All-female cultural festival starts in Biella, featuring only female guests

An all-female cultural festival: this is ContemporaneA. Words and Stories of Women, scheduled for Saturday, October 10 and Sunday, October 11 in Biella, at Palazzo Gromo Losa. The peculiarity lies in the fact that this festival has only female guests: more than twenty, including writers, translators, journalists, economists, musicians, historians, sociolinguists and nurserywomen. The project, curated by Irene Finiguerra and Barbara Masoni, born online within the Biella association BI-BOx in collaboration with the Giovannacci bookstore and now arrived at the first live edition, is to be a space for all women (and not only) where to confront, dream and plan, where to listen to the interventions of women writers, artists, entrepreneurs. On the online space there was no shortage of male voices, who talked about their favorite female authors with videos: the same format will be replicated in the “physical” festival as well.

Over the course of the two days, the audience will be able to catch up with the formats and some of the guests they have come to love and know in the online rendezvous on ContemporaneA’s social channels. Each morning the day opens with the press review Newspapers at Breakfast. On Saturday 10 Roberta Scorranese, journalist for Corriere della Sera, talks about how the profession is evolving along with Simona Romagnoli, La Stampa journalist for the Biella newsroom, in the culture and entertainment section. Commenting on the day’s news on Sunday 11 are Francesca Angeleri (Corriere della Sera, Donna Moderna, Alias) and Roberto Azzoni, editor of the Eco di Biella for more than a decade.

Four appointments with Coffee with the Girls. On Saturday morning, journalist Simonetta Fiori, who has been covering cultural issues for La Repubblica for thirty years, presents La testa e il cuore. Love in Thirty Stories (Guanda, 2020), while in the afternoon coffee is in the company of Florencia Di Stefano-Abichain, translator of the book The Atlas of Women by Joni Seager (ADD Editore, 2020) and known on Instagram as Florenciafacose. Argentine by origin, she has lived in Milan for years and works as a radio speaker. On Sunday, editor and translator Alice Basso talks about her latest novel The Viper’s Bite (Garzanti, 2020), while the afternoon meeting is with Anna Peyron, founder of a nursery specializing in the cultivation of antique and botanical roses, hydrangeas, clematis, plants and bulbs for amateurs and author of The Romance of the Rose (ADD Editore, 2020).

On Saturday 10 at the Ristorante Antico Comune in Biella a special lunch with journalist Barbara Frandino for Vi racconto Edna O’Brien, writer, feminist, rebel, while on Sunday, also for lunch, the meeting will be with poet and writer Elena Varvello, with Tu chi sei? The Lives of Others. The Writing of Elizabeth Strout (€15, reservation only at segreteria.contemporanea@gmail.com). But there is not only literature: other topics will be addressed with sociolinguist Vera Gheno, who specializes in digital communication and is the author of esteemed books on the use of the Italian language (the latest, published by Longanesi in 2020 is Parole contro la paura), with journalist Ritanna Armeni for the presentation of Mara. Una donna del Novecento (Ponte alle Grazie, 2020), with Mariangela Pira, voice of economics on Sky Tg24 to understand how the pandemic has infected the global economy. Other encounters are those with Silvia Zanella, who takes her cue from her latest book Il futuro del lavoro è femmina (Bompiani, 2020), with Rossana De Michele, among the creators of Storielibere.Fm, and with Alice Cappagli, cellist in the orchestra of Teatro alla Scala for nearly 40 years.

Also coming off the screens is the format Writers for Women Writers, dedicated to authors telling about their favorite female author. Others include Andrea Pomella, whose Anni luce in 2018 was a finalist in the Strega Prize Dozen; Simone Tempia, creator of the character of the imaginary butler Lloyd, who is able to find an answer to his sir’s daily dilemmas; Nicolò Targhetta, writer and creator of the page Non è successo niente; and Raffaele Riba, writer and teacher at the Holden School.

Thursday, Oct. 15, is scheduled for another appointment with ContemporaneA: 25 Years of Passion for Art: from the Collection to the Foundation, a meeting with Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, art collector and founder of the Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation in Turin with offices in Madrid and Guarene, a member of various international art institutions. The meeting will be at 9 p.m. at Palazzo Gromo Losa.

The project is supported by Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Biella. The illustration and graphic design is by Chiara Fucà. For all info you can connect to the ContemporaneA festival website.

All-female cultural festival starts in Biella, featuring only female guests

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