Melania Gaia Mazzucco (born 6 October 1966) is an Italian author. She is a recipient of the

Strega Prize The Strega Prize ( it, Premio Strega ) is the most prestigious Italian literary award. It has been awarded annually since 1947 for the best work of prose fiction written in the Italian language by an author of any nationality and first published ...

and

Bagutta Prize The Bagutta Prize is an Italian literary prize that is awarded annually to Italian writers. The prize originated among patrons of Milan's ''Bagutta Ristorante''. The writer Riccardo Bacchelli discovered the restaurant and soon he regularly gathere ...

Education and career

Mazzucco graduated from the

Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia The Centro sperimentale di cinematografia (Experimental Film Centre or Italian National film school) was established in 1935 in Italy and aims to promote the art and technique of cinematography and film. The centre is the oldest film school in ...

in 1990 and the

Sapienza University of Rome The Sapienza University of Rome ( it, Sapienza – Università di Roma), also called simply Sapienza or the University of Rome, and formally the Università degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza", is a public research university located in Rome, Ita ...

with a degree in History of Modern and Contemporary Literature in 1992. In the 1990s, she wrote several screenplays before publishing her first novel ''Il bacio della Medusa'' in 1996. Her 2003 novel ''Vita'' was awarded the

. The novel tells the story of two children from a rural Italian village, Diamante aged twelve and Vita aged nine, who emigrate to New York. It was translated into English by Virginia Jewiss. A film adaptation of Mazzucco's 2005 novel ''Un giorno perfetto'' was released in 2008. It was directed by

Ferzan Özpetek Ferzan Özpetek (born 3 February 1959) is a Turkish-Italian film director and screenwriter, residing in Italy. Biography Ferzan Özpetek was born in Istanbul in 1959. In 1976, he decided to move to Italy to study Cinema History at Sapienza Unive ...

and was entered in the 65th Venice International Film Festival. In 2008, Mazzucco published the first of two volumes on the Renaissance painter

Tintoretto Tintoretto ( , , ; born Jacopo Robusti; late September or early October 1518Bernari and de Vecchi 1970, p. 83.31 May 1594) was an Italian painter identified with the Venetian school. His contemporaries both admired and criticized the speed wit ...

called ''La lunga attesa dell’angelo'' which won a

. The second volume, ''Jacomo Tintoretto e i suoi figli: storia di una famiglia veneziana'', was published in 2009.

Bibliography

* ''Il bacio della Medusa'' (1996) * ''La camera di Baltus'' (1998) * ''Lei così amata'' (2000) * ''Vita'' (2003) * ''Un giorno perfetto'' (2005) * ''La lunga attesa dell’angelo'' (2008) * ''Jacomo Tintoretto e i suoi figli: storia di una famiglia veneziana'' (2009) * ''Limbo'' (2012) * ''Il bassotto e la Regina'' (2012) * ''Sei come sei'' (2013) * ''Io sono con te: Storia di Brigitte'' (2016)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mazzucco, Melania 1966 births Living people Italian women novelists Italian women screenwriters Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia alumni Sapienza University of Rome alumni Strega Prize winners