In Genoa, from October 9 to 11, Book Pride returns, the National Fair of Independent Publishing organized by the Turin International Book Fair, in collaboration with Palazzo Ducale, the Municipality of Genoa, and the Liguria Region.
Three days will bring together more than 100 publishing houses, thousands of titles on display, and a program of talks, dialogues, meetings, and workshops, with international guests such as Anne Cathrine Bomann and Antje Rávik Strubel and Italian authors like Claudia Durastanti, Francesco Pacifico, Annalisa Camilli, Chiara Alessi, and Giulia Siviero. The 2026 edition interweaves major literary and social anniversaries: the centenary of the Nobel Prize awarded to Grazia Deledda, 25 years since the Genoa G8, and tributes to Mary Shelley, Ingeborg Bachmann, Giorgio Caproni, Eugenio Montale, and, on the bicentennial of his birth, Carlo Collodi.
The fair (here is the full program), with free admission, will be open from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. for all three days.
Alice Francesca Mancini will lead the program’s editorial coordination, together with editors Ilaria Crotti and Valentina Mancinelli, supported by Federica Antonacci, the point of contact for editorial proposals. For the special sections Book Young and Book Comics, curators will be Valentina De Poli and Federico Vergari, respectively.
“Following Milan’s stop last spring, we are ready to land in Genoa with the objectives that have always guided the event’s growth: the research and support of project publishing that animates Italy’s book offering. This year we chose to lean on the verses of Emily Dickinson: the theme of 2026 is inspired by one of the poet’s most famous lines, “Hope is the thing with feathers.” In this clear image, Dickinson assigns to hope the form of a tiny yet tenacious presence, able to endure even in the harshest conditions: a metaphor that travels through time with surprising relevance and, today, becomes a key to interrogating the present. A thought that perfectly resonates with the city of Genoa, which has made hope a form of resistance: with its port, long a place of encounters, departures and discoveries; with its ability to rise after great disasters; with the memory tied to events like the G8, 25 years on, that continues to challenge our present on democracy and justice. And it is precisely between memory, wounds, and rebirth that literature finds its space: the place where words do not erase the past but imagine the future,” emphasizes Francesca Mancini.
International Authors Featured in Genoa
Among the international guests, Danish writer Anne Cathrine Bomann brings to Genoa La stagione dell’acquario (Iperborea), a novel about an adult female friendship and an unexpected bond between the protagonist and an octopus, a symbol of the difficulty of communication.
At Book Pride also the German writer Antje Rávik Strubel, winner of the Deutscher Buchpreis in 2021, with her latest novel L’influsso dei fagiani (Voland), the story of a woman accused of incitement to suicide, who, losing all certainties, dissects with extraordinary lucidity that taste for power from which no one is immune.
Pablo Maurette, Argentine writer and professor of comparative literature, will present La Niña de Oro (Sellerio), a noir set in a Buenos Aires haunted by murders, superstition, and scientific obsessions.
The Spanish debutante Elisa Levi will recount Tante cose non le so (Sur), a novel in which meeting a stranger becomes the pretext to tell how life changes direction and the desire to go elsewhere becomes irresistible.
In collaboration with Portici di Carta – organized by the same Fair – Malaysian writer Tash Aw will be at Book Pride with the novel Il Sud (La Nave di Teseo), longlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize, and will recount 1990s Malaysia, amid family, desire, and social transformations.
Contemporary geopolitical and social tensions, starting from the situation of women in Iran, will be at the center of the event Donna, vita, libertà, which will begin with the screening of the documentary A War on Women – Women Life Freedom: will discuss director Raha Shirazi, human rights and digital rights activist Pegah Moshir Pour, author of the novel La casa dimenticata (Garzanti), and Sharareh Mogadasi, spokesperson for the Iranian community in Genoa.
Current Affairs at Book Pride
From Iran, the focus shifts to Palestine—with writer Aysar Al-Saifi, journalist Martina Stefanoni, and philologist Riccardo Burgazzi—and to Cuba, explored by humanitarian worker Carla Vitantonio and publisher and physician Massimo Costantini in the session Cuba: What Remains of the Revolution?
A public dialogue between economist Fabrizio Barca, coordinator of the Inequalities and Diversity Forum, and historian and essayist Luca Borzani, former president of Palazzo Ducale, will address the potential regeneration of democracy in a session titled Building trust in democracy. A tangible hope.
