FIILI Association
One day, everything changed...
After the third Festival in September 2025, and given the consistent success of each edition, we were inspired to create a not-for-profit association named FIILI, through which we could engage to further the mission of the Festival: to promote and celebrate Italian and Irish literature, culture, and intellectual exchange in Ireland, and to foster cultural dialogue and collaboration between Italian and Irish writers, scholars, translators, artists, and readers.
We sat down at the kitchen table (where often magic happens!) and imagined new ventures, a bigger Festival with added partners and sponsors, a deeper engagement with the Irish language, masterclasses and interactive workshops.
We drafted a Constitution that can be found below:
Meet our Executive Committee!
Catherine Dunne is the author of twelve novels, several essays and one work of non-fiction, An Unconsidered People, that documents the lived experience of half a million Irish immigrants to Britain in the 1950s. Catherine's novels have been shortlisted for a number of prizes, including Novel of the Year at the Irish Book Awards and the International Strega Prize. The Things We Know Now won the Giovanni Boccaccio International Prize for Fiction in 2013, and The Years That Followed was longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award. Her latest novel, A Good Enough Mother, won the European Rapallo Prize for fiction in November 2023. Her work has been translated into several languages. She was the recipient of the 2018 Irish PEN Award for Outstanding Contribution to Irish Literature and is a member of Aosdána. © Simon Robinson
Enrica Ferrara is the author of several books of academic non-fiction, dozens of essays and reviews, and one novel. She lectures in Italian at Trinity College Dublin. Her books include: Calvino e il teatro (2011); Il realismo teatrale nella narrativa del Novecento: Vittorini, Calvino, Pasolini (2014); Staged Narratives/Narrative Stages (2017); Posthumanism in Italian Literature and Film: Boundaries and Identity (2020); the special issue of Reading in Translation 'Reading Domenico Starnone' (with Stiliana Milkova, 2021) and the special issue of Quaderni d'italianistica on Critical Posthumanism in Italian Cinema and Media (with Russell Kilbourn, 2025). In 2024 her debut novel, Mia madre aveva una Cinquecento gialla was awarded the Rapallo Prize for fiction. © Michael Chester
Katia Compagnoni has many diverse interests and professional experiences. Now working in electricity regulation, she has a background in classical studies, political science and international economics. But her love of literature in all its forms has been the constant driving force from the moment she learned to read. Whether it's theatre, poetry, fiction or non-fiction, contemporary or classical, she loves nothing more than to immerse herself in the words created by storytellers around the world. There are too many favourites to list, but among Irish and Italian writers, her heart keeps going back to Alessandro Baricco, Donal Ryan, James Joyce, Margaret Mazzantini, Niccolò Ammaniti, Pirandello, Roddy Doyle, Samuel Beckett, Stefano Benni and W.B. Yeats.
Paul Coffey has worked in IT for the past 30 years and has been active in social enterprises and community development for the past 10 years. He is passionate about all forms of literature and writing. He has volunteered with the FIILI Festival since its inception. Some of his favourite writers include novelists Paul Auster and Italo Calvino as well as essayists George Orwell, Roberto Saviano and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.