On April 15th the award ceremony of the 2024/2025 edition of the AACUPI-Vieusseux Grand Tour Literary Prize took place in the Sala Ferri at Palazzo Strozzi, Florence. The jury — consisting of ISI Florence director Stefano U. Baldassarri, Fabrizio Ricciardelli (AACUPI president and director of the Kent State University Florence program), Franco Zabagli (Vieusseux Institute), former AACUPI president Portia Prebys, and professors Anna Gravina (Kent State University Florence program) and Nicoletta Peluffo (NYU in Florence) — decided to award the first prize to Gail Curtis (IES Abroad, Siena) for her short story titled “A Home in Siena.” As the members of the jury wrote in their decision, the winner “has succeeded at joining the years she spent in the US with her stay (though brief) in Italy. In an original, sensitive, and insightful way, her prose compares her hometown in the US and the city where she has studied in Italy. Gail Curtis thus highlights both differences and similarities, not only through her own memories and daily life but also relying on impressions by famous English-speaking writers such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Charles Dickens, and Virginia Woolf. Her metaphoric language often comes across as particularly lively and emotionally engaging, also thanks to the personification of the very places she describes. All this makes her prose at once more suggestive and sincere.” The winning short story will be published in the fall issue of the prestigious “Antologia Vieusseux” together with its Italian translation.
