Last night’s presentation of our collaborative novel in the Sala Rosa felt, in retrospect, like the visible culmination of something that had been quietly growing over a long stretch of time — not just a writing project, but a shared process of learning, shaping, and discovery unfolding over months, and in fact years.
The book itself, which had already been published around Christmas, can be thought of as a kind of modern Decameron: a group of hikers and mountain trekkers find themselves taking refuge in a mountain shelter after being caught out by bad weather, and, in that shared enforced pause from the world, they begin to exchange stories. These are stories rooted in “magic” as it is understood in this landscape — not as fantasy or escape, but as perception: a way of noticing how history, folklore, memory, and lived experience accumulate in place and give it resonance.
The stories are set within the Val di Lima and the wider Garfagnana region of Tuscany, where mountains, villages, river valleys, and old paths form not just a backdrop but an active presence. Each contributor engages with this shared world differently, yet always within the same atmosphere. What emerges is not a single narrative, but a constellation of voices held together by geography, imagination, and a shared attentiveness to place.
Last night was the moment when this written world was brought fully into public space. In the Sala Rosa, each writer read a passage from their work, and the effect was quietly transformative: texts that had been composed in solitude were reshaped by voice, silence, timing, and the presence of an audience. One voice followed another, and gradually what had been separate pieces began to feel like parts of a larger whole.

The evening was also marked by Irene Ghilardi from the University of the Third Age who acted as a marvellous presenter, Priscilla Valentino. cultural councillor of our Comune and the Co-op that helped support and finance the project. The book itself is distributed on a freewill offering basis, with all proceeds going to Auser charity supporting people in difficulty within our commune, giving the project a further sense of shared purpose beyond the literary one.
It is impossible not to acknowledge the extraordinary contribution of Francesca Tatina Mengozzi whose devotion to the project was fundamental at every stage. As our teacher and guiding presence throughout this process, she not only encouraged us to write, but also sustained the discipline and coherence needed to bring the work into being. Her energy, patience, and sheer industry in assembling, editing, and shaping the book were remarkable, and the final result bears the imprint of her care and commitment throughout.
Thanks are also due to all those who supported the project in more practical but essential ways — those who provided us with spaces in which to meet and work, and those who encouraged the process along the way, often quietly and without public recognition. No project of this kind can ever be fully or properly acknowledged, because so many hands, seen and unseen, contribute to its making.
What we can say is that this book is the outcome of a collective effort in the fullest sense: not only of the writers whose voices appear within it, but of all those who made it possible for those voices to be heard.
Afterwards, our team gathered informally at the Circolo dei Forestieri e restaurant, where the evening continued in a warm and convivial atmosphere. Over dinner — for some of us wild boar among the dishes, for others a pizza— the sense of completion and shared achievement lingered, not as an ending, but as a continuation of the same spirit that had carried the project from its beginnings.