2016
the Italy Writes Award, each finalist
meets with Professor Tara KeenanThomson, director of JCU’s Writing
Center. Professor Keenan met with
all eight finalists individually to help
them revise their winning piece and
select the excerpt for reading at the
ceremony.
Professor
KeenanThomson announced the winners at
the ceremony.
Italy
Writes,
John
Cabot
University’s
national
creative
writing competition for high school
students whose primary language of
instruction is not English, is now in
its 5th year.
JCU Writer in Residence, awardwinning
Susan
Minot,
in
presenting the awards, said she was
pleased to celebrate and support the
creative writing efforts of these
students. All artists, she pointed out, need
encouragement and support regardless of
their degree of accomplishment. As part of
Italy Writes 2016 Winners
Fiction Category:
1st Place (€300 gift certificate) – Lea Pietrosante, Liceo Scientifico Statale
'Plinio Seniore', Rome for ‘The Sun Beats Down Hard’,
2nd Place (€200 gift certificate) – Leonardo Monterubbiano, Liceo Scientifico
'E. Majorana', Latina, for ‘About the Vacuity of Words and the Necessity to
Preserve’,
3rd Place (€100 gift certificate) – Angelica Tajani, Liceo Linguistico
Immanuel Kant, Rome, for ‘The Ride’,
Honorable Mention - Muriel Vittori, Liceo Musicale Scientifico
Farnesina, Rome, for ‘Eat me’,
Non-Fiction Category:
IMPORTANT DATES
 14 October, 9am-5pm, Teacher
Training Workshop (free of charge).
This year, this workshop will include
information about Italy Pitches and
JCU’s current offer for Alternanza
Scuola Lavoro.
 26 October, 6:00-7:30pm, Italy Reads
Keynote Address by Prof. Sarah
Churchwell
 27 October, 6:00-7:30pm, Italy Reads
Master Class for high school teachers
by Prof. Sarah Churchwell
 Italy Writes 2017 deadline: April 1st
High School Teachers and Book Group
Leaders: Register for Italy Reads 20162017 The Glass Menagerie at
[email protected] and receive
your free copy of Tennessee Williams’s
masterpiece.
1st Place (€300 gift certificate) – Elena Placanica, Liceo Classico
‘Dante Alighieri’, Rome, for ‘The Female Outcast in Theatre’,
2nd Place (€200 gift certificate) – Vittoria Castiglione, Liceo Classico
‘Dante Alighieri’, Rome, for ‘Refugees: When Your Homeland Isn't Home Anymore’,
3rd Place (€100 gift certificate) – Marco Guarnieri, Liceo Scientifico
‘Keplero’, for ‘Can War be Avoided?’
Honorable Mention - Annalisa Feliziani, Liceo Classico
‘Dante Alighieri’, Rome, for ‘Dead Men Walking. Mafia Kills, Silence Too’.
Building on the tremendous success of JCU's Italy Reads program that began in 2008 with a
grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), JCU sponsors Italy Writes, a national
English-language writing competition for Italian high school students that includes on its panel
of judges professors from one of America's most highly-ranked creative writing centers: the
University of Iowa's International Writing Program.
This document is online. Participate in the many Public Events offered at John Cabot University.
Italy Writes 2016 – excerpts from winning pieces
‘The Sun Beats Down Hard’
1st Place, Fiction
by Lea Pietrosante,
Liceo Scientifico Statale 'Plinio
Seniore',
Rome
The sand grains quickly dance all
around me running after one
another in small vortexes.
The more I spit, the more I feel my
mouth filling up with miniscule
pebbles.
My forehead is studded with tiny
pearls of sweat that the heat lets slip
over my temples. I feel the same
tickling on my neck and along my back.
