Open Doors Review is a seasonally published literary & arts magazine. We feature short fiction, essays, poetry, visual art and interviews with authors and local artisans. We publish work submitted in Italian and in English.

Open Doors Review è una rivista non solo letteraria ad uscita stagionale. Ci occupiamo di short fiction, saggi, poesie ed arti visive, includendo interviste con autori ed artigiani locali. Pubblichiamo lavori in lingua italiana ed inglese.

In popular culture, Italy is frequently seen as two things: a soap opera Mafiosi video game or a picture postcard tourist dreamland of the Dolce Vita. 

Let’s add more stories to this picture. Let’s look under the surface. Let’s highlight the creativity and skill of the people in Italy. Now. Today. The point is not to produce something Italy-focused. It’s to create a collection of writing and visual art that is Italy-grown. 

Who do you love? What do you believe in? What do you know? These days, truth is under attack. Reality means different things to different people. While language is increasingly black and white the issues, like our hearts, never are. Art lives in these spaces between.

We are cracking open, evolving, breaking up with the old world, breaking down the new. That’s where art grows. That’s where conversations happen. There, in that space, we find our humanity when we share and connect with each other.

I challenge you to step into that place and create. Come on in, the doors are open.

Agli occhi di uno straniero, L’Italia viene spesso vista come il paese della pizza, della Mafia e della Dolce Vita.

È l’ora di condividere storie ed immagini per scardinare questa stereotipo e dare un’occhiata più nel profondo. Mettiamo in risalto la creatività e l’abilità delle persone del “Bel Paese.” Adesso. Oggi. L’obiettivo non è di creare qualcosa che sia incentrato solo sull’Italia. Si tratta di diffondere una raccolta di scritture ed arti visive cresciuta in questo posto.

Chi ami? In che cosa credi? Cosa è reale? In questi giorni la verità è in pericolo. La realtà viene percepita in maniera diverse a seconda del punto di vista delle persone. Mentre il linguaggio è sempre più categorico, i problemi (come i nostri cuori) non lo sono. L’arte fiorisce proprio in questo terreno di mezzo.

Ci stiamo aprendo. Ci stiamo evolvendo. Stiamo rompendo con il vecchio mondo e mettendo il nuovo alla prova. È qui che avvengono le conversazioni. È così che cresce l’arte. Qui, in questo spazio, condividendo e connettendoci l’uno con l’altro, ritroviamo la nostra umanità.

Non ti resta che entrare in questo luogo e iniziare a creare. Le porte sono aperte.

I’m Lauren Mouat. I was born in California but since 2010 Italy has been my home.

Reading and writing are an essential part of my life. When I write, I think. When I read, I grow. In my time in Italy, I’ve written for numerous publications and I’ve sought to bring writers together in a series of writing groups to share our work and ideas. We met first in Rome in a small apartment in Monti then around a green table by the Campidoglio (you know who you are!). I’ve also worked for many years as a tour guide and in discussing Italy’s art and history I found myself wanting to explore and share more of the contemporary writing and creative endeavours that are growing in Italy today.

Open Doors is a way to share enthusiasm and encourage the exchange of ideas that only art can bring to the surface. My aim is to connect writers and artists to reveal another side of Italy, a country that is so much more multifaceted than we are used to seeing in mainstream culture. The world is going through vast changes and I believe that what we create now and the conversations we have today, will decide our future.

Poetry & Fiction Editor

Monica lives and writes in Florence, Italy. Her international spirit travels with an American passport. She moonlights as a legal researcher when not parenting, managing projects, or writing. Her writing has been published in Across the Margin, Mediterranean Poetry, Bosphorus Review of Books, Fevers of the Mind, The Florentine, Rome-ing: Firenze, Adamah, and Synapse. Find out more at sharpmonica.com.

Art Editor

Luca Misuri is a visual artist and musician living and working in Livorno. He is the creator of the “Crumbling World” project and curator of Studio 124, an artist col- lective located in Livorno. Wendepunkte (“turning points” in German) is his some- time alias for visual and musical projects. www.lucamisuri.com.

Nora Studholme

Fiction English Reader

Nora Studholme grew up in the country- side of Virginia and now lives and writes in Florence Italy. Her work has appeared in various literary magazines and can be found at NoraStudholme.com

Norah Leibow

Non Fiction English Reader

Norah Leibow grew up in the San Fran- cisco Bay Area—and first met the Med-

iterranean when she was 16 on an ex- change trip. She is a running enthusiast, lover of architecture, art and taking long walks around San Francisco where she lives with her husband Adam and two cats. She is the author of the weekly newsletter “Be Soothed.”

Michela Guida

Italian Copy Editor

Michela Guida è un’insegnante di lin- gua italiana a stranieri. Durante la sua esperienza di docente, ha collaborato con diverse istituzioni tra cui universi- tà americane, case editrici e piattaforme per l’insegnamento online. Ha lavorato come redattrice per riviste online, e con- tinua questo lavoro come autrice di testi didattici, redattrice di articoli e content editor per siti di apprendimento online.

