Fire and writing are not too different. They both need two things: an initial spark and enough fuel to keep the spark alive. In majestic Piazza Sordello, Mantua’s central square, Colum McCann talks about his evolution as a writer. It's part of a series of events called The Sacred Fire of Writing where national and international authors disclose where their love of writing came from and how it developed. McCann, author of bestsellers including Let the World Spin, still remembers his classmates' joy when the teacher read them tales written by his father. The ecstatic reactions of his friends to the antics of those fictional characters unleashed in the Irish novelist a visceral feeling, a desire to tell his own stories.

Whether writing football match reports in the local newspaper of publishing books translated in more than 35 languages, the author conserved his unique style; many-faceted and epic. His gift is to take characters that really lived and locate them in an imaginary world. He's a tightrope walker, skirting the line between fiction and reality, a craftsman who considers real events as building blocks in a virtual building. The actress Lella Costa, who also participated in the discussion, claims this skill is especially visible in The Side of Brightness. The novel tells the life of a young migrant involved in the construction of the New York underground at the beginning of the 1900s. But for McCann the link between fiction and real life is only a part of what makes him a writer. As he says, readers use their intelligence to fan the flames of his fire. The writer just provides the initial, essential spark to let the magic of storytelling begin.

The event was moderated by the writer and television author Christian Mascheroni.