About us
In Italian, "filo" means "thread", referencing both the thread of the story and the thread of ink. In Irish, FIILI is a nod to the word "filí", meaning "poets", a tribute to the rich lyrical tradition of a country that has given birth to poets like William Butler Yeats, Seamus Heaney, and many others.
The history of the Festival of Italian and Irish Literature in Ireland began in late 2022 ...
In July 2022, Enrica Ferrara, lecturer at Trinity College Dublin, went to Marco Gioacchini, then Director of the Italian Cultural Institute in Dublin, with the proposal of creating an Italian literary festival. Marco loved the idea but felt that for the Festival to be a success, it needed to be embedded in the local culture: a Festival of Italian and Irish Literature that would consolidate the relationship between two countries that had so much in common.
Soon they approached Catherine Dunne, a world-renowned Irish author with strong links with Italy, and asked her to become part of this new exciting project. They were delighted when she said YES! The three founders of FIILI started working on their 2023 programme straight away, with Catherine and Enrica as co-curators and Marco as project manager.
FIILI, the acronym of Festival of Italian and Irish Literature in Ireland, is a word dense of meaning both in the Italian and the Irish language. In Italian, "filo" means "thread", referencing both the thread of the story and the thread of ink. In Irish, FIILI is a nod to the word "filí", meaning "poets", a tribute to the rich lyrical tradition of a country that has given birth to poets like William Butler Yeats, Seamus Heaney, and many others.
The 2023 edition of FIILI, "Crossing Over" was held at the Italian Cultural Institute in Dublin and was a real success! Guests included authors such as Viola Ardone, Carlo Lucarelli, Carlo Gébler, Elaine Feeney, Olivia Fitzsimons, Mark O'Connell and many others. All our sessions were fully booked, both writers and audience loved the relaxed yet engaging conversations aiming to discover pathways between the Italian and Irish culture, and cross over to the other side via the invisible bridges of literature.
In 2024, the second edition of FIILI, "Wor(l)ds of Change", took place at the Italian Cultural Institute and the Trinity Long Room Hub, with an array of distinguished guests who spoke to the important role literature has to articulate all the momentous changes that are happening in our society. Among our speakers: Celia de Fréine, Sinéad Gleeson, Laura Imai Messina, Igiaba Scego, Stephen Sexton, Domenico Starnone, Enrico Terrinoni, and many more. The full programme and a photo gallery can be found here.
For its third edition, "In Other Wor(l)ds, FIILI 2025 confirmed its presence at the Italian Cultural Institute and Trinity College Dublin, moving to a more prestigious, historical location within the campus: Regent House. Paraphrasing the famous memoir by Pulitzer Prize awardee Jhumpa Lahiri, who adopted Italian as her language of election, the 2025 edition aimed to express the remarkable power of literature to translate and transpose our everyday world into other words of fiction, creative non-fiction and poetry. Guests included, among others: Darren Anderson, Stefania Auci, Aifric MacAodha, Joseph O'Connor, and Nadia Terranova. The full programme and a photo gallery can be found here.