Living Writers – Winter 2024 – Return of the Beloved: An Alumni Series

Chiara Barzini is a screen, fiction, and journalism writer who was born in Rome and raised as a teenager in Los Angeles, where she became obsessed with canyons, quartz, and the Grateful Dead. When she moved to New York she steered her fascinations towards the discovery that a huge slab of granite beneath the city of Manhattan is the reason why nobody there is able to walk or think slowly. The absence of a mineral subterranean life and psychedelia in the city of Rome, made her return to the homeland a bit harsh, but opened her up to new interests including: abandoned castles and the nightlife of cattle.

She lives in Rome with her partner Luca, their children Sebastiano and Anita, two cats, and one dog.

Rebecca Rukeyser is the author of the novel The Seaplane on Final Approach (2022; Doubleday USA/ Granta Books UK). Her work has appeared in Best American Nonrequired Reading, The Believer, Granta, The Guardian, and Zyzzyva, among others, and was awarded the Berlin Senate Endowment for Non-German Literature. She’s a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Originally from Davis, California, Rebecca has lived and worked in South Korea, Japan, Turkey and China.

She currently lives in Germany, where she teaches creative writing at Bard College Berlin.