Festival Internazionale
di Letteratura a Venezia
29 March — 1 April 2023
About us
Incroci di civiltà began in March 2008, sixty years after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the U.N. It followed in the wake of an important international academic conference organized by Ca’ Foscari University and the University of Padua. The city of Venice accepted the proposal to provide a wider stage for Italian and foreign authors who would come together in Venice to discuss literature and human rights.
The success of the first experimental edition convinced the municipality and the University to promote the event and, a year later, to set up four intense days of literary discussion.
It is important for us to remember that the Festival’s name, Incroci di civiltà (Crossroads of civilizations), was conceived as an implicit response to a heated debate around the so-called “Clash of civilizations.” Today, as in the past, a constructive reflection on cultural differences and on the definition of a universal concept of humanity remains an ongoing and important challenge for our time. Venice offers the ideal scenario for this proposal because of its millennial history as a crossroads of cultures and languages and because of the complex challenges it has to face today.
Over the years, thanks to its special thematic structure, Incroci di civiltà, has become a well-recognized and engaging cultural project. Its influence reaches far beyond the Festival itself, which still remains its focal point.
The Festival began as an academic project of the former Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures and developed within the two language Departments that were created when the Faculty was closed. It is these departments that have proposed the many major writers who have attended the conference, 274 in all, from every part of the world. Over the course of these twelve years they have made Incroci di civiltà truly unique among literary festivals, thanks to its international perspective and the spirit of its dialogues. We are proud to have brought together, year after year, so many voices within Ca’ Foscari itself and in many other venues throughout the city thanks to the contribution of many important cultural, social and commercial institutions guided by some enlightened minds.
Authors in previous editions:
Héctor Abad / Chris Abani / Abdilatif Abdalla / Ghada Abdel Aal / Kader Abdolah / André Aciman / Gabriela Adameşteanu / Adonis / Eraldo Affinati / Amir Alagić / Usama Al Shahmani / Naomi Alderman / Raja Alem / Meena Alexander / Eugenijus Ališanka /Salwa Al–Neimi / Sergio Álvarez / Mathieu Amalric / Ana Luísa Amaral / Eric Andersen / Karin Andersen / Antonella Anedda / Li Ang / Theo Angelopoulos / Sascha Arango / Antonia Arslan / Elisabeth Åsbrink / Ariane Ascaride / Tash Aw / Akram Aylisli / Andrea Bajani / Hoda Barakat / Maria Barbal / Gioconda Belli / Carla Benedetti / Jacqueline Bishop / Ana Blandiana / Giulio Boccaletti / Yves Bonnefoy / Adrian Bravi / Breyten Breytenbach / Jan Brokken / Jerry Brotton / Antonia S. Byatt / Gabriele Caia / Roberto Calasso / Arno Camenisch / Vinicio Capossela / Massimo Carlotto / Guillermo Carnero / Gianrico Carofiglio / Marco Castelli / Francesco Cataluccio / Patrizia Cavalli / Andrea Cavazzuti / John Cayley / Michael Chabon / Catherine Chanter / Boris Chersonskij / Michael Christie / Jonathan Coe / Robert Coover / Marlena Corcoran / Roberto Costantini / Teresa Cremisi / Gabin Dabiré / Arne Dahl / Luigi Dal Cin / William Dalrymple / António Damásio / Michelle de Kretser / Radka Denemarková / Anita Desai / Kiran Desai / Patrick Deville / Caterina Edward / Edmund de Waal / Donatella Di Pietrantonio / Tishani Doshi / Jabbour Douaihy / Rita Dove / Amir ElSaffar / Carl-Christian Elze / Wim Emmerik / Nathan Englander / Per Olov Enquist / Mariana Enriquez / Mostafa Ensafi / Abilio Estévez / Cristina Ali Farah / Erika Fatland / Ge Fei / Bi Feiyu / Jean Flaminien / Paulina Flores / David Foenkinos / Marcello