BARCOLANA
UN MARE DI RACCONTI

When: Monday 6 October – Saturday 11 October 2025
Where: Magazzino delle Idee
What: Literary Festival
Official hashtag: #Barcolana #BUMDR
Info: unmarediracconti@barcolana.it

The “Barcolana – A Sea of Stories” Festival returns this year for its seventh edition. Part of the cultural programme of the Barcolana, the festival will take place from Tuesday 7 to Saturday 11 October at the Magazzino delle Idee (Corso Cavour 2, Trieste), with a special preview on Monday 6 October at 6 p.m. Each day will feature four consecutive encounters with leading writers, starting at 4.30 p.m.

Opening the Festival, organised with the support of the CRTrieste Foundation and the Municipality of Trieste, will be the Mexican writer Cristina Rivera Garza, winner of the 2024 Pulitzer Prize with Liliana’s Invincible Summer. In Trieste, she will present her new short story collection Terrestre, published by Sur. She will be in conversation with her Italian translator, Giulia Zavagna.

The programme continues on Tuesday 7 October with the return of the German writer Esther Kinsky, author of Of Light and Dust (Iperborea), and Dimitris Lyacos, one of the foremost contemporary Greek authors, who will present his new work Until the Victim Becomes Our Own (Il Saggiatore). Both writers have been cited as possible candidates for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

On Wednesday 8 October, the spotlight will be on Wanda Marasco, shortlisted for the 2025 Campiello Prize with Turning Away from this World (Neri Pozza), and Dutch writer Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer, author of the historical novel Alcibiades (Ponte alle Grazie).

Thursday 9 October will feature one of Europe’s most influential writers, Romanian author Mircea Cărtărescu, who will discuss his new novel Theodoros (Il Saggiatore) together with his Italian translator, Bruno Mazzoni. On the same day, Antonio Moresco (A Love Letter to Giacomo Leopardi, Solferino) will also appear, alongside two noir writers: Sandrone Dazieri (Kill the Rich, Mondadori) and Orso Tosco (La controra del Barolo, Rizzoli).

On Friday 10 October, the spotlight turns to Ben Pastor, an Italian-based American writer well known for her Martin Bora series, who will present La fossa dei lupi (Mondadori), a novel that imagines what might have happened a few years after the end of The Betrothed. The day will also feature Marco Balzano, winner of the 2015 Campiello Prize, with Bambino, a novel set entirely in Trieste.

The Festival will close on Saturday 11 October with three leading names: Dutch author Jan Brokken (Discovering Holland, Iperborea), French writer Maylis de Kerangal (Backwash Day, Feltrinelli), and Emanuele Trevi, winner of the 2021 Strega Prize, who will present his forthcoming novel My Grandmother and the Count (Solferino).

The full Festival programme will be announced at the end of September.