Luigi Fontanella (Mercato San Severino (SA), 1943) studied at the University of Rome, “La Sapienza” (Laurea in Lettere), and at Harvard University (Ph.D. in Romance Languages and Literatures). He was a Fulbright Fellow at Princeton University, 1976-1978.
Currently he is Professor of Italian in the Dept. of European Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, at Stony Brook University. Fontanella is Founder and President of IPA (Italian Poetry in America). and the editor of Gradiva and Gradiva Publications, which was recently awarded the prestigious Prize for Translation by the “Ministero dei Beni Culturali”. He has given lectures in more than seventy universities in the United States and in Europe. Selections of his poetry have been included in twenty anthologies, both in Europe and in the United States. As a poet, critic, translator, playwright, and novelist. he has published twenty books (eleven collections of poetry; seven volumes of criticism, two books of narrative), and seventy scholarly articles.