Francesca Giannone
ItalyAbout
Francesca Giannone is an Italian novelist born in 1982 in Lecce, in the southern Italian region of Apulia. She graduated in communication science and studied filmmaking at Rome’s Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, one of Europe’s oldest film schools. Before becoming widely known as a novelist, she published short stories in literary magazines and developed an interest in painting and storytelling. Her debut novel, The Letter Carrier (La portalettere), was published in Italy in 2023. Inspired in part by the story of her great-grandmother, the book became a major bestseller and won the prestigious Premio Bancarella in 2023. Giannone’s fiction often explores family relationships, women’s lives, and the tensions between individual desires and social expectations. She currently lives in Milan, although she remains deeply connected to her hometown of Lizzanello in Salento, where The Letter Carrier is set.
