Elisa Donzelli

Elisa Donzelli (Turin, 1979) is Associate Professor of Contemporary Italian Literature at the Scuola Normale Superiore, where she teaches undergraduate and doctoral students. She is also a member of the faculty board of the PhD programme in Literary Studies (formerly Italianistica e Filologia moderna). In 2026, she was unanimously awarded the Italian National Scientific Qualification (Abilitazione Scientifica Nazionale) for Full Professorship in Contemporary Italian Literature (Scientific Disciplinary Sector LICO-01/A).

She studied at the former Department of Italian Studies of Sapienza University of Rome under the supervision of Giulio Ferroni, Amedeo Quondam, and Biancamaria Frabotta. She earned her PhD in Italian Studies from Sapienza in 2007 and subsequently held a postdoctoral research fellowship there from 2010 to 2012. In 2013, she completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini in Venice. She obtained the National Scientific Qualification for Associate Professorship in Contemporary Italian Literature in 2017. Between 2008 and 2010 she taught at the LUISS International High School, and from 2017 she also served as Adjunct Professor at Roma Tre University.

A specialist in twentieth-century Italian literature, her research has focused primarily on poetry and literary translation, and later expanded to twentieth- and twenty-first-century fiction, with particular attention to archival research conducted in literary collections and archives in Italy and abroad.

Her archival research resulted in her first monograph, Come lenta cometa. Traduzione e amicizia poetica nel carteggio tra Sereni e Char (Like a Slow Comet: Translation and Poetic Friendship in the Correspondence between Vittorio Sereni and René Char; Aragno, 2009); the critical edition of Vittorio Sereni's previously unpublished translations of René Char, Due rive ci vogliono (Two Riverbanks Are Needed; Donzelli, 2010), introduced by Pier Vincenzo Mengaldo; the exhibition Giorgio Caproni. Rome, the City of "Disaffection" and its accompanying catalogue (De Luca, 2012); and the monograph Giorgio Caproni e gli altri. Temi, percorsi e incontri nella poesia europea del Novecento (Giorgio Caproni and Others: Themes, Paths and Encounters in Twentieth-Century European Poetry; Marsilio, 2016), which received both the Marino Moretti Prize for Literary History and Criticism (2017) and the Renzo Sertoli Salis Prize for Literary Essays (2018).

For Einaudi's prestigious Poetry Series, she edited Poesie by René Char in Giorgio Caproni's Italian translation (2018), which received the Città di Fiumicino Prize for Poetry Translation. For Il Mulino she edited, in the "Tracce" series, Tra due città. Lettere 1951–1995 (Between Two Cities: Letters 1951–1995), the correspondence between Attilio Bertolucci and the art critic Roberto Tassi (2019), in collaboration with the Fondo Tassi in Parma directed by Mario Lavagetto. She also edited Pasolini: figure, luoghi, dialoghi (Pasolini: Figures, Places, Dialogues; Marsilio, 2024), the proceedings of the international conference held in Trieste to mark the centenary of Pier Paolo Pasolini's birth.

In 2025 she published Inventare la memoria. Giovinezza e antifascismo: Lalla Romano, Mario Soldati, Carlo Levi(Inventing Memory: Youth and Anti-Fascism in Lalla Romano, Mario Soldati and Carlo Levi; Marsilio), a monograph supported by the Department of Excellence of the Scuola Normale Superiore and the outcome of research begun in 2018. The book was shortlisted for the 2026 The Bridge Book Award. She is also a member of the Academiuta, the School of Advanced Studies of the Pier Paolo Pasolini Study Centre in Casarsa.

Her current research focuses on Italian poetry of the 1970s, twentieth-century Italian women poets, and the work of poets born in the 1970s and 1980s.

She has published numerous essays in leading peer-reviewed and Class A academic journals on authors including Diego Valeri, Giovanni Giudici, Andrea Zanzotto, Franco Fortini, Mario Luzi, Elsa Morante, Rocco Scotellaro, Fabio Pusterla, Pierre Jean Jouve, Philippe Jaccottet, Lalla Romano, Cristina Campo, and Margherita Guidacci. She is the official Italian translator of works by the French psychoanalyst and semiotician Julia Kristeva and has contributed to cultural journals and newspapers including Alias (Il Manifesto) and Il Venerdì di Repubblica. She serves on the editorial boards of the Class A journals Ticontre. Teoria Testo Traduzione and Italian Poetry Review.

She has for many years directed the Contemporary Poetry Series of Donzelli Editore.

Alongside her scholarly activity, she is also an acclaimed poet. Her first poetry collection, album (nottetempo, 2021), won the Giuseppe Tirinnanzi Poetry Prize (Città di Legnano), the "Opera Prima Alma Mater Elena Violani Landi" Prize awarded by the University of Bologna, and the Metauro Prize (all in 2021), and received a Special Mention at the Camaiore Literary Prize (2022). She also published the poetry chapbook uomini blu (Blue Men), first issued in 2009 and republished in 2023 with notes by Maurizio Cucchi and Ana Blandiana and artwork by Giulia Napoleone. In 2026, the prestigious fine-art publisher Il Bulino (Rome) released Archeologie del desiderio (Archaeologies of Desire), an artists' book created in collaboration with the poet Christian Sinicco and featuring mixed-media works by Pierluigi Isola.

Her poetry has been translated into Greek, Romanian, Russian, Polish, French, English, Spanish, and Portuguese, appearing in international anthologies and literary journals. album was also translated into Portuguese for publication in Brazil by the poet and translator Prisca Agustoni.

She has participated in numerous national and international poetry festivals, including the Poesia Festival (Modena), Pordenonelegge, Cabudanne de sos Poetas (Sardinia), and Parole Spalancate (Genoa). In 2025 she represented Italy as a leading voice of contemporary women's poetry at the International Poetry Festival of Bucharest (Romania), and in 2026 she was invited to the International Poetry Festival of Thessaly (Greece).

For four years she served on the Scientific Committee of the Strega Poetry Prize established by the Bellonci Foundation. She is currently President and founder of the Premio Nazionale Poesia del Mezzogiorno, and serves as a juror for both the Rainer Maria Rilke International Poetry Prize (Duino Aurisina) and the Ludovico Corrao Prize for young poets, promoted by the Orestiadi Foundation in Gibellina.