About

I was born in Genzano, near Rome, and graduated from the Università La Sapienza before moving to London in 1997. I am the founder of Hesperus Press, Alma Books and Alma Classics, and the successor of John Calder at the helm of Calder Publications. As well as being a literary publisher with over twenty years of experience, I am a prize-winning translator, a poet, a playwright and a novelist.

My collection of poetry, Modern Bestiary – Ars Poetastrica, was published in 2005 to critical acclaim. My satirical literary novel, Bestseller, was published in 2010, followed by InterRail in 2012 and The Tower in 2014. My retelling of Collodi’s children’s book The Adventures of Pipì the Pink Monkey (illustrated by Axel Scheffler) has been translated into many languages. My verse translation of Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock won the Premio Biblioteca di Monselice special award in 2010. My articles have appeared in many papers and journals, including The Times, The Scotsman and The London Magazine.

My first novel written in Italian, Il figlio perduto, a story set in a lunatic asylum in Northern Italy in the 1930s, was published by Rizzoli in April 2018. My most recent published books are a translation of John Keats’s Letters (December 2021) and a biography focusing on the poet’s last months, Written in Water: Keats’s Final Journey (September 2022).