THURSDAY, 6 JUNE
CIRCOLO DEI LETTORI
6.00 PM
What do plants sense? How do they survive in a wounded world filled with non-human creativity? What must we know about waste and aliens that inhabit the seas along with fish, cephalopods, and whales? It is questions like these that Alessandra Viola seeks to answer. Winner of this year’s Le Ghiande literary award for science popularization, her numerous books, animated cartoons, and works for the theater have blurred the distinction between fiction and non-fiction, while engaging the imagination and scientific research to state clearly how the Earth works. The Le Ghiande award is presented in recognition of her extraordinary ability to explain nature in ways that everyone can understand.
Alessandra Viola is a journalist and science popularizer with a keen interest in plants. She is author and conductor of RAI Tv programs Clorofilla (Rai Gulp) for children and Racconti verdi (Rai3). She has authored award-winning science books, including Verde brillante. Sensibilità e intelligenza del mondo vegetale (with Stefano Mancuso, Giunti 2013), Flower Power. Per i diritti delle piante (Einaudi 2020), Andare per… orti botanici (with Manlio Speciale, Il Mulino, 2022). Two-time winner of the National Award for Science Popularization, two-time winner of the Gambrinus award and the Armenise-Harvard Foundation award for best science journalist of the year, she was nominated Nature Ambassador of the International Park Center in 2019 and in 2020 she received for “her science reporting on plants” the Luisa Minazzi Environmentalist of the Year award. Since 2022 she teaches environmental communication at the Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele, Milan.
The Le Ghiande literary award was founded in 2015 in recognition of an author’s work of prose or poetry in which ecological awareness is central to the work.
The award committee is composed of Serenella Iovino, ecology writer and researcher, Mattero Righetto, writer, and Marco Fratoddi, director of Sapereambiente.
A meet-the-author event will be held on Thursday, 6 June, at 18.00 at the Circolo dei lettori. Alessandra Viola will talk with Serenella Iovino and Marco Fratoddi.
