Patricia Grace

Patricia Grace, a Maori writer of novels, short stories, and children's books is one of New Zealand best known authors. Her works include three very successful books: Potiki (1986), Cousins (1992) e Tu (2004). She currently lives in Hongoeka Bay, Plimmerton. Grace was awarded the Distinguished Companion of The New Zealand Order of Merit in the 2007 Queen's Birthday Honours. She is the 2008 recipient of the prestigious biennial Neustadt International Prize for Literature.

Witi Ihimaera

Witi Ihimaera became the first Maori novelist with Tangi in 1973. He has subsequently developed a continuing career in the novel as well as short story, play and opera (including an opera on Galileo). He is also a Professor of English and Distinguished Creative Fellow in Maori Literature at the University of Auckland. His latest book is Ask The Posts of the House (2007), longlisted for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award. He has edited eight anthologies of contemporary Maori literature, including Get On The Waka (2007), and recently completed rewriting his novel The Matriarch (1986) in fulfilment of his aim to rewrite all five of his first published works; his next writing commitment is a screenplay adaptation of The Matriarch. Recently one of his novels, The Whale Rider (1988) was adapted for film and released in Italy under the title La ragazza delle balene. He lives in Auckland.

Áine O'Healy

Aine O'Healy holds a PhD in Italian from the University of Wisconsin. She has been Professor of Italian and Director of the Humanities Program at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles since 1998. She is author of numerous significant works on contemporary Italian literature, cinema and cultural studies.

Her most recent publications include Transnational Feminism in Film and Media(Co-edited with Katarzyna Marciniak and Anikó Imre, New York: Palgrave, 2007), a book on national identity, sexual difference, and discourses of the transnational in contemporary Italian cinema; and “Hospitality, Humanity and the Detention Camp: Envisioning Migration in Contemporary Italian Cinema”, published by the International Journal of the Humanities (2006), an article in which she examined the cinematic representation of clandestine immigration in contemporary Italy. Aine O’Healy is currently co-editing a special issue of Feminist Media Studies titled Transcultural Mediations and Transnational Politics of Difference.

Aine O'Healy ha conseguito un Dottorato in Italiano all'Università del Wisconsin e dal 1998 è Professore ordinario di Italiano e Direttore del programma di Studi Umanistici all'Università Loyola Marymount di Los Angeles.
È autrice di importanti studi sul cinema, la letteratura e la cultura dell’Italia contemporanea.
Le sue pubblicazioni più recenti includono Transnational Feminism in Film and Media (in collaborazione con Katarzyna Marciniak e Anikò Imre, New York: Palgrave, 2007), un libro sull'identità nazionale, le differenze di genere e i diversi processi della transnazionalità nel cinema italiano contemporaneo; e l’articolo “Hospitality, Humanity and the Detention Camp: Envisioning Migration in Contemporary Italian Cinema” (apparso nel 2006 sulla rivista International Journal of the Humanities)  che analizza la rappresentazione dell'immigrazione clandestina in Italia nel cinema contemporaneo.
Attualmente sta curando un'edizione speciale di Feminist Media Studies dal titolo Transcultural Mediations and Transnational Politics of Difference.

Graziella Parati

Graziella Parati is Professor of Italian and Comparative Literature at Dartmouth College, NH, USA, where she teaches courses in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Italian culture, Italian American Culture and Women's and Gender Studies.

Parati has been one of the first scholars in the US to respond to the new multiculturalism in Italy, researching and publishing extensively on what she has defined as “Italophone literature”. In Mediterranean Crossroads: Migration Literature in Italy (1999), Parati offered a collection of translated pieces from recent immigrant literature. In Migration Italy: The Art of Talking Back in A Destination Culture (2005), by looking at migrant literature and cinema, Parati examined immigration to Italy in the past twenty years, exploring the processes of cultural hybridization that have occurred. More recently, in 2007, she edited with Marie Orton the volume Multicultural Literature in Contemporary Italy, which contains short stories and selections from books that explore representation of otherness in contemporary Italian culture. Her book The Cultures of Migration: Diverse Trajectories and Discrete Perspectives, co-edited with Anthony Tamburri, is forthcoming with Farleigh Dickinson UP.