It starts in the morning with six young women and men of the Italian Resistance and ends late in the evening with the story of the perfect body, a body invented by images. On Thursday, November 5, the Books Festival opens at the Centro per l’arte contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Prato’s contemporary art center, for its fifth edition, which continues on Friday, November 6, and Saturday, November 7.
A festival built with the city and its schools
The festival is built together with the city: Prato’s schools, the Istituto Professionale “G. Marconi”, the Associazione Ipazia, CNA Toscana Centro Impresa Donna and the Book Club Via col Libro of the Università Popolare di Prato all work on the program. Mornings are dedicated to young people, with talks in schools of every level, curated with the Centro Pecci’s Education and Accessibility Department, founded in 1988 by Bruno Munari.
10 a.m.: Michela Ponzani and the young partisans
The first event is also open to the public. Historian Michela Ponzani, who teaches contemporary history at Tor Vergata University in Rome, meets students to present Giovani Liberi Partigiani. Storie di ragazze e ragazzi in lotta per un futuro migliore (Young Free Partisans: Stories of Girls and Boys Fighting for a Better Future; De Agostini, 2026), her first book for young readers. It tells six lives inside the Resistance: Rosario Bentivegna, Teresa Mattei, Giorgio Marincola, Tina Anselmi, Bianca Guidetti Serra and Ughetto Forno.
6:30 p.m.: Maria Ausilia Di Falco presents “Immacolata”
The evening brings three talks. The first is with Maria Ausilia Di Falco, a musician also known as Madif, who presents Immacolata (Einaudi, September 2026) in conversation with the Via col Libro book club. It is her first book, written in a childlike, biting language, a kind of lullaby that gives no respite and tells the fiercest of loves: a mother’s.
8:30 p.m.: Fumettibrutti and her first novel, “Cigni selvatici”
Next up is Fumettibrutti, the pen name of Josephine Yole Signorelli, who sets aside the comic page for her first novel, Cigni selvatici (Wild Swans; Einaudi, September 2026), in conversation with Michele Bertolino, associate curator at the Centro Pecci. She is the author of Romanzo esplicito (Feltrinelli Comics, 2018), which won best debut at the Micheluzzi awards, and of other graphic novels, and in 2026 she received the Emma Goldman Snowball Award.
9:30 p.m.: Maura Gancitano and “La fabbrica della bellezza”
Closing the day is Maura Gancitano, writer, philosopher and educator, co-founder of Tlon. With the Centro Pecci’s general director, Stefano Collicelli Cagol, she presents her new book La fabbrica della bellezza. L’invenzione del corpo perfetto dalla fotografia all’intelligenza artificiale (The Beauty Factory: The Invention of the Perfect Body from Photography to Artificial Intelligence; Rizzoli, November 2026): the history of the relationship between body and image from the 19th century to today, through photography, advertising, fashion, film, social media and AI.
Free admission and practical info
Admission is free until seats run out. For the evening talks, it’s worth arriving early.
