One of the most prolific writers and dramatists on the contemporary Italian scene. Francesco Piccolo, born in Caserta in 1964, lives and works in Rome. In 1993, he was a finalist for the Premio Calvino with his then unpublished novel Diario di uno scrittore senza talento. In 1994, he wrote Scrivere è un tic. I metodi degli scrittori (Minimum fax) based on a number of lectures on creative writing dealing with writing methods. For the publisher Feltrinelli he wrote a collection of stories Storie di primogeniti e figli unici (1996) and the novels E se c’ero, dormivo (1998), Il tempo imperfetto (2000) and Allegro occidentale (2003). In recent years, his works – La separazione del maschio (2008), Momenti di trascurabile felicità (2010) and Il desiderio di essere come tutti (2013) – have all been published by Einaudi. For the cinema, he has worked as a screenwriter for films by Renato De Maria, Silvio Soldini, Antonello Grimaldi, Nanni Moretti, Michele Placido and Paolo Virzi.