Luigi Fontanella is a poet, critic, translator, playwright, and novelist.

Life

He graduated from the Sapienza University of Rome (Laurea in Lettere), and Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

 (Ph.D.) He has taught at Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

, Princeton University

Princeton University

Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....

, and Wellesley College. He is Professor at Stony Brook University.

He is founder of IPA (Italian Poetry in America), and the editor of Gradiva and Gradiva Publications.

Awards

• Fulbright Fellow at Princeton University, 1976-1978.
• Prize for Translation by the “Ministero dei Beni Culturali”, Gradiva Publications
• 1998 Orazio Caputo Prize
• 1993 Ragusa Prize
• 2000 Bordighera Poetry Prize
• Circe Sabaudia Prize, Minturnae Prize, S.Andrea Prize
• 2008 Città di Marineo
• 2008 Laurentum Prize

Literary Criticism

• I campi magnetici di A.-Breton-P. Soupault (traduzione, introduzione e note) Roma: Newton Compton, 1979
• Il Surrealismo Italiano. Roma: Bulzoni, 1983, American edition Harvard University, 1981
• La Parola Aleatoria. Firenze: Ed. Le Lettere, 1992 ISBN 9788871660790
• Il filo verde di Ugo Betti. Camerino: Ed. Mierma, 1993
• Storia di Bontempelli. Ravenna: Longo Editore, 1997
• La Parola Transfuga: Scrittori Italiani Espatriati in America. Firenze: Cadmo, 2003 ISBN 9788879232821
• Pasolini rilegge Pasolini (Milano: Archinto, 2005)
• Giuseppe Berto: Thirty Years Later (Venezia: Marsilio) 2009 ISBN 978883179903

Poetry

• Simulazione di reato. Manduria: Lacaita, 1979
• Stella Saturnina. Roma: Ed. Il Ventaglio, 1989
• Round Trip. Udine: Campanotto, 1991
• Ceres. Formia: Caramanica Editore, 1996 ISBN 9788886261364
• Terra del Tempo. Bologna: Book Editore, 2000 ISBN 9788872323571
• Angels of Youth
  Angels of Youth
  Angels of Youth, by Luigi Fontanella, is a book of poems written originally in Italian.- Synopsis :A cycle of poems reaching for the ineffable wisps of thoughts, memories and impressions that make up one's private world...
  
  . Riverside, Calif.: Xenos Books
  Xenos Books
  Xenos Books is a publishing company in Riverside, California that was founded in 1985 by Karl Kvitko and Verona Weiss. The company is known for publishing bilingual books, and modern American and foreign writers in translation.- Poetry :...
  
  , 2001 (Translators C. Lettieri and I. Marchegiani Jones)
• Azul. Milano: Archinto Ed., 2001. ISBN 9788877683885
• L'azzurra memora. Poesie 1970-2005 (Bergamo-Milano: Moretti & Vitali, 2007)
• Oblivion (Milano: Archinto, 2008, Note by Giovanni Raboni)

Fiction

• Milestone e altre storie (Siena-Roma: Il Messapo, 1983 English edition Soleil, 1998
• Controfigura (Venezia: Marsilio, 2009)

Reviews

...his most recent poetry is like a rare hothouse flower blooming in Fontanella's garden, laid out like a golf course, with surprising bridges between pleasure and reflection which, in the end, enliven both author and readers. Fontanella is essentially the transcriber of unique lyric moments in a poetic corpus that is neither too fertile (abundant) nor too facile (redundant), yet shines with a contemporary relevance that carries it well beyond its cycles of conception and completion.