“One of the best editions ever.” This is how Maria Luisa Pieri describes Friday evening at the Chiostro San Francesco with the finalists of the Bancarella Prize. The event with the finalists of the Pontremoli literary prize is now a regular summer event in Cesena. It was created 22 years ago by Pieri, who most people in the city simply know as “la Gigia,” and who continues to organize on behalf of Confesercenti, even though she is now retired. “I put together a team of volunteers of former Confesercenti employees,” she says.
Last year the meeting with the authors came at the end of the Stalls in Schools award, this was not the case this year but the affection of the people of Cesena for this event has not waned and on Friday evening there were almost 300 people at the Cloister.
This year, in fact, the sixth finalist arrived on May 9th, too late for the schools that were usually involved in a literary competition aimed at students that rewards their best reviews of the finalist books. It is a competition in which many classes and hundreds of students participated every year and which the moving of the presentation of the sextuplet further and further forward in the calendar had already caused great difficulty for a few years, until this year’s edition when it was necessary to give up . Mayor Enzo Lattuca addressed the representative of the Bancarella foundation on Friday evening, underlining the importance of the competition and the work that is done through that event to train new readers.
“It was a very feminine edition – Pieri says – not only because there were more female authors than writers, but also because this year’s sextet is full of female protagonists, in several novels women are spoken of with great truth, recounting what they had to suffer and the abuses of the patriarchy”.
On stage were Aurora Tamigio, author of “Il cognome delle donne”, Diana and Diego Lama who with the pseudonym Valeria Galante sign “La casa delle Sirene”, Marilù Oliva with her “L’iliade cantata dalle Dee”, Franco Faggiani, author of the book “L’organizzato delle nuvole”, Daniele Pasquini, author of “Selvaggio ovest” and Emanuela Anechoum with her “Tangerin”. Pieri had the task of introducing the finalist works from time to time, Elide Giordani had the task of interviewing the authors. «The authors were all very good: self-confident, capable of capturing the attention of the public», Pieri reports.
During the evening, a very excited Claudio Cavalli was also awarded the “Cesena e le sue pagine” prize for his book “Ragnatele”, a prize promoted by Credito Cooperativo Romagnolo, which is also a sponsor of the initiative with Formula Servizi.