“Ho la fortuna di insegnare la mia splen- dida lingua agli studenti stranieri. Ques- to lavoro mi ha dato tante opportunità di crescere e di fare nuove esperienze professionali, anche perché sono un’ap- passionata delle parole. Adoro leggere e scrivere su tutto e di tutto quello che mi piace. E quando non trovo le parole, fo- tografo e cerco di immortalare qualsiasi cosa mi lasci a bocca aperta!”

Readers & Editors of the Open Doors Review

Guest Judges of the Open Doors Review

Flavia Brunetti

Flavia Brunetti is the author of All the Way to Italy: A Modern Tale of Homecoming through Generations past.

The novel tells the story of Little, a girl who, until the death of her father, considered herself a Californian. Now, thanks to half a letter, a symbol she can’t quite remember, and a case of writer’s block, she finds herself back in Italy with a lot of questions about her family and her country. On her journey throughout Italy, Little will enlist the help of the aunt who raised her, friends old and new, and the country itself, in her search for the answers she needs.

This is a powerful story that will appeal to anyone who has ever bal- anced wanderlust with the need to come home, a reminder that al- though we may be fragments, we are never a lost cause.

Flavia is the guest judge for the January 2021 issue of the Open Doors Review. She joined me in a caffe in Rome for a conversation about her book and Italy. You can listen to the audio recording of our conversa- tion on opendoorsreview.com.

Heather Jane Johnson

Heather Jane Johnson is the guest judge for the May 2021 issue of the Open Doors Review and the author of 1500, a young adult novel set in Venice. 

Children are disappearing in Venice. Rumor has it a demon is to blame, but no one knows for sure. Beatrice de la Pietà, an orphan on the brink of a new life, cannot be bothered with such stories though. Meeting the expectations of her new employer, Cassandra Fedele, is all she cares about, and she’ll do anything to hold onto her new apprenticeship as a cook and maid in her household. Demons and missing children will have to wait.

When Signora Fedele’s requirements of Bea take a sharp turn from domestic work to more academic pursuits however, the orphan begins to fear one day she may let the famed scholar down. Matters only become more complicated when Bea meets a girl obsessed with stopping the demon she was so determined to forget. Prompted by her new friend’s dedication to justice, and bolstered by the humanistic education she never bargained on receiving, Beatrice reluctantly dives into the danger and daring that flow through the heart of her watery world.

Our conversation covered Heather’s decision to move to Italy, the research process of writing a book set in Venice, how city’s could be compared to lovers and what she learned while self publishing her novel.

Giacomo Barba

Giacomo è uno scrittore e insegnante a Roma. Insegna Lin- gua e Letteratura Inglese presso il Liceo Scientifico “Ennio Quirino Visconti” e ha un dottorato in Lingua e Letteratura Inglese. È l’autore de “La Libertà dell’Oddio,” Graphofeel edizioni, “The Teacher,” un romanzo che ho seguito, anche se in modo inesperto, nella traduzione dall’italiano all’in- glese quasi un decennio fa. A settembre 2021 è uscito il suo romanzo “Non Dite a Romeo che Giulietta mi piace.” Nell’intervista, chiedo un consiglio su quali libri leggere, in inglese e in italiano, cosa cambia quando leggi o scrivi in almeno due lingue, sul proprio processo di scrittura e sulle diverse fasi della vita di uno scrittore.

Giacomo is a writer and teacher living in Rome. He teach- es Language and English Literature at the “Ennio Quirino Visconti” highschool in Rome and has a doctorate in En- glish language and literature. He is the author of “La Libertà dell’Oddio,” Graphofeel edizioni, “The Teacher,” a novel I assisted, however inexpertly, in translating from Italian into English nearly a decade ago. His novel “Non Dite a Romeo che Giulietta mi piace” came out in September 2021. As

a teacher of english literature in Rome, I wanted to ask his advice on what books to read, in English and Italian, what changes when reading or writing in multiple languages, about his own writing process and the different phases of a writer’s life.

Giovanni Vergineo

Giovanni Vergineo è archeologo, guida turistica di Roma e imprenditore. E’ nato a Benevento nel 1984 ma vive nella capitale dal 2009. Nel 2010 è stato finalista del premio “Italo Calvino” con la raccolta di racconti “Pippe”. Nel 2015 è stato semifinalista del premio “La Giara” con il romanzo “La scom- parsa delle Cotolette” selezione regione Campania. Ha pub- blicato alcuni dei suoi racconti in varie riviste e raccolte, tra le quali “OschiLoschi” – Nevermind edizioni, Benevento, curata da F. Ignelzi.

Giovanni Vergineo is an archaeologist, tour guide in Rome and entrepreneur. He was born in Benevento in 1984 but has lived in the capital since 2009. In 2010 he was a finalist for the “Italo Calvino” award with the collection of short stories “Pippe”. In 2015 he was semi-finalist of the “La Giara” award with the novel “La scomparsa delle Cotolette” in the Campa- nia region selection. He has published some of his stories in various magazines and collections, including “OschiLoschi” – Nevermind editions, Benevento, edited by F. Ignelzi.

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