I wish I could fall asleep and not
Continue reading on page 4
‘About the Vacuity of the Words and the
Necessity to Preserve’
2nd Place, Fiction
by Leonardo Monterubbiano,
Liceo Scientifico ‘E. Majorana’,
Latina
A loud ringing preceded the enthusiastic
exclamation of my aunt: “Was für ein
Wunder!”, “What a wonderful thing! You
are already here. Come on, enter, enter,
the rest of us are already inside!” An
almost hypnotic jiggle of her heavilybeaded dress revealed all the innate
‘The Female Outcast in Theatre’
1st Place, Non-Fiction
by Elena Placanica
Liceo Classico ‘Dante Alighieri’,
Rome
Join Italy Reads 2016 - JCU's English
language reading and cultural exchange
program. We’ll be reading Tennessee
Williams’s ‘The Glass Menagerie’
Refugees: When Your Homeland
Isn’t Home Anymore’
2nd Place, Non-Fiction
by Vittorio Castiglione,
Liceo Classico ‘Dante Alighieri’,
Rome
Since 2013 the percentage of
immigrants considerably increased
especially referring to those coming
from Eritrea (+119%) and Syria
(+173%), both stages of terrible and
destructive wars.
Eritrea has been governed since
1993 by the dictator Isaias Afewerki
who established a regime of terror
according to which minorities are
persecuted, prisoners
are tortured, elections are always
postponed and there is no press
freedom.
For my essay I chose to compare
the main characters from the Greek
tragedy Antigone, written in 441 BC
by Sophocles, and the musical
Wicked, based on the book of the
same name by Gregory Maguire,
which is an ideal prequel to the
movie The Wizard of OZ. I chose to
compare Antigone and Elphaba
Thropp because they are both
underdogs who engage in morally
controversial actions in their
pursuit of justice.
These are my conclusions:
Because Antigone sees chaos as a
necessary consequence of the course
of her justice, she is a reformative
force, while Elphaba uses chaos as a
tool to achieve justice, therefore
she’s a destructive one.
Furthermore, while Antigone is
completely devoted to divine laws,
and defies the earthly ones to follow
them, Elphaba spends most of her
life challenging her father’s religious
conviction, and affirms she doesn’t
have a soul.
In conclusion, Antigone and
Elphaba are surprisingly similar
characters that express the human
fascination with anti-heroes and
rebels. Wicked raises the same
questions Antigone raised
Continue reading on page 4
Continue reading on page 5
Continue reading on page 4
‘The Female Outcast in Theatre’
Continued from page 2
in 441 BC: are we cursed by our
2
Italy Writes 2016 – excerpts from winning pieces
‘Eat Me’
3rd Place, Fiction
by Angelica Tajani,
3rd Place, Non-Fiction
by Marco Guarnieri,
Rome
Rome
I looked outside the window: the woods
seemed to spread before me, there was
only green, and instinctively I felt a
flutter of joy.
A memory of many years before flashed
through my mind: a forest, dark, dreary,
even the slightest glimmer of light
seemed to be gone, as if it had been
captured by tree branches. I was walking
trying to make my way through decayed
trees and scratching shrubs, when an
animal caught my eye; a deer, bowed
and hidden in the bushes, eagerly
devouring the flesh of his brother.
Staring at it in the eye - I'll never forget
- I had the strangest and indefinable
feeling.
Still I do not know how to explain it, it
was as if until that moment I had lived
in an illusory dream, where evil was just
an urban legend and good always
prevailed, and suddenly reality had
shattered on me like a concrete wall,
With this reading key we can understand the
reason why man has never stopped fighting:
he wants more than he has, he wants to
control everything around him. But why?
he had?
Honorable Mention, Fiction
by Muriel Vittori
Liceo Musicale Scientifico
Farnesina,
Rome
One hour later she's at the
supermarket reading calories,
taking objects and putting them
back to their place, walking twice
towards the chocolate sector and
changing her mind; coconut or
hazelnut?
Find out about:
Summer Camp
http://www.johncabot.edu/admission
s/studenti-italiani/studenti-liceo.aspx
Why did he want to overcome the limits of
the reasonable and fall into the irrational pit
of avidity? Continue reading on page 6
I could take hazelnut ice cream,
Ben and Jerry's, vanilla chocolate
chip cookie sugary grains on the
tongue strawberry cupcake
‘Dead Men Walking. Mafia Kills,
chocolate muffin soft and light the
Silence,too.
bitter chocolate melting and filling
Honorable Mention, Non-Fiction
you up frozen foods the pizza that's
by Annalisa Feliziani
800 calories and then fast
Liceo Classico ‘Dante Alighieri’,
tomorrow Sofficini my father
wouldn't let me croquettes I could
Rome
eat the entire bag waffles strudel
The Mafia first appeared in Sicily during the sweet apple down my throat
first decade of 800. Then, as time passed, it pancakes syrup peanut butter
stuffed French toast marshmallow
spread all over the rest of Italy and it
fluff gnocchi pesto gnocchi with
managed to reach all the corners of the
parmesan hungry hungry hungry
Earth.
hungryeateatEAT
overwhelming and unexpected.
