Join us at the Italian Cultural Institute of San Francisco for the launch of Fausta Cialente’s A Very Cold Winter with translator Julia Nelsen, in conversation with writer and journalist Enrico Rotelli.

Published for the first time in English, her translation of this rediscovered classic introduces one of Italy’s most significant twentieth-century writers to a new generation of international audiences.

Originally published in 1966, A Very Cold Winter is a poignant novel of secrets and solidarity set in post-war Milan, hailed as an “exquisite chronicle of frozen hearts and their gradual thaw” (Publishers Weekly).

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Fausta Cialente (1898–1994) was a novelist, journalist, and political activist. A pioneering feminist and active member of the anti-fascist movement, she wrote pamphlets and broadcast for Radio Cairo while living in Egypt for nearly two decades. She returned to Italy after World War II and continued to publish to critical acclaim, winning the prestigious Strega Prize in 1976. Cialente spent her final years in England, where she translated authors such as Henry James and Louisa May Alcott.

Julia Nelsen translates between English and Italian. A San Francisco native, she holds a PhD in comparative literature from the University of California, Berkeley, and a masters in European languages from the University of Milan, where she studied on a multiyear fellowship from the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Her work has appeared in journals including Circumference, Two Lines, Firmament, and the Chicago Review. A Very Cold Winter is her first translated book.

Enrico Rotelli is an Italian writer and journalist. His articles on U.S. literature received the Premio Amerigo 2020. He has translated The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and his last book is the auto fiction Nanda e io (City of Como International Literature Prize and Visintin Prize 2024). He lives between San Francisco and Venice, Italy.