Modena, 2 May 2024 – BUK Festival once again the spring of literary events opens: with its 17th edition Saturday 4th and Sunday 5th May returns to the heart of the city that has always hosted him, Modena, for a very lively full immersion in bibliodiversity. Two days to experience in the evocative setting of the Cloister of San Paolo, with many protagonists and many new features. Promoted for artistic direction by Francesco Zarzana And co-curated by Sara Caselliorganized by ProgettArte, BUK Festival will host a wide selection of small and medium-sized national publishing houses, offering a program of meetings with authors from all over Italy, dedicated to new seasonal releases. As always, the highly anticipated event will be the one dedicated to BUK Special Prizescheduled Saturday 4 May at 9pm: «an award that identifies with the festival and which in recent editions has been awarded to contemporary narrative artists such as Donatella Di Pietrantonio and Maurizio De Giovanni» explains Zarzana. This year’s BUK spotlight is on the much-loved author Rosella Postorino, winner of the BUK 2024 Special Prize “for the ability to intertwine history and stories, building a narrative that is both epic and intimate”. The author made her debut in 2007 with her first novel ”La stanza di sopra”; in 2018 you published the international best seller ”Le Assaggiatrici”, winner of the Campiello award, translated into more than 32 languages and transposed into the film production directed by Cristina Comencini. In 2023 she published ”I just loved you” (Feltrinelli, Strega Prize finalist), the adventure of a girl and two boys inspired by a true story, winner of the BUK special prize. Postorino will present the book Saturday 4 Mayat 9pm in the Leccio Hall.
It stands out among the Festival events, Sunday 5 May at 10.30, theInternational BUK Speed Date: an opportunity in which people with different literary inspirations, tastes and readings will be able to share their favorite books, meeting readers they have never met before, sharing experiences and reading advice. Readers of various nationalities will participate in the BUK Speed Date and it will be an opportunity, in the classic ‘one to one’ rotating meetings, to also get to know authors from foreign countries who are not part of the ‘mainstream’ of international publishing. The meeting will be held in English.
Sustainability And innovation are central themes this year. Science communicators will be at the festival on Saturday 4 May Andrea Segrè and Eliana Liotta with their latest news. At 3pm, in the Sala del Leccio, ”Globesity, the hunger for power” will be presented, a food thriller by Segre on the threat of a new pandemic, the one linked to the ‘calorie bomb’: obesity. Liotta will follow at 4pm with ”Life is not a race. The four breaks that help you gain health and youth”, a valuable analysis on breaks, seen as the only key to regaining energy and hoping to live well and for a long time. The story of a ”very human” diva is instead at the center of the author and journalist’s latest book Annarita Briganti: Sunday 5 May, at 5.30 pm in the Sala del Leccio he will talk about his ”Maria Callas. The human diva” (Cairo publisher), restoring, one hundred years after the birth of the legendary soprano, the true life of Callas. Sustainability and innovation also for the books that, in the land of Enzo Ferrari, come across at BUK ”Motor Valley Fest”new this year: an area dedicated to the automotive and its future, but also to the roaring and visionary years of the great ”four wheels”.
Between the world premieres of the festival also the novels published by ProgettArte ”I want to stay in gattabuia”, by Sergio Grecodedicated to two rebellious hearts who meet in prison, and ”Catch the water when it rains” by Angela Albano, the story of 80-year-old Gemma, who has a life made up of rare memories and small reassuring rituals, until a man knocks on her door who will turn everyday life upside down in the name of the incredible power of Love. Also at the Festival will be the presentation of the crime novel ”That Dangerous Thing Called Love”, by Corrado Antani And Ettore Mascetti, in which four terrorists escape from Rovigo prison, and a dangerous investigation tries to clarify. ”A pickaxe and shovel” will also be presented Vincenzo A. Scalfari and ”Extramundi. Lambrusco, Galizia and perhaps Hitler”, by Schuler’s Daniel. There will then be paths linked to children’s fiction with the novelist Eliselleauthor of ”Matilda’s Romance”, and a rhyming story, ”Flying Children in Search of Love” by Mila Lodi, dedicated to children of all ages, ethnicities and colours. This year too, BUK Festival is created thanks to a large team of institutions, with the support of the Modena Foundation, the Municipality of Modena, the Modena Chamber of Commerce and Bper Modena, Gruppo Hera, Cna Modena, with the patronage of the Emilia Romagna Region, and Modenamoremio, under the auspices of the Center for Books and Reading of the Ministry for Cultural Heritage, the Maggio dei Libri and Alda (Association Européenne de la Democratie Local based at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg). Info and details bukfestival.it
