Summer, as we know, is stingy with books, at least in August, but on the other hand it seems to be the ideal season for editorial migrations. This year then the phenomenon is accentuated in a particular way, with shifts in some sensational ways. Literary agents and writers update agendas and perhaps strategies, while publishers, with new faces in the newsroom, do the same for programmes. It will be an interesting autumn. The merry-go-round began with the resignation of Giuseppe Russo from Neri Pozza (historical acronym born in the immediate post-war period, bears the name of its founder, the multifaceted writer from Vicenza), which after a certain tarnishing had been brought back by him starting from 2000 to a leading role among independent publishers.
A pupil of the great Mario Spagnol, he had arrived when the Longanesi group had acquired the publishing house, and had remained as director when ownership passed to a group of Venetian industrialists. He has known how to characterize it for quality and market books, from Romain Gary to Eshkol Nievo, also managing, with Emanuele Trevi, to win a Strega that is not at all obvious. He was followed by the editor for Italian fiction Roberto Cotroneo and the head of the press office Daniela Pagani: all in the Feltrinelli group, where they will give life to the Gramma brand (30 titles a year) dedicated to high-level fiction and non-fiction; not too far, he would say, from previous experience.
Neri Pozza did not stand by and reacted to the acquisition campaign with a surprise blow: in mid-September, in fact, it will have Giovanni Francesio as its new editorial director, responsible for Mondadori’s Italian fiction since 2018, when he took over from Carlo Carabba ( now at Harper Collins). He will be joined by a historical name of the publishing house such as Sabine Schultz, in the meantime responsible ad interim. But it goes without saying that the merry-go-round doesn’t end there: Segrate has in fact announced that the role of narrative director passes to Marilena Rossi, another point of reference for the company, where she has been working in various positions for about fifteen years and above all he knows every corner of the giant well, having followed authors such as Daria Bignardi, Teresa Ciabatti, Mauro Corona, Alessandro D’Avenia, Fabio Genovesi, Daniele Mencarelli, Alessandro Piperno over time.
She too has the keys to the chest. He also holds courses at the Belleville writing school, which suggests that physiologically there will be a marked attention to newcomers, as well as going without saying to what Mondadori has always defined as a “plural” proposal (i.e. narrative of different levels, from genre to literature ). Could all this change the balance in the world of Italian books? It is difficult to make predictions, even if the most evident aspect is for now the dynamism of the Feltrinelli group, which months ago had already acquired another independent publishing house such as SEM, founded in 2016 by a former Mondadori director, Ricky Cavallero, with the poet Antonio Riccardi. The appointment in September, in this editorial risk, could recall the much more popular glories of the transfer market: which is often a zero-sum game, but who knows. Maybe someone has found their Lukaku.