The first edition of the Contemporary Festival goes to New York, which took place from 15 to 17 October 2026 thanks to the patronage and contribution of the Institute of Culture and the General Consulate of Italy in New York.
This US debut was marked by the start of a journey full of new relationships and collaborations. The event opened at the Italian Institute of Culture, an indispensable landing point for the presence of our country abroad. In the meeting of Olga Campofreda dedicated to Alba de Céspedes, the transnational gaze of the writer, who lived his life through borders, was highlighted. The dialogue with Isabella Livorni, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Italian Studies of NYU – New York University, has developed from his research into the archive of the Mondadori Foundation. The next day, Campofreda was a guest at Columbia University for a lecture organized in collaboration with Contemporanea on the rediscovery of de Céspedes in the 21st century, with Elizabeth Leake and Anna Borgarello, respectively professor and director of Undergraduate Studies in the Italian Department at Columbia and Core Lecturer in Literature Humanities.
During their stay in the city, the two curators of Contemporanea goes to New York, Irene Finiguerra and Annalisa Menin, through Livorni’s involvement, held a meeting at NYU – New York University to talk about writing and cultural events, in an exchange with Creative Italian students.
The Contemporary team was received at the Permanent Representation of Italy to the United Nations to present its project also in view of future collaborations, illustrating how this is recognized in some fundamental principles of the UN Agenda 2030, in particular in Objective 4, dedicated to quality education, and in Objective 5, which promotes gender equality. “We started from a small Italian city, working with our territory, with schools, associations and people who over the years chose to participate in our meetings. We have always believed that culture should not be a privilege reserved to a few, but an accessible opportunity, an instrument of participation and collective growth”, said Irene Finiguerra, artistic director of Contemporary. “And we have learned that even a small reality can contribute to a greater reflection, if it manages to build alliances and keep alive the ability to question the present. Today, in an international context like this, we would like to reiterate above all a principle: there can be no full gender equality without a real possibility for women to contribute to the construction of the collective narrative”.
Alessandra Oliva, Consul Aggiunta at the Consul General of Italy in New York, an institution that has been among the main supporters of the event, wanted to deepen the themes brought by Contemporary, with particular attention to issues related to equal opportunities, confirming its interest in the project.
Contemporary goes to New York is also in the schools of the city. At the School of Italy New York Guglielmo Marconi, the only Italian school in North America that covers all grades from childhood school to high school, Finiguerra opened the meeting talking to children of Contemporary, telling them about the characteristics of the territory in which the festival was born and then establishing a dialogue with students on their relationship with reading. In the same morning, the team also met some middle and upper classes. Subsequently, Contemporary was the guest of the United Nations International School (UNIS), the official United Nations school, which welcomes students from kindergarten to high school, for a total of more than ninety languages spoken and nine learned during the school journey. In this context, writer Stefania Auci held a workshop on how to build a historical novel.
Auci was also the protagonist of the last day of festival, with two public meetings widely attended by the Italian-American community and not only. At the Illuna Library, Auci focused on her work as a writer, starting from the texts that formed her as a reader. In the afternoon, at the Rizzoli Bookstore, with the journalist Simona Siri, the author retraced the genesis of the Florio saga. With Marta Perego the festival has entered the streets of the city, with a literary walking tour that winded between West Village, Greenwich Village, Washington Square and SoHo, woven places, biographies and pages of some of the most important Italian and international authors, from Elena Ferrante to Patricia Highsmith, from Claudia Durastanti to Sylvia Plath. The meeting in Sulluna and the literary walking tour took place in collaboration with IWUSA – Italian Women in the USA.
The American festival will continue in the months ahead, in different forms. In May 2027 will be the winner or winner of the first edition of the New Generations Across the Ocean contest, promoted by Contemporanea in collaboration with NYU – New York University and addressed to the students of the Department of Italian Studies. On the program a cultural tour of northern Italy for a journey that will have its center in Biella, territory in which Contemporanea was born and continues to develop, and then extend to Turin, just in the days of the International Book Exhibition, Santo Stefano Belbo, on the tracks of Cesare Pavese, and Milan, with its archives and important Foundations.
A video-interview return of significant meetings took place during New York’s days is on the social program. Studying, entrepreneurs and Italian professionals living in the United States spoke about their relationship with the City, between dreams, courage and even the challenges of the first steps. Among the guests, the stylist Enrica Chicchio; Vanessa Roghi, author, historian and researcher about the themes related to school, education and adolescents, but also feminisms of the 1970s; Cornelia Pop, founder of IWUSA – Italian Women in USA, the first and largest community of Italian women in the United States, with over 10,000 enrolled, and Marta Galfetti, an expert in communication that online tells the city for over fifteen years with original and attentive look, also Italian pages. Many of the interviews were made in the dedicated corner at Piadi by La Piadineria, located in the heart of the Flatiron District in Manhattan.
“This first edition of Contemporanea goes to New York has gone far beyond our expectations, both for participation and for the quality of the meetings and the relationships we have managed to build. New York has proved to be an extraordinaryly fertile ground, open to dialogue and comparison on the themes that have always been contemporary. What has particularly affected us was the attentive, lively and deeply involved participation of the public: each appointment has generated questions, reflections and occasions of confrontation that have often continued even at the end of the meetings. Many people approached to share impressions, express appreciation and get to know our project better, starting to follow its path. Particularly significant was the dialogue with the world of education, from the School of Italy and UNIS to the Columbia and NYU universities, which gave rise to a cultural exchange of the highest level, confirming how important it is to create opportunities for meeting between different generations, languages and contexts. We return to Italy with the awareness that Contemporary can speak to an international audience, keeping firm its roots and identity. This experience does not represent a point of arrival for us, but the beginning of new possibilities: it is with even greater enthusiasm, energy and determination that we look at in 2027, ready to further increase the project and relations born these days”.
Irene Finiguerra, Direttrice di Contemporanea. Parole e storie di donne
Born in 2020 in Biella, the Contemporary Festival. Words and stories of women have quickly conquered an important role in the national landscape, demonstrating that when a project has solid roots in its territory, it possesses the strength to open itself to the whole world through the universality of its themes. Contemporary goes to New York is a project of BI-BOx – APS with the artistic direction of Irene Finiguerra and the co-curacy of Annalisa Menin, responsible for international relations, realized with Barbara Masoni, Stefania Biamonti, Laura Colmegna, Patrizia Bellardone and Mariangela Rossetto. The project was realized with the patronage and contribution of the Institute of Culture and the Consulate General of Italy in New York; in collaboration and with the contribution of NYU – New York University; in collaboration with Rizzoli Bookstore, SullaLuna Bookstore, the association IWUSA – Italian Women USA Community and FAAM – Fondazione Arnoldo and Alberto Mondadori. Technical sponsors: Piadi – La Piadineria e Beüme.
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