Those eyes were empty, there was
nothing they expressed, neither sorrow
nor sadness at the death of his fellow
soul. I thought that our entire world was
based on destruction, on our eating each
To my mind, the most paradoxical thing is
other as if we were nothing but
that Italians themselves acted for a long
agglomerations of
time as if the Mafia were not a problem,
Continue reading on page 5
Continue reading on page 4
She chews her lunch until it
resembles soup in her mouth;
…spits it in the toilet and flushes
the guilt away.
Two things she remembers of
August: her teeth start to hurt and
she stops combing her hair so that
it will stop falling out.
Everything else gets eaten out by
anorexia.
Continue reading on page 4
3
Italy Writes 2016 – excerpts from winning pieces
‘About the Vacuity of the Words and the
Necessity to Preserve’ continued from page
2
sweetness of a nearly perfectly rounded
body.
Since aunt Hannerose demonstrated such a
kind of overwhleming exuberance, I forced
myself to crack a grin. I don't know if I
actually managed to make it appear realistic
or spontaneous at least. As we, my parents
and I, walked along the preciously furnished
rooms of aunt Hannerose's house, I could
glimpse what, at first glance, surely didn't
seem a noteworthy scene. There were two
women. I ignore their names or what they
were supposed to do there, but I shall never
forget the air of melancholy they emanated.
At that point I was informed they were the
poor girls my aunt had chosen as a sort of
“ladies-in-waiting” several years prior to my
Grand Tour throughout the Old World.
Too many great novels by Tolstoy, Flaubert
or Dostoyevsky had found their own place in
my shelves, so that I couldn't have been able
to understand the complexity of the women's
emotions. It is simply unavoidable, I
suppose. I think it is the same for anyone
who has read Jules Verne and is keen on
sea voyages, or who has “known” the
famous Maigret, and dreams to solve each
crime he comes across… A crime. That is
the exact word I should use to define what
the poor now-middle-aged ladies had
suffered. The theft operated by my aunt is
only definable as crime indeed. She has
stolen their lives, and with them, the
possibility of having a family, as their mother
had done. I hope you will allow me to assert
that they are victims of modernity. My aunt is
that kind of woman who professes not to
need a family, that having babies is a waste
of time and so on… This way of living can be
suitable for an independent woman like
Hannerose, but not for the people who
enliven these suspended-in-time places, who
don't want much, but the possibility to live a
simple life, like their parents. I believe they
deserve this possibility, and I also believe we
need them. They are the monuments of an
ancient world which is gradually
disappearing. Not even the mighty walls of
this nicely located town will be able to stop
this tendency.
‘Eat Me’ continued from page 3
It's cold in September. Dead
leaves decide to cover the
streets before anyone can notice
the change of season.
She trips while getting up from
the bed and stays down. Her
hipbone aches under 60 pounds
of weight. But it's the heart that
aches the most. It's beating fast
in hopes of keeping the body
working, but it's pumping too
much.
She traces the floor in search of
a piece of paper, a pencil; I have
to say something to Mom and
Dad. Fear is a familiar taste, but
this pain tastes like certainty.
Once I close my eyes, I'm not
opening them ever again. I can't
even think of something to say
to Mom. Mom, I'm not sorry.
I'm happy to die.
It means I really am thin.
It means maybe I really am
beautiful now.
Everyone will love me.
Vice President and Dean of Academic
Affairs Mary Merva opens the
5th Annual Italy Writes Award
Ceremony
‘The Female Outcast in Theatre’
Continued from page 2
in 441 BC: are we cursed by our
parents’ isdeeds, and can we
free ourselves from their
mistakes?
Are our actions the product of
our time and the way we were
raised? Is doing thing really
worth the price? Do the ends
really justify the means, or
indeed do the means justify the
ends?
Continue reading on page 6
The Sun Beats Down Hard’, continued
from page 2
feel nor think of anything, but I’m
too weak-dehydrated- I need help. ‘
I look up and see an insect scurrying
up and down among the small dunes.
