Summer Mysteries

Marco Magnone is one of Italy's most acclaimed and sought-after children's authors by schools, festivals, and reading groups. Thanks to these engagements, he meets thousands of young readers every year. His stories, which have earned him two nominations for the Strega Ragazze e Ragazzi Prize, often blend various genres but share a common goal: to explore the profound meaning of growing up. He teaches narrative at the Holden School in Turin and at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan.

Sara De Martino (Genoa, 1989) earned a degree in Modern Literature after completing her classical studies. She concluded her academic path with a two-year Master's degree in Storytelling, Screenwriting, and Directing at the Scuola Holden in Turin. Since 2015, she has worked as an assistant director in the film and advertising industry. The book Fuga dal paradiso (Escape from Paradise) originated from Sara De Martino's participation (and victory) in the sixth edition of A Caccia di Storie (A Hunt for Stories), a national initiative conceived by Lucca Comics & Games and Book on a Tree, in collaboration with Edizioni PIEMME - Il Battello a Vapore and Amref Health Africa.

Alessandro Gatti was born in 1975. As a young man, he studied a lot of philosophy but then he thought it was best to start writing novels for children. He is the author of the Klincus Corteccia books (Mondadori), which have just been adapted into a cartoon series. Along with Pierdomenico Baccalario and Lucia Vaccarino, he is also the author of the novels in the Sherlock, Lupin & Io (Sherlock, Lupin & Me) series, Piemme, translated into several languages. For a few years he has also been a comic book writer for Disney.

Loredana Lipperini is a writer and radio host. She hosted Fahrenheit on Radio3 and currently produces a cultural interview podcast, Cose (molto) preziose, co-produced with Emons Audiolibri.
She contributes to La Stampa, L’Espresso, Linus, and Lucy, focusing on culture.
She teaches speculative fiction at Scuola Holden.
Lipperini has published both essays and novels, and runs Lipperatura, a widely beloved blog that has become a key reference point for readers interested in literature—and in understanding our contemporary world.

An author whose books have been translated into 25 languages, in Italy Davide Morosinotto won the Super Andersen Prize in 2017 with Il Rinomato Catalogo Walker&Dawn (The Pocket Watch Gang), Mondadori, and the Strega Children’s Prize 2021 with La Più Grande (The Greatest), Rizzoli, with which he also entered the IBBY Honour List 2021. A finalist at the prestigious Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis and winner of the Penzberger Urmel in Germany, he has also won the Prix des Bouquineurs en Seine and the Grand Prix des Lecteurs du Journal de Mickey in France, the Vlag en Wimpel and the Zilveren Griffel in Holland, the KJV in Flanders, the Protagonista Jove prize in Catalonia and he was nominated for the Carnegie Medal 2022 in the United Kingdom.

Lucia Perrucci grew up in Puglia, on an isolated country road, surrounded by olive trees, cats, and film rolls. She was convinced she owned a velociraptor, so much so that her father gave her her first camera to prove it. Always in love with stories, she studied Literature in Bologna and Cinema at the Giffoni Film Festival. She's a creative writing instructor and contributes to magazines and anthologies. Today, she writes and teaches at a middle school, where she absolutely adores her students and always dedicates her stories to them. In 2022, she debuted with Mondadori with "La prodigiosa macchina cattura anime di Cassandra Apollinaire," which will also be published soon in France. "Nelle case dei morti non ci sono scale" (2024) is her second novel for young adults. This autumn, the fourth novel in "The Hidden Society" series, co-written with the Archer sisters for Castoro Off, will be released.