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Centre for the Study of Contemporary Women's Writing (CCWW)

Simona Vinci

Simona Vinci was born on 6 March 1970 in Milan, and now lives in Budrio in the province of Bologna. She studied Contemporary Italian Literature at the University of Bologna. Early in her career she was part of a group of young writers who published the online magazine, Incubatoio 16, and is one of the authors commonly associated with the giovani cannibali movement.

Simona Vinci, 2008 (Utente Dread83 WIkiCommons CC BY-SA 3.0)_0.jpg
​ Simona Vinci at the Biblioteca Poletti, Modena in 2008 (Photo: Utente: Dread83 via Wikimedia Commons CC BY -SA 3.0) ​

Vinci made her literary debut in 1997 with Dei bambini non si sa niente. The novel was widely praised by both the public and the critics, winning the Elsa Morante award in 2000 for best debut work, and being published in translation in twelve countries. With its graphic depictions of child sexuality, pornography, and violence, it also provoked a great deal of controversy. Centring on intergenerational conflict and providing a bleak dystopia of family life, it was to prefigure some of the themes that she would return to in later works.   

In 1999, Vinci published a collection of short stories, In tutti i sensi come l'amore, which was also widely translated. The thirteen stories deal with obsession, questioning the definition of love at the end of the 20th century. Written in a dark, detached style, Vinci’s stories observe rather than judge. Her next major work, Come prima delle madri (2003) – its title cites Morante – is set during fascism and offers a child’s perspective on violence committed by adults.

She later moved ever further from her ‘pulp’ roots, with works of investigative fiction that explore the degradation of the environment and the damaging consequences of progress.

Vinci’s most recent production explores several genres. Her 2016 novel La prima verità, which won the Premio Campiello, mixes fiction with historical fact. Through the characters, the reader discovers the history of one of the largest psychiatric hospitals in Europe, an institution on the island of Leros (Greece) that was at the centre of an international scandal at the end of the 1980s for the inhuman conditions in which its patients were kept. Psychiatry remains the focus of Vinci’s next work Parla, mia paura (2017), a memoir that combines a personal account of her own experience of depression with a generational portrait.

In her latest work, Vinci has continued her investigation of the memoir and gothic traditions. In Mai più sola nel bosco. Dentro le fiabe dei Fratelli Grimm, published in 2019 and winner of the Premio Rapallo in 2021, Vinci recounts childhood memories triggered by her rereading, as an adult, of the fairy tales she used to love as a little girl. Lastly, L’altra casa (2021) is a gothic story built around a mysterious old mansion which used to belong to a famous opera singer, Giuseppina Pasqua.

Simona Vinci has also written books for children, including Corri Matilda (1998), Matildacity (1998), and Scheletrina Cicciabomba (2012).
 

Compiled by Alex Standen. Updated by Francesca Pierini (Chittagong)