Its footprints are drawing thin
wreaths that the wind erases every
once in a while. It probably believes
it is climbing a gigantic mountain, I
think. How big the world must be
for it. All of a sudden, I feel I am an
insect, too. I stare at the small
creature for a few moments, until it
disappears in the distance.
I slowly get up on my elbows and
turn over. I take a deep breath: the
salty air penetrates the most remote
corners of my lungs. Gradually
everything becomes clearer. The sea
spreads out in front of me - infinite
and turquoise. The waves overlap,
foaming, rising higher and higher,
and then they hit the hard surface of
the shoreline with a violent crash.
While receding, they draw a milky
lace
of lather. The wet cutout of sand,
that looks darker, reflects the light
for a few seconds while the waves
recede toward the sea. Then it fades
again when the sand surfaces and
the grains appear to bloom. I relax a
few minutes, I forgot the reason why
I'm here. But then, twisting my neck
absently, I discern dark spots all
over the dunes. I sharpen my vision.
A hand, an arm. A cold shiver shakes
my body, chills my blood.
Suddenly, everything comes back to
my mind: the chaotic preparations
for the trip, the departure. My
friends, the urge of landfall. A new,
welcoming land, a land of peace. We
gathered all of our money, all of our
courage, all of our hope. We
departed. Then the storm, the
overcrowded boat, screams, tears,
immeasurable fear. I remember that
during those hours we desperately
struggled in the storm. We were
grains of sand on giant waves.
4
Italy Writes 2016 – excerpts from winning pieces
Refugees: When Your Homeland Isn’t
Home Anymore’ continued from page 2
After obtaining the independence
fromEthiopia (1993), wars to establish
the borders never ended and
Afewerki cut every contact with
Brussels and with the United Nations,
denying every kind of support to his
people. The country’s backwardness,
the permanent drought and the
increasing poverty has been pushing
Ethiopians to emigrate trusting
traffickers to reach European territory
in order to avoid the never-ending
legal procedures. In 2011 the civil war
began in Syria and today it involves
many other countries that for various
economic reasons took one or the
other side. This war caused the
migration of 4 million people, 340,000
of which found refuge in Europe.
Every single country has its own
politics and speed in analysing the
countless asylum requests that they
receive everyday, and every country
provides a different service to these
people. There are specific centres all
over Europe where refugees are
welcomed and where they can enjoy
first aid services, where they are
provided with essential goods such as
food, clothes, a pocket money…
The first problem to solve is how
every single country manages the
finances supplied by the European
Commission that seem to never be
enough. European countries should
reach an agreement and establish a
plan in order to equally distribute all
the refugees. In order to be
integrated into society, these people
must be provided with a certain
amount of money that helps them to
start a new life and to find a job. On
this basis they would be able to pay
taxes and to be effectively considered
as equal.
‘The Ride‘ continued from page 3
flesh, and the greatest drama of
humanity would be coming to the
awareness of it. We are born, we
grow and finally die, but from
womb to tomb we are soaked in
our own weaknesses, prisoners of
our perpetually hungry stomach.
Maybe I was just crazy and all of
this was just nonsense, but may be
not ...
And so what? So what if feelings
like love were only mental
constructs of humans, who turn
away so as not to face the bitter
truth that rules the world?
And we're back to square one.
Back to the conclusion that our
lives are based on this principle,
why are we even here?
I got off the train, walked, got
swallowed among blurry figures
and fading lives like my own.
I was smiling while warm tears that
tasted of life ran over my face, I
smiled while around me fiancés
were
hugging
after
long
separations, mothers and children
were reuniting, and boys were
returning home.
I was suddenly in front of the ticket
booth, and that was it for me, I
knew I was facing a turning point;
I could keep on walking and
drown again in the unaware
organism that I had always been
Create my own path?
Was I able to do that?
Did I really have choice?
We always do.
I breathe
‘Dead Men Walking. Mafia Kills,
Silence, too’continued from page 3
as if it did not exist at all: they
preferred ignoring it, for they
already had the consciousness that
it was an enemy too strong for
them, and it would have been
dangerous to oppose it. So the real
reason why it found no resistance is
weakness. Italian people have been
authors of their own destiny in that
sense, and of their ruin too.
Fortunately, not everyone is the
same. Courage took the place of
cowardice at some point, and we
must be grateful to those who
could now be defined "heroes", for
it. All these people died nobly (and
silently, too), killed because of their
opposition to the Mafia.
