Bologna University, Italy

Giorgia Grilli teaches Children's Literature at Bologna University where she helped found Italy's first Children's Literature Research Center. She published Myth, Symbol and Meaning in Mary Poppins: The Governess as Provocateur with Routledge, New York, 2007, in the series “Children's Literature and Culture,” edited by Jack Zipes (with a foreword by Neil Gaiman). She has translated from English into Italian several critical essays written by the most important scholars in the field (Jack Zipes, Alison Lurie), and novels and picturebooks by the most important authors of children's and young adult literature (P.L. Travers, Aidan Chambers, Frank C. Boyce, Neil Gaiman, John Green, David Almond…). She writes about topics concerning children's literature on a regular basis in specialized magazines in Italy, and in the literary supplement of a national newspaper (Tuttolibri, “La Stampa”).

Pennsylvania State University

Maria Truglio is an Associate Professor of Italian and of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Pennsylvania State University. She cofounded the Spanish and Italian Modernist Studies Forum at Penn State with Nicolás Fernández-Medina. In her book, Beyond the Family Romance: The Legend of Pascoli (2007), she offers a psychoanalytic perspective of the work of Giovanni Pascoli (1855-1912), one of Italy’s most celebrated and innovative poets, with a particular focus on the uncanny. In addition to her work on Pascoli and on Italian gothic writers, Dr. Truglio has published articles on Primo Levi’s Se questo è un uomo, and on the children’s books of Annie Vivanti, Dino Buzzati, Umberto Eco and Eugenio Carmi, and Eugenio Cherubini, as well as on the representation of Giuseppe Garibaldi in children’s books before the First World War. This research has been published in journals such as Forum Italicum, Quaderni d’italianistica, Romanic Review, MLN: Modern Language Notes, California Italian Studies, and Children’s Literature.

The National University of Ireland, Galway

Lindsay Myers is a lecturer in Italian and Children's Studies and the Director of the BA Connect with Children's Studies at the National University of Ireland, Galway. She is the author of “Making the Italians”: Poetics and Politics of Italian Children’s Fantasy (London Peter Lang, 2011). She has published articles in LG Argomenti, Bookbird, International Research In Children's Literature, and The Lion And The Unicorn and contributed entries to The Oxford Encyclopedia of Children's Literature London. She is a member of IRSCL and the Chairperson of the Board of management of Galway Steiner National School.