Fernanda Pivano

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Fernanda Pivano (born July 18, 1917) is an Italian writer, journalist, translator and critic. Born in Genoa, as a teenager she moved with her family to Turin where she attended the Massimo D'Azeglio Lyceum. In 1941 she received a bachelor's degree with a thesis on Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, which earned her a prize from the Center for American Studies in Rome. In 1943 her first translation, part of the Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters, was published by Einaudi. In the same year she received a degree in philosophy.

In 1948, Pivano met Ernest Hemingway, resulting in an intense relationship of professional collaboration and friendship. In the following year Mondadori published her translation of A Farewell to Arms. She made her first trip to the United States in 1956. Throughout her professional life she has contributed to the diffusion of the most significant American writers in Italy, from the great icons of the Roaring Twenties, like F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dorothy Parker and William Faulkner, through the writers of the 1960s (Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Lawrence Ferlinghetti), to young writers of recent decades including Jay McInerney, Bret Easton Ellis, David Foster Wallace, Chuck Palahniuk and Jonathan Safran Foer. Pivano was also interested in African-American culture: for example she published many italian versions of Richard Wright's books. She also writes about popular music and is an admirer of Fabrizio de André and Bob Dylan. In 2006 Fernanda Pivano decided to tell once again Spoon River Anthology in the book "Spoon River, ciao" (Dreams Creek, 2006), where her unpublished texts describe the pictures by American photographer William Willinghton taken in the real landscapes told by Edgar Lee Masters in the Anthology.

[edit] Bibliography

1947: La balena bianca e altri miti, Mondadori.
1964: America rossa e nera, Vallecchi.
1972: Beat Hippie Yippie , Arcana.
1976: Mostri degli Anni Venti, Formichieri.
1976: C'era una volta un Beat, Arcana 1976.
1971: L'altra America negli Anni Sessanta, Officine Formichieri.
1982: Intervista a Bukowski, Sugar.
1985: Biografia di Hemingway, Rusconi.
1986: Cos'è più la virtù, Rusconi.
1988: La mia kasbah, Rusconi.
1955: La balena bianca e altri miti, Il Saggiatore.
1996: Altri amici, Mondadori.
1996: Amici scrittori, Mondadori.
2001: Hemingway, Rusconi.
1997: Dov'è più la virtù, Marsilio.
1997: Viaggio americano, Bompiani.
1997: Album americano. Dalla generazione perduta agli scrittori della realtà virtuale, Frassinelli.
2000: I miei quadrifogli, Frassinelli.
2000: Dopo Hemingway. Libri, arte ed emozioni d’America, Pironti.
2001: Una favola, Pagine d'arte.
2002: Un po' di emozioni, Fandango.
2002: Mostri degli anni Venti, La Tartaruga.
2002: De André il corsaro, with C. G. Romana e M. Serra, Interlinea.
2004: The beat goes on, Mondadori.
2004: Italian Lovers with pictures by William Willinghton, Dreams Creek.
2006: Spoon River, ciao with pictures by William Willinghton, Dreams Creek.
2006: Ho fatto una pace separata, Dreams Creek.