Armonia Off 2026: Emmanuel Carrère also arrives in Salento

The 12th edition of the ‘Armonia’ literary festival starts again on Sunday 26 July with the Armonia Off events. Narrazioni in Terra d’Otranto’, conceived and organized by the Idrusa bookshop of Alessano, recently awarded the Straordinaria Award promoted by ALI Confcommercio, and by the NarrAzioni association, with Mario Desiati.

Six appointments with some of the main protagonists of the Italian and international literary scene, followed by a final event in October, will mark the summer until early September. Guests include Emmanuel Carrère, Paolo Giordano, Concita De Gregorio, Chiara Tagliaferri, Stefano Petrocchi, Alcide Pierantozzi e Cinzia Cognetti. Armonia Off is created with the support of the Puglia Regional Council – Teca del Mediterraneo and BPER Banca, with the contribution of the Municipalities of Alessano, Castrignano del Capo, Ugento and Specchia.

The program

It starts on July 26th in Ugento with Stefano Petrocchi, who will present with Michela Santoro ‘Private Novel’ (Mondadori), a fictionalized biography of the founder of the Premio Strega Maria Bellonci. Afterwards, Alcide Pierantozzi will talk with Elena Rausa about the novel ‘Lo sbilico’ (Einaudi), finalist in the Strega and Campiello prizes. On July 29th in Alessano Cinzia Cognetti will present ‘Notes on the margins of my pain’ (HarperCollins) with Elisa Maggio. On the same evening Chiara Tagliaferri will talk about the memoir ‘Arkansas. Story of my daughter’ (Mondadori) with Valentina Chiaritti. On 31 July, again in Alessano, the meeting with Emmanuel Carrère is scheduled, who will dialogue with Chiara Valerio starting from ‘Kolchoz’ (Adelphi), a volume in which the writer reconstructs the history of his family by intertwining it with the political and social events of twentieth-century Europe. On 3 August in Castrignano del Capo the winner of the 2026 Armonia BPER Debut Award, Santina Cosetta, will present ‘Soltanto il giorno’ (Giunti) with Valeria Bisanti. This will be followed by the awarding of the Armonia BPER Writing and Cultural Work Award to Paolo Giordano. The writer will dialogue with Annalisa Camilli – author of one of the contributions to the volume ‘Da Vicino. Telling the war today’ (Einaudi) edited by Giordano himself – and with Valentina Murrieri on the role of writing and journalism in the story of contemporary conflicts. On 8 August in Alessano Maria Antonietta Epifani, editor of the volume ‘Maledette. The different ones from the 17th century to the present day’ (Adda), will present the book with Vincenzo Santoro, author of the essay ‘Cursed by tarantism’. The Armonia Off program will end on 5 September in Giuliano, a hamlet of Castrignano del Capo, with Omar Di Monopoli who will dialogue with Annibale Gagliani on the novel ‘Il santo degli astitati’ (NN Editore). Following this, Concita De Gregorio will present ‘La cura’ (Feltrinelli) in dialogue with Elisabetta Liguori. The 12th edition of the festival will end in October in Bari with a meeting organized in collaboration with the Premio Strega 2026 in the Agora of the Puglia Regional Council, where the exhibition of Artist’s Books curated by Maddalena Castegnaro will also be set up.