Book presentation: Libeccio – by Franco Poggianti

The book presentation will be conducted by Grazia Di Michele, who will guide the audience through a meeting dedicated to the themes, atmospheres, and narrative path of the work.

The bitter story of the “segnorine” of Tombolo – the thousands of girls who arrived in Livorno in the summer of 1944 following the American army – resurfaces, twenty years later, in the memory of the “Wednesday gang”, the bizarre group already encountered in “La pesca del Giunti” that gathers once a week in Alfredo’s wine shop, in the heart of the popular Pontino-San Marco district.

For years that memory remained buried: a painful page that the city preferred to forget. The brutal murder of an entrepreneur who enriched himself during the economic miracle reopens that story of misery, violence, passions, and long-forgotten mysteries.

The result is a story that intertwines historical novel, love story, and a police investigation, which reserves a surprising ending for the reader, against the backdrop of a popular and theatrical city, where even the most bitter stories end up fading and softening in the mocking irony that is the distinctive trait of the Livornese.

Franco Poggianti

Franco Poggianti (Livorno, 1946) made his journalism debut at the Livorno editorial office of “Paese Sera” in 1967. In 1970, he was called to Rome to the newspaper’s central office.

From June 1974 to September 1979, he worked at the Press Office of the PCI Directorate (secretary Enrico Berlinguer).

In November 1979, he was hired at Tg3. Initially a presenter and political columnist. As a reporter, he covered the devastating earthquake in Irpinia, the flood in Valtellina. He reported from the former Yugoslavia and Bosnia. He was in Helsinki for the historic Bush-Gorbachev meeting. He was in Berlin at the fall of the wall.

In 1990, he directed and hosted “La Domenica sul 3 – hundred minutes of information for young people.”

In 1992, he was head of the Tuscany regional editorial office of Rai. In 1998, he returned to Rome as deputy director of information at Rai International.

Back at Tg3, he created and curated Agri3, a weekly program dedicated to professional agriculture that aired for eight years until May 2010.

He has taught journalism courses as an academic lecturer at the University of Parma and television journalism at the Dams in Rome as a “subject expert.”

He is the author of an essay (“Il nonno elettronico”) on educational TV published by “Riforma della Scuola” which was later collected in a volume.

From his experience as an agricultural journalist comes the book “Capra e cavoli – agriculture and zootechnics in today’s Italy” (Agra editrice. Rome 2013).

In 2022, he released “La pesca del Giunti” picaresque novel from Livorno (Sarnus, Florence 2022)

In 2023, he publishes “Parigi1911 – The theft of the Mona Lisa and surroundings”

(Mauro Pagliai Editore, Florence 2023)

In 2024, he publishes “Il bellissimo Cecè – Life and death of the partisan count” (Effigi editrice, Arcidosso, 2024)

In 2026, “Libeccio” the second Livornese novel is released with Effigi publishing house.