Grazia Ritrovata All Day Symposium

Grazia Deledda (Italy) Ritrovata All Day Symposium

Thursday, Dec 10th

Join us for the celebration of the centenary of Grazia Deledda’s 1929 Nobel Prize and readings of plays inspired by her work. Grazia Deledda (1871-1936) holds a singular place in Italian literature: a self-taught Sardinian writer with only a basic formal education, she became, in 1926, the first Italian woman – and the only second woman ever – to win the Novel Prize in Literature, honored for novels like Elias Portolu and Canne al vento that gave voice to the customs, poverty, and moral struggles of rural Sardinia with unflinching realism. Writing from the margins of both the literary establishment and a deeply patriarchal society, she carved out an authorial career on her own terms, and her international recognition became an early, powerful example of a woman claiming full literary authority in a field still dominate by men – making her an important, if often under-recognized, forerunner in the history of Italian women’s writing and feminist literary achievement. Playwrights With Marcello Fois (Italy), playwright of Quasi Grazia and Nalini Vidoolah Mootoosamy (Italy/Mauritia) engage with her work. 

Presented by The Segal Theatre Center in collaboration with GC CUNY Ph.D. Program in Comparative Literature / Italian Specialization, Giancarlo Lombardi (Co-Chair); 369 Gradi, Italy, Valeria Orani (Co-Chair)— with Donatella Mulvoni (Conference Coordinator) as part of Grazia Ritrovata, a 2026 special project supported by the Italian Ministry of Culture.