Bruno Tognolini (Cagliari, 1951) lives in Bologna — where he graduated from DAMS in 1979 —, in Lecce, and on the road, participating in thousands of meetings with readers all over Italy. After a decade in theater during the 1980s (collaborating on works with Vacis, Paolini, and Baliani), he has been a writer "for children and their grown-ups" by passion and profession for thirty years. He has published more than seventy books with national publishers, alongside numerous poems and several novels. For television, he was among the authors of popular RAI children's programs such as L'albero azzurro and Melevisione. For the cinema, he wrote the song lyrics for Enzo D'Alò's animated film La gabbianella e il gatto (Lucky and Zorba) and collaborated with documentary filmmaker Gianfranco Cabiddu. In 2007, he received the Andersen Prize as the best Italian children's writer; in 2011, he won the Special Jury Prize for his book Rime di rabbia. In Italy alone, his books published by Salani have sold over one hundred thousand copies. Among his most recent works are Versi di bestie (Topipittori, 2022), Rime Alfabete (Salani, 2022), Canti dell'inizio canti della fine (co-authored with Silvia Vecchini, Topipittori, 2024), and Rima rimasta (Salani, 2026), his intense collection of forty-three occasional poems never previously published in a single volume.

(photo: © Leonardo Céndamo)