The climate crisis and its global implications will animate the session The Arctic Race, which will bring together Leonardo Parigi, founder and coordinator of the Arctic Observatory and co-author of Groenlandia/Nuuk – Chi vuole rompere il ghiaccio (Paesi Edizioni), Mara Morini, professor of Political Science at the University of Genoa, and photographer Fabio Accorrà, to reflect on how melting ice and new strategic rivalries are redrawing the planet’s geopolitical and anthropological maps.
The space will also take center stage with Luna: the New Frontier, a session dedicated to Earth’s satellite as a stage for myths, science, and new races for space dominance, between ancient deities and programs that inherited their names, from Apollo to Artemis; with the contributions of Walter Riva, director of the Righi Observatory, together with Marina Costa and Davide Zambonin, and science communicator Fabrizio Fazzari.
The Italian debut of Audre Lorde’s The Cancer Diaries (Meltemi Editore) – published in the USA in 1980 – will become an occasion for dialogue on illness, care, self-determination, and beauty, with Raky Doumbia, Mackda Ghebremariam Tesfau, and Caterina Venturini; while mental health and society will be discussed by Eleonora Marocchini and Federico Dibennardo, with Psychology Is Politics, and Giulia Bergamaschi, with The Therapy Won’t Save Us (Edizioni Tlon), on the political effects of the psychologization of contemporary life.
Discussions on artificial intelligence and the future of work will unfold across several events: Flavia Barca, with The Biases of AI. Artificial intelligence is not neutral (Donzelli), will reflect on how these systems convey worldviews and power relations; Helen Hester and Will Stronge, among the most authoritative voices in the international debate, will launch with The Post-Work Society (DeriveApprodi) the challenge of a post-work society today; Filippo Lubrano, with Work Without Us (Edizioni Tlon), will recount the history of universal basic income and question what will remain of us when we no longer need to produce to exist.
Public civic engagement is celebrated in Guido Caserza’s Il canto dei morti sul lavoro, a political poem on workplace fatalities and labor exploitation, which will be performed with the accompaniment of a video projection by visual artist Roberto Merani.
Italian Authors of Yesterday and Today
On the centenary of Grazia Deledda’s Nobel Prize, the event dedicated to her will reinterpret the modernity of the Nuoro-born writer in dialogue with Agenda 2030 themes: participants will include Maria Pina Usai, curator of the Giudicesse 2030 project, journalist Laura Pezzino (curator of the Book Pride Milan edition), and Alessandro Ferraro, associate professor of Contemporary Italian Literature at the University of Genoa.
The writer and journalist Lavinia Mannelli will reflect on the myth of the perfect woman in male imagination, between science fiction and literary criticism, with TecnoEva. The Myth of the Perfect Woman (effequ). Claudia Durastanti, with Falsi amici, and Francesco Pacifico, with the Post podcast Maschi, will give life to conversations that interrogate the present, society, and gender relations; Violetta Bellocchio will return to the memoir form with the new edition, for 66thand2nd, of the powerful and controversial Il corpo non dimentica; for the same publisher, sports journalist Giuseppe Pastore, with La migliore delle ipotesi, will recount ten Olympic athletes on their greatest day.
Around the Calvino Prize, now in its eighth edition for short fiction in 2026, the prize president Mario Marchetti will discuss with Giulia Bocchio, curator of the summer season of the magazine L’Indiscreto, and writer Monica Acito, winner and later judge of the prize. Finalist for the Calvino Prize 2025 is journalist and writer Raffaela Ulgheri, who will present with the crime writers Ronco & Paolacci her novel Minerva. Il giudizio dei viventi (effequ), a Sardinian investigation between realism and popular beliefs.
Space will also be given to contemporary poetry with the collective poet. who will dialogue with Marilena Renda, winner of the Strega Poesia Giovani 2025.
Giallo novelist Maurizio Torchio will present La peggior specie (Sellerio), a thriller set among intensive farms, violence, and animal activism; literary critic Valentino Baldi will explore the relationship between literature, madness, and the supernatural in Fantasmi (Quodlibet); Strega finalist Elena Rui will recount the Veiled Wives of Camus (L’orma editore), the four women who loved Albert Camus; writer Giulia Baldelli will recount thirty years of female friendships in Un mondo soltanto (NN editore); Fernando Rennis, writer and music journalist, will recount through Disorder (nottetempo) the Joy Division and post-punk Manchester history.
