Sixth meeting of the seventh edition of the Reading Group "The Garden"
"The Bookstore on the Hill" by Alba Donati
Reading and commentary by Annalisa Macchia
The work:
It is never too late to realize a dream. In December 2019, Alba Donati decided to change her life and open a bookstore in Lucignana, a few houses in the Apennines of Lucca. She does this by word of mouth on social media. Immediately the bookstore, a sort of "literary cottage" surrounded by greenery, becomes a place of pilgrimage, of shared words, of special encounters. In this diary spanning six months of the bookstore's life - the fire destroying it within a month of opening, the energy of the people getting it back on its feet, the closure during the lockdown, to the organization of a literary festival - there is the tale of a passion that is leverage to lift the world.
Author:
Alba Donati, born in Lucca in 1960, has lived, studied and worked in Florence. In 2018, the poetry collection Tu, landscape of childhood was released. All Poems 1997-2018, with which she won the Gradiva International Prize awarded by the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He is president of the Gabinetto Scientifico Letterario G. P. Vieusseux. In 2019 he left Florence to open a bookstore in Lucignana, his birthplace, inhabited by 180 people. The bookstore has been listed among the 20 most charming bookstores in Europe.
Texts and event by The Garden Social Center