Demonstration

What is scrittorincittà?

A theme serves as a common thread each year. From the first edition in 1999: Literatures between North and South, The Journey and the Dream, Islands, Fears, Borders, Places of Freedom, Passions, Passages, 2007: In This Precise Moment, 200∝: At the Edge of Infinity, Lights in the Dark, Idols, Vertical Horizons, Breathless, Earth, Earth!, Colors, Odds, Recreation, Crumbs, Winds, Voices, Next, Snapshots, Air, Quicksilver, Stars.

Every year, more than one hundred authors meet with other authors and other books, presenting their latest works, fresh from the press, to an engaged audience, offering their own interpretation of this year's theme. A series of multi-voiced debates ensures that the meetings are not simply a presentation and editorial promotion, but an opportunity for discussion and growth, for both listeners and participants. A physical location for the event, the Provincial Meeting Center, is the geographic and institutional hub of the event and the city. It hosts most of the debates and is enlivened by a specially equipped bookshop and a Children's Space. For the four days of the event, this physical location becomes a crossroads, a celebration, and a preferred space for citizens and readers of all ages. A host of small and large meeting places, both public and private, actively participate in the event by offering their spaces, their audiences, and their stories: Casa Galimberti Museum, Circolo 'l Caprissi, Cinema Monviso, the Multipurpose Hall of the Territorial Documentation Center, Palazzo Comunale, Teatro Civico Toselli, Sala San Giovanni, Auditorium Varco, Rondò dei Talenti, Sala Ferrero di Confindustria, Open Baladin. And then there's the Theater, with major national premieres and shows for children and young people, and music, with musicians and writers (perhaps musicians who are also writers).

the theme of 2025

circles

SEARCHES is the verb to seek, meaning to let ourselves be inspired by an invitation and a desire. What are you seeking? It's perhaps the most common question today, even when it's not asked explicitly. What are you seeking? Happiness, work, health, free time, world peace? What are you seeking deep down? What are you seeking on the surface? What moves you toward different goals, what makes you get out of bed in the morning? Are you seeking that "original pact of the spirit with the universe," as Simone Weil said?

Among children, teenagers, and adults, we haven't stopped searching, especially if we frequent books and their authors. Are you looking for something? It's the recurring question in contemporary communication. The Internet itself was born that way, because people are looking for something and so they can find it. Even the latest generation of technologies seem to answer the same question: are you looking? Who knows if we've found what we're looking for, if we've looked in the right places, and if searching doesn't already give meaning to existence, well before we find anything. Searching is an action in itself, and ultimately an achievement. "It makes you feel young," said Konrad Lorenz. Even when the journey is long, even when you find something else, perhaps something better. If you stop searching, you live less. We know this well at all ages. What do we look for in books? Perhaps to see "if you yourself aren't hidden somewhere outside your own circle," as Franz Kafka wrote? Is there something that books search for in us readers, or in us authors? Do we feel sought after? Wanted?

Perhaps we are seeking… the squaring of the circle. Because CERCHI is not just a verb but also a plural noun. They are the circles that tell us about the perfection of things, or those of bicycles or those in the crop, traced by who knows who, and the Olympic rings, so important because they represent the closeness between continents, and the circles at the head of those who ask so many questions. But circles are also the planets, when we draw them on a map: our Earth is a circle in a child's drawing. At scrittorincittà, circles will form above all of people, because as human beings we need to be in circles, to find ourselves, we desire small, intimate and familiar circles, and larger circles, which allow us to feel part of a civilization, each with their own place, without exclusions.

Standing in a circle is a way of experiencing community. If today's society sometimes seems like a long selfie, the shape of the circle goes against convention, against self-sufficiency. The circle is altruism. At scrittorincittà, books and beautiful people are beautiful, and in a circle we return to look each other in the face, to talk. Together. If you search for scrittorincittà this year, you'll find a circle. We were born for that.