Fernanda Rossini, teacher, essayist and translator, will present Flannery O’Connor’s Diaries (Ares), balancing faith and artistic vocation; Marthe, the Story of a Prostitute by Joris-Karl Huysmans (Prehistorica), will be told by critic Filippo D’Angelo, translator of the novel, and by publisher Gianmaria Finardi; and still, Mauro Colarieti, with Crunco (Fazi editore) signs a narrative debut about Italian provinces; teacher and pedagogue Angelo Calvisi will present The Natural Book of Gordianus Lardovellus (Exòrma), a blend of bestiary, philosophy and linguistic invention.
Furthermore, Dino Baldi, classical philologist and writer, will present Il brutto eloquente (Quodlibet), a work devoted to plebeian rhetoric in ancient Greece; writer Luca Ricci will return to storytelling with Foglie d’acero (Racconti edizioni), a tale of love, finitude, and life passages; writer Rosa Matteucci will take us into the Lotteria delle anime (Adelphi), a mix of grotesque, sacred and metaphysical; Emma Cortesi will guide us through the mysteries of Parisian noir with La portinaia del 17 (Fazi editore); Massimo Acanfora, journalist and editor, will offer L’Italia del silenzio (Altreconomia), a guide to places and experiences of quiet and disconnection; Deborah Lucchetti, national coordinator of the Clean Clothes Campaign, will present La moda è potere (Altreconomia), an investigation into the fashion industry.
Acrobate: a space for writers who have turned their pen into a gesture that is both aesthetic and political
The standout novelty for 2026, after a first event in Milan last March, is Acrobate: a space that the festival dedicates entirely to women writers who have transformed their pen into a gesture that is both aesthetic and political. In Genoa, this is how Mary Shelley is presented, in a portrait by director Ivonne Capece, artistic director of the Teatro Fontana in Milan, and journalists Silvia Neonato and Laura Guglielmi, author of Mary Shelley – The Wonderful Creature (Morellini); and the prophetic voice of Ingeborg Bachmann, presented in Una storia di formazione incompiuta by philosopher and author Ilaria Gaspari.
For the first time in Genoa arrives La cassetta degli attrezzi femminista, the itinerant project combining exhibition and reading that tells the history and evolution of feminist movements through about thirty symbolic objects, curated by essayist Chiara Alessi and journalist Giulia Siviero.
Space for Poetry
Among the tributes, a homage to Giorgio Caproni on the ninety-year anniversary of his debut collection Come un’allegoria, with Alessandro Ferraro and Mattia Bettoni.
A tour through Genoa as seen by Eugenio Montale, authored by Alessandro Ferraro for Palindromo, accompanies the audience to discover the places and verses that made the poet’s city immortal, between Ossi di seppia and Occasioni.
A 25 Years Since the G8
On the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Genoa G8, journalist Annalisa Camilli will present Limoni live, a reading drawn from the podcast Limoni (Internazionale), which revisits the days of July 2001 and their consequences for Italian civil memory; the same anniversary centers on a session about how the language of comics has told, almost in real time, those days, conveying their complexity and impact: G8. Drawing Memory, a gathering with comic artists Claudio Calia and Francesco Cascione who will explain how images, panels, and stories can become tools to reconstruct memory, observe reality, and question one of the most important and controversial events in recent Italian history.
Also devoted to memory of the 2001 events will be Zena e il campione (Monterosa Edizioni) by Nico Priano, a novel that intertwines partisan resistance on the hills of Ovada and a Genoa where those who fought continue to resist; and the session on the book Genova 2001. Perché c’eravamo, perché ci siamo ancora (Red Star Press), recounting these twenty-five years of history and political practice with former MEP Vittorio Agnoletto, resistance activists Norma Bertullacelli and Giuseppe Coscione, and Elena Giuliani, Carlo’s sister.
Between city politics and international politics, another session curated by Red Star Press, entitled Due città, due porti, un’unica lotta contro il traffico di armi e il genocidio in Palestina: a balance of 2025 demonstrations in support of Palestine ahead of the general strike of port workers, with the unionist Giovanni Ceraolo, the representation of the Port Workers Autonomous Committee of Genoa, and Cristiano Armati, editorial director and activist.
The relationship between the city and its urban history will be at the center of the presentation of the volume L’evoluzione urbanistica di Genova. Dall’apporto di Roma allo sviluppo medioevale (Edizioni Pantarei), which reconstructs the traces and transformations of Genoese living over the centuries, up to the contemporary city. Palazzo Ducale will also bring to Book Pride the fourth edition of its own literary series Zhemao through the books Roma mia, non morirò più by Aurelio Picca (La nave di Teseo), a high-wire love letter to the capital, and Sadhguru. Il piccolo libro, curated by Federico Traversa (Crêuza de mä Edizioni), a collection of thoughts, reflections, and teachings of the Indian spiritual master Jagadish Vasudev, known as Sadhguru.
