Maria AttanasioBorn in Caltagirone, Italy, in 1943--where she still lives, writes her books, and teaches philosophy--Attanasio is the author of five collections of poetry and four works of historical fiction. Her latest work, Il Falsario di Caltagirone, ha been the recipient of the prestigious Premio Vittorini. An ironic, often visionary, intensely political poet, Attanasio sees her poetry as a form of vertical writing (scrittura verticale), a definition that well describes her dense, intellectually rigorous and demanding poetic style, a style influenced by the German Expressionists (Gottfried Benn, Georg Trakl), the French Surrealists (Louis Aragon, Paul Éluard), and the leftist Italian avant-gardes of the twentieth century (Giorgio Caproni, Franco Fortini. Alfonso Gatti, Giancarlo Majorino, Pier Paolo Pasolini, and Amalia Rosselli). Read More Read Less