Il fuoco sacro della scrittura is a brand new event format at Festivaletteratura. Why do writers write? What is creativity? Where does it come from? Is the need to create a blessing or a curse? These questions are explored twice a day during thirty-minute interviews where Italian and international authors talk about their relationship and history with the act of writing.

Sabrina Efionayi, 21, is an Italian writer of Nigerian origin. She is a young writer, but not just because of her age: her relationship with the act of writing is connected at its core to the internet and the new forms of written expression it offers. Her first novel was written, published, and became popular on Wattpad, ad blog-like platform for long form written content.

Another fundamental part of Efionayi’s relationship with the creative act is experimenting with different forms of media. Her first adventures with storytelling happened as a child, initially telling stories by recording her own voice; she later on moved on to visual storytelling, drawing characters and story.

She talks about the encounter with writing as a freeing moment: Wattpad, with its possibility to publish semi-anonymously with a username, gave her a safe space for creative expression and exploration, which eventually led her to be discovered by traditional publishing channels (her latest book, Addio, a domani, is published by Italian publishing house Einaudi).

The theme of vulnerability returns as Efionayi explains how her writing has become more and more personal over time, requiring more and more courage but also becoming an even more powerful tool.

While she writes, Efionayi continues to experiment with other forms of expression and recently launched a podcast, Storia del mio nome, where she talks about the story of her origins and her mother, exploring the same themes and characters as her most recent book from a different angle. The return to her childhood’s experiments with recording became a way to once again use the potential of new narrative media to the fullest.