Alina has red hair, green eyes and an extraordinary intelligence: at the age of two, she can already read and count. She loves to surgically dissect the world around her and listen to the stories that her grandfather Giuseppe tells her, as they wander through the alleys and rocky coastline of Polignano. Hers is an atypical childhood, always poised between genius and discomfort, skipped life stages and looming bullying. Because she is always the youngest one, the best one, the strongest and most fragile one at the same time. A fish out of water with intellectual and sensory "superpowers", with depression and anorexia always lurking. Until Nicola arrives to break her crystal ball. A love that is as strong as it is socially unacceptable and that will mark the beginning of her real life, of her forced growth, of her precocious blossoming into a strong woman, capable of loving and suffering. This is the story of Alina and of her way of being, living with Asperger's syndrome, in a crescendo of emotions "differently" felt between Polignano, Milan and Paris, to then return to the starting point: the twelfth room.

Teresa Antonacci was born in 1964 in the province of Bari (Puglia, Italy) where she currently lives and works. She is a company manager and is married with three children and one granddaughter. La dodicesima stanza/The Twelfth Room is her fifth book, published by Les Flâneurs Edizioni in 2016. Her other publications include: Lasciami sognare (2012), Rinascerò pesce (2014), C’è modo e modo (2015), La casa della domenica (2015),Enrico fatto di vento (2017), Una storia imperfetta (2018), Quasi (2020). She has participated in numerous literary awards and in 2020 she was the winner of the XIV edition of the Premio Giovane Holden with her last book Quasi.

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Connie Guzzo McParland holds a BA in Italian Literature and a Master’s degree in Creative Writing from Concordia University. Upon graduation from the Master’s program, in 2007, she received the David McKeen Award for creative writing for her thesis-novel, Girotondo. In 2005, an excerpt from this novel, Verso Halifax, won second prize at the ninth edition of the Premio Letterario Cosseria in Cosseria, Italy. Her first novel, The Girls of Piazza d’Amore, (Linda Leith Publishing, 2013), was shortlisted for the Concordia First Novel Award by the Quebec Writers’ Federation. Her second novel, The Women of Saturn, (Inanna Publications, 2017) was translated into Italian and published in 2021 by Rubbettino Editore as Le donne di Saturno. This translated version won second prize at the 2022 Concorso Letterario Internazionale Citta di Crucoli, Lucrezia Paletta, and a special jury award from the 2022 Premio Vitruvio (Lecce, Italy). A biography of the operatic Quilico family, An Opera in 3 Acts was published in English and French in the fall of 2022 by Linda Leith Publications. The Twelfth Room is her first work of translation. She lives in Montreal and, since 2010, has co-directed Guernica Editions.

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