Italian · b. 1987
Viola Di Grado is an Italian novelist born in Catania, Sicily, in 1987. She studied in Milan and later lived in Leeds, London and Dublin before settling in Rome. Her first novel, Settanta acrilico trenta lana (2011), won the Premio Campiello Opera Prima and was published in English as Cotton Wool Seventy Acrylic Thirty. She has since written several novels, including Cuore di Cenere (Ashes Heart), Fuoco al cielo, Hotel Argentina and Fame Blu, published in English as Blue Hunger in 2023 in Jamie Richards's translation. Her fiction often deals with grief, the body, illness, desire and the sense of being a foreigner, written in dense, sensory prose. She has also worked as a translator and writes for Italian newspapers and magazines. Her books have appeared in a number of languages. She is one of the more visible Italian writers of her generation.