Programs for Young People and Families
“The event, in collaboration with local organizations that operate across the city, places great attention on families, students, and the younger generations.” The Book Young section is dedicated to them, curated by Valentina De Poli, with a program for classes of every grade and meetings structured also thanks to renewed collaboration with Andersen – the Italian magazine for children’s books – and with Filippo Repetto, founder of L’Econegozio La Formica, who will oversee the Book Young bookstore in coordination with the Kids in the City space.
Among the guests will be Bruno Zocca, SuperPremio Andersen “Gualtiero Schiaffino” 2026, who on the day dedicated to schools will present to children his new illustrated album La nottataccia (LupoGuido), handing it to the “X-ray” session in the masterclass for illustration and storytelling for children.
Also coming are Ligurian authors Sergio Olivotti with his new work Troppi Roberti! (Terre di Mezzo) and Carte Creastorie (Sabir Editore), and Dario Pomodoro with his picture books for Terre di Mezzo and Franco Cosimo Panini. Young readers will also take part in workshops by illustrator Giovanni Colaneri with his award-winning Blob (Hopi Edizioni) and by authors Isabella Labate and Cinzia Ghigliano for Orecchio Acerbo and Selina Mako and Sarah Zambello for Aboca.
Yoga teacher Lorenza Novelli and artist Jacopo Olivieri will offer a breakfast and a snack session engaging families in Uno spazio morbido (Quinto Quarto), while primary school students will honor Genoa’s special places with the workshop Città. Una guida illustrata per farci caso (Quinto Quarto) with illustrator Andrea Q and cultural journalist Marcella Nicodemo.
Colibrì ODV will present the workshop Everything begins with a drop, led by environmental researcher Marco Fossati, to sensitize young people to environmental sustainability; and environmental awareness will also appear through the short film EIKŌN, selected by Sea Film Festival and Pianeta Mare Film Festival – dedicated to protecting the monk seal and its artistic reproduction, followed by a discussion led by marine biologist Maurizio Wurtz, in collaboration with Artescienza.
The Bicentennial of Carlo Collodi
Genoa will celebrate the bicentennial of Carlo Collodi with a series of meetings, including readings and tributes, at the Casa Luzzati cultural production center. Locomoctavia, a company of audiobooks for the young, will participate with Le avventure di Pinocchio – a work that won the Best Editorial Project Award at the Andersen Prize – which includes a reading-show and a fold-out insert (leporello) signed by illustrator Manuele Fior, whose original works will also be on display during the event. The events will also feature the extraordinary presence of Andersen Prize winner Gek Tessaro, who will discuss Collodi and Pinocchio’s imagery with critic Walter Fochesato at Casa Luzzati, in a collaboration with Andersen.
Also in collaboration with the children’s magazine Anna Vivarelli, with her novel Adele (Sinnos) winner of numerous awards, will participate in two sessions, one with schools and one with teachers. A tribute to Rosellina Archinto, who passed away last August, a fundamental figure in the cultural history of Italy and of children’s publishing, will be included. Participants will include Francesca Archinto, daughter and editor of Babalibri; Pino Boero, historian of children’s literature and former professor at the University of Genoa; Barbara Schiaffino, journalist and editorial director of Andersen; and Antonio Crugliano, Cantiere delle Arti of Casa Luzzati.
There will also be a focus on education: InfoDocenti and Talent School Edizioni will organize La didattica vista dagli alunni, a project that fosters dialogue about teaching methodologies between students and teachers, in a participatory and innovative approach to education; A workshop on the mindful use of digital resources on fake news and AI is organized by Wikimedia, one of Book Young’s cultural partners, together with Nati per Leggere Liguria and Biblioteca De Amicis, who will also present workshops on reading and writing.
Two Previews
While waiting for the fair, Book Pride offers two pre-events to warm up. On Wednesday, October 7 (6:15 p.m.), at the Society of Readings and Scientific Conversations, Valentina Mancinelli and Maurizio Romanengo retrace the figure of artist and painter Lorenzo Viani via the work of Marco Amerighi, curator of Book Pride Milan, who will be in Genoa to present his latest book, Quanto splende questo nero (Bollati Boringhieri). Then, on Thursday, October 8, the eve of the event, at Cinemino Astra (7 p.m.), the magazine R/EST will be presented, whose first issue will be released at the end of September: an evening to preview the voices and projects that will animate the coming months of independent publishing.
