About
Sara Fruner is a bilingual poet and novelist.
She was born in Riva del Garda, Trentino, North-Eastern Italy. After graduating in English literature and language at Ca’ Foscari University (Venice), and acquiring two MPhils in literary translation from the English at Istituto Superiore Interpreti e Traduttori, Fondazione Scuole Civiche Milano, and at Ca’ Foscari, she has been working as a translator in the publishing industry. Being interested in post-colonial literature, her translations include such authors as Dionne Brand, Monique Truong, Sello Duiker, Raj Rao, Don McKay, and in the last couple of years Marie-Helene Bertino, Jane Hirshfield and W.S. Merwin.
After serving at the Italian Cultural Institute of Los Angeles in 2007, she has worked for six years as Senior Publication Coordinator in an international research center based in Trento, and taught English as a foreign language at Istituto Accademico Interpreti e Traduttori di Trento (ISIT), and at the University of Trento.
At the end of 2016, she moved to New York City, where she currently teaches Italian at the Fashion Institute of Technology, with additional past experience at NYU, Mercy College and Columbus Citizens Foundation.
She has contributed extensively to bilingual newsmagazine La Voce di New York, and collaborated with the Center for Italian Modern Art (CIMA) and Magazzino Italian Art.
Her articles have appeared in Brick Literary Journal, Magazzino 23, CinematoGraphie.
Sara’s Italian poetry has been published on Graphie and on Italian Poetry, where she is included among the featured poets who belong to the second half of the 20th Century.
"Bitter Bites from Sugar Hills," her first collection of poems in English, came out in 2018 by Bordighera Press NY. "Lucciole in palmo alla notte", a collection of poems in Italian, came out in 2019 by Supernova Editore, Venice.
"La rossa goletta", her new poetry collection in Italian, will be released by Crocetti Editore in 2023.
With regard to fiction, her first novel, "L'istante largo", came out in 2020 for Bollati & Boringhieri to national acclaim. It made the final shortlist of the Severino Cesari National Award for Debut Novel 2021 and received the second prize.
Her new novel, "La notte del bene" (Bollati & Boringhieri), was released in May 2022.
She spent the summer in Italy on the book tour.
Sara has been accepted in numerous residency programs for writers worldwide, including BILTC at the Banff Center for the Arts , Noepe Center for Literary Arts on Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, Centre d’Art Marnay Art Centre (CAMAC) as Ténot Bursary, Marnay-Sur-Seine, France, Mountain Seas, Flinders Island, Tasmania, Earthskin Creative Residency, Muriwai, New Zealand, Galerie Huit, Arles, France, The Writer’s Room at the Betsy, Miami, Florida, Hanna Creative Center, Castellvì de la Marca, Spain, Casa Tagumerche, La Gomera, Canary Islands, New Orleans Writers’ Residency, The Studios of Key West, Florida, The Lock-Up, Newcastle, Australia, The Emily Harvey Foundation, Venice, The Bogliasco Foundation, Bogliasco, Italy, Translation House Looren, Wernetshausen, Switzerland, Casa delle Traduzioni, Rome.
Featured Work
"Bitter Bites from Sugar Hills", poetry collection, Bordighera Press, NYC
In November 2016, I moved to Sugar Hill, Harlem, after a decade of longing for New York City —my geographical soulmate. Provided with a cityscape that somehow welcomed, with all its contradictions, the poetic self, I started cruising the streets, searching people’s eyes, listening to the endless epics the city narrates every day, every night. New York is a storyteller nobody can silence. My recording of its voice comes from a pure act of love towards the extraordinary repository of diverse humanity the city proves to be. Beauty here can sparkle with horror, disgust and trauma, and still be utterly gracious.
This contrast, in its fierce vividness, has opened up a new territory that my imagination never gets tired of exploring. I also began questioning the political moment in which I landed here, with the world stepping into some new global Middle Ages, and faltering on major long-standing issues —including discrimination, violence on women, race disparities— and on history itself. If my poetry in Italian primarily focuses on an intimate pursuit, where the universal might resonate in the poetic subject’s individual experience, "Bitter Bites from Sugar Hills" addresses the current world we are living.
My poetic imagery moves around archetypal recurring images, which could suggest some poietic consistency, but which I am more prone to define deep-rooted obsessions: pain, wonder, desire, solitude, mourning, loss, god, the quest for beauty in an ethically and environmentally lacerated world.
And love, of course.
Other Works
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"La notte del bene", novel, Bollati & Boringhieri, Turin
May 2022
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"La rossa goletta", poetry collection, Crocetti Editore, Milan
2023
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"L'istante largo", novel, Bollati Boringhieri, Turin
2020
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"Lucciole in palmo alla notte", poetry collection, Supernova Editore, Venice
2019
Awards and Recognition
- "When a poet writes in English as a second language, we get a more precise understanding of words. This is a terrific portrait, paying tribute to Manhattan, and Fruner nails the city with clear, fresh perceptions that work like silk on the page. She owns her words with personality and originality in this high-caliber collection." — Poet Laureate Grace Cavalieri on "Bitter Bites from Sugar Hills," published in the Washington Independent Review of Books, May 2019.
- "Written in dynamic, intimate clipped prose, 'L'istante largo' takes the reader into a buoyant youthful world where insights and discovery work the kind of brilliance we haven't witnessed in today's prose. Fruner is a magician of the word." - André Aciman, author of "Call Me By Your Name" and "Find Me"
- "L'istante largo" received the second prize of the Severino Cesari National Award for Debut Novel 2021.