Fois / Antonio Franchini / Rodrigo Fresan / Furukawa Hideo / Rhea Galanaki / Sergej Gandlevskij / Muthoni Garland / Michele Gazich / Yan Gelling/ Gabriella Ghermandi / Amitav Ghosh / Heddy Goodrich / Alicia Giménez–Bartlett / Carlo Ginzburg / Georgi Gospodinov / Peter Greenaway / Stephen Greenblatt / Cristina Gregorin / David Grossman / Robert Guédiguian / Abdulrazak Gurnah / Garth Risk Hallberg / Natalie Handal / Ayesha Harruna Attah / Julia Hartwig / Aleksandar Hemon / Stefan Hertmans / Lena Herzog / Werner Herzog / Alexandre Hmine / Mary Hoffman / Oto Horvat / James Ivory / Roy Jacobsen / Howard Jacobson / Kathleen Jamie / Drago Jančar / Helena Janeczek / Gish Jen / Zhang Jie / Nicole Krauss / Linton Kwesi Johnson / Jennifer Johnston / Antanas A. Jonynas / Billy Kahora / Wladimir Kaminer / Ioanna Karistiani / Etgar Keret / Randal Keynes / Khaled Khalifa / Jonas Hassen Khemiri / Elias Khuri / Pap Khouma / Naveen Kishore / Urszula Kozioł / László Krasznahorkai / Michael Krüger / Ryszard Krynicki / Hanif Kureishi / Gabriella Kuruvilla / Kim Kwang-Kyu / Dany Laferrière / Nicola Lagioia / Jhumpa Lahiri / Joe R. Lansdale / Linda Lê / Ulla Lenze / Gad Lerner / Rosa Liksom / Ewa Lipska / Vittorio Long / Roger Lucey / Maja Lunde / Amin Maalouf / Alain Mabanckou / Ann-Marie MacDonald / Alberto Manguel / Chris Mann / Roberto Marchesini / Javier Marías / Antonio Moresco / Lucio Mariani / Petros Markaris / Hisham Matar / Melania G. Mazzucco / Shara McCallum / Ian McEwan / Fiona McFarlane / Daniel Mendelsohn / Maaza Mengiste / Giselle Meyer / Boris Mikhailov / Mohammad H. Mohammadi / Mahsa Mohebali / Malika Mokeddem / Mohamed Moksidi / Andrea Molesini / Mark Mustian / Bae Myung–hoon / Kiran Nagarkar / V. S. Naipaul / Kirino Natsuo / Okey Ndibe / Liliana Nechita / Guadapule Nettel / Eshkol Nevo /Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o / Mikael Niemi / Gholam Najafi / James Noël / Cees Nooteboom / Amélie Nothomb / Wilfried N’Sondé / Michael Ondaatje / Vladislav Otrošenko / Patrik Ouředník / Emine Sevgi Özdamar / Orhan Pamuk / Antonio Pascale / Carmen Pellegrino / Daniel Pennac / Antoine Pecqueur /Carlo Petrini / Katja Petrowskaja / Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai / Anthony Phelps / Caryl Phillips / Chiara Piaggio / Lamberto Pignotti / Alessandro Piperno / Ali Podrimja / Aaron Poochigian / Giorgio Pressburger / Yu Qun / Doron Rabinovici / Mandeep Rai / Charlotte Rampling / Yasmina Reza / Eugenia Rico / Víctor Rodríguez Núñez / Marco Nereo Rotelli / Tomasz Rózycki / Salman Rushdie / Karina Sainz Borgo / Tatiana Salem Levy / Gastón Salvatore / Yasemin Şamdereli / Alka Saraogi / Yishai Sarid / Tiziano Scarpa / Igiaba Scego / Marc Scialom / Antonio Scurati / Lasana Sekou / Habib Selmi / Steve Sem-Sandberg / Toni Servillo / Vikram Seth / Joann Sfar / Masahiko Shimada / Mikhail Shishkin / Lola Shoneyin / Marino Sinibaldi / Sepideh Siyāvashi / Sjón / Alawiya Sobh / Dag Solstad / Morten Søndergaard / Vladimir Sorokin / Ersi Sotiropoulos / Wole Soyinka / Linda Spalding / Alexian Santino Spinelli / Alicia Stallings / Jón Kalman Stefánsson / Michelle Steinbeck / Marija Stepanova / Sergej Stratanovskij / Noémi Szécsi / Paco Ignacio Taibo II / Jüri Talvet / Francesco Targhetta / Gonçalo Tavares / Yoko Tawada / Sami Tchak / Tamiko Thiel / Uwe Timm / Su Tong / Ilija Trojanow / Olivier Truc / Agata Tuszyńska / Dubravka Ugrešić / Ludmila Ulitskaya / Ko Un / Fariba Vafi / Luisa Valenzuela / Thanasis Valtinòs / Hans Van De Waarsenburg / Chiara Valerio / Hans Maarten van den Brink / Adriaan van Dis / Tomas Venclova / Manuel Vilas / Juan Villoro / Simona Vinci / Igor Vishnevetsky / Varujan Vosganian / Ornela Vorpsi / David Wagner / Jeffrey Wainwright / Ayelet Waldman / Zhu Wen / Frank Westerman / Zoë Wicomb / Tommy Wieringa / Marcia Williams / Jeanette Winterson / Alexis Wright / Wu Ming 1 / Xu Xing / Abraham B. Yehoshua / A Yi / Hong Ying / Lea Ypi / Arnold Zable / Oksana Zabuzhko / Adam Zagajewski / Xu Zechen / Raúl Zurita