Turin, 17 May 2025
Prizes were awarded to the four winners of the literary competition A/R Andata e Racconto. Viaggiare con leggerezza: istruzioni per l'uso dedicated to first-time writers, organised by the FS Group and Turin International Book Fair.
The ceremony took place this morning at the Turin Book Fair, before Annalena Benini and Silvio Viale, Director and President of the Turing International Book Fair, Alessandra Calise, Head of Communication and External Relations of FS Group, and the jury composed of writers Guido Catalano, Antonella Lattanzi, Lorenza Pieri, Matteo Nucci, Nadeesha Uyangoda, and Simona Vinci.
The writers were honoured today by Alessandra Calise, Head of Communication and External Relations of FS Group, who added 'The train is a narrative space par excellence. A/R Andata e Racconto combines FS Group's vocation for travel and the power of writing as a tool for expression and knowledge. We are proud to offer, together with the Turin International Book Fair, a concrete opportunity to up-and-coming authors, supporting a culture of storytelling that is born from the journey and opens up to the future. Because travelling - by train as in writing - means looking at the world in new ways, and FS Group becomes the driving force behind this transformation, every time'.
This year, the A/R Andata e Racconto contest - now in its 3rd edition - is dedicated to lightness, which in literature is a response to the complexity of the times. In Italo Calvino’s words, it represents the possibility of 'gliding over things from above, without boulders on your heart'. Travelling lightly towards real places or inner landscapes, towards self-knowledge and encounters with other people, while watching the world flow by from a train window, leaving room for imagination.
The jury awarded the first place to Mare More by Maurizia Di Stefano, the story of a happy childhood in Belarus, interrupted by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster that forces the protagonist to leave her homeland for Italy to regain her health, far from radiation, and discover that happiness is still possible along the journey. Il Segnalibro by Franco Revello won second place, retracing the life of a leaf that finds its place between the pages of other people's stories. In a tie for third place, Riccardo Grasso with Caporale Express retraces the drama of exploitation and illegal employment in Italian agricultural fields, while Edoardo Maresca with L'uomo in fuga o L'inquietudine umana returns to the famous escape that ended Tolstoy's life.
An initial technical commission, appointed by the Turin International Book Fair, selected the 15 finalist short stories from the 500 submitted, which were passed on to the final jury to designate the winners. The four short stories will be published later this year in an anthology, together with those of the jury members, and the competition finalists received a Trenitalia gift card.
'New travel narratives', because there are endless ways to tell the story of the journey, not only through the expressive architecture of literature, but also with the evocative images of photography or the enveloping voice of a podcast that recalls faraway places. This was discussed - on the sidelines of the award ceremony of the literary competition - with Ciro Fusco, ANSA photojournalist, Bruno Pellegrini, CEO & founder of Loquis, Alessandra Calise, Head of Communication and External Relations of FS, together with the deputy director of Sky TG24, Omar Schillaci. A moment of reflection on the many possibilities of storytelling, from traditional forms of writing to more modern and contemporary ones, such as podcasts or advanced photography techniques.