetry. Her poems and prose poems have been translated into English by John Taylor and published at The Bittr Oleander Press: THE LITTLE BOOK OF PASSAGE (2018), AT AN HOURS' SLEEP FROM HERE (2019), as well as a volume gathering her prose narratives and personal essays, THE BUTTERFLY CEMETERY (2021). The Italian original of the present volume, Tutti gli occhi che ho aperto (Marcos y Marcos, 2020), has won two national prizes: the Europa in Versi Prize and the San Vito al Tagliamento Prize. With this translation, ALL THE EYES THAT I HAVE OPENED, nearly all of Mancinelli's writing to date has become available in English. Taylor and Mancinelli also carry on a dialogue about literary, philosophical, and spiritual issues: the first part was published in the special feature, on her writing, in the Autumn 2019 issue of the Bitter Oleander; a second part appeared online in Hopscotch Translation (July 2021); and a third part, which was originally broadcast on Trafika Europe Radio, was published in Eurolitkrant (April 2022). Mancinelli has been selected for the ongoing European poetry project "Versopolis," was the Chair Poet in Residence (Calcutta, India) in January-February 2019, and participated in the European program "Refest: Images and Words on Refugee Routes" in February 2018. Her writing is also featured in the project "Non solo muse: panorama della poesia italiana dal 1970 a oggi," coordinated by Adele Bardazzi and Roberto Binetti at the University of Oxford. Her work has been translated into fifteen languages.