Professor Tara Keenan-Thomson,
Instructor of English and Coordinator of
the JCU Writing Center
Worked individually with finalists on the
revision and selection of their excerpt.
We must admire these heroes, for
they had the awareness of the risks
they were undertaking, and yet
they never stopped fighting for
what they considered a noble
cause. If we do not talk about
them, if we do not raise our voices,
as a result, the Mafia will have won,
and all these
Continue reading on page 6
5
Italy Writes 2016 – excerpts from winning pieces
Can War be Avoided?’ continued from page 3
Dead Men Walking. Mafia Kills, Silence,
too’continued from page 5
studied history and I can tell you that there
have been wars fought for honor, freedom,
brave fighters will have sacrificed their
lives in vain. We must not allow it. It
would seem that they dedicated their
entire life to a lost cause. We must
prove, as a democratic society, in the
name of a free country, that it was not
a lost cause at all.
Even because, as Falcone and
Borsellino said, those who have fear
die everyday. Those who do not have
fear die only once.
but if we think a little, the truth rapidly
emerges, and the mask behind which our
interlocutor hides those wars he talks about
falls away. The Trojan War, the one Homer
wrote about, the one fought for honor by the
Greeks? Yes, maybe Menelaus really wanted to
punish prince Paris, but I think that the Greek
king noticed the strategic position of Troy,
and realized that to control it meant to control
the commercial traffic between the
Mediterranean and the Black Sea. And how
can we forget the First World War, the war
that exploded due to an assassination. Of
course, but how about the economic interests
of the industrialists and the will of some
nations to expand their boundaries, like
Russia? And the war in the Middle East, the
most contemporary; did it brake out due to the
9/11 attack by Osama Bin Laden? Surely, but
what about the oil?
In conclusion, to answer the question to which
there is no answer, war cannot be avoided
because the motives which cause it are intrinsic
within human nature. War will become just a
bad memory only when man understands that
money, power and riches do not give
happiness or make our life easier, but they are
the causes of the sorrow we try to escape. Only
when man understands that respect, fraternity
and the humaneness are the only things that
matter in this life, just then, war will give way
to a perpetual peace.
SAVE THE DATE: July 14th
Open Day and Round Table
“Serve ancora l’università
per trovare lavoro”?
JCU’s Institute for Entrepreneurship presents
"The Presentation that Gets to YES!"
A Day-Long Workshop
by Dreamers Communication
This program is intended to enhance the
presentation skills of start-ups in search of
investors.
During the program we will focus on three main
areas: Storytelling, Presentation Design, and
Delivery.
‘The Female Outcast in Theatre’
Continued from page 4
Neither ‘Wicked’ nor
‘Antigone’ offer an answer to
these questions, and if they do,
they are often contradictory.
The real richness of these plays
is the way they force us to
question ourselves, our
motives, and the justifications
we offer for our actions.
Italy Pitches – JCU’s national,
English-language pitching
competition for Italian high-school
students. Participating students
will select a non profit
organization, study it and create a
pitch to convince the audience to
donate to its cause.
 October 14: Workshop for
teachers in collaboration with
Italy Reads and Italy Writes
 January 20: Deadline to register
participating classes
 Week of January 23: Workshop
for students (how to construct a
pitch, rules and regulations,
etc..)
 Monday, April 3: Deadline to
submit names of competing
students and guests
 Monday, April 10: Italy Pitches
Final Competition 4.30pm in
Tiber Café
The workshop will combine theory with
practical exercises to consolidate the
learning outcomes. You will learn
how to make your pitch to investors
unforgettable.
The workshop is entirely in English,
therefore giving you an added
advantage when meeting investors
abroad.
Wednesday, July 6th,2016
9:00 AM– 4:00 PM
TG4, Lungotevere Raffaello Sanzio 12
The Workshop is free of charge, but
please register at:
http://bit.ly/DreamersWorkshop
The July 14th Open Day features a round table with managers, experts and university professors that will try to answer
whether or not university education is still useful to find a job. An information session on John Cabot University follows
courses, study abroad and job opportunities, scholarships and financial aid.
Students can register for the English Proficiency test at 10.00 a.m.
6
To confirm your participation and reserve your free spot register here or call 06-68191292.