Brunella Gasperini

She spent most of her life between Milan, her birthplace, and San Mamete, a small hamlet in Valsolda, on Lake Lugano.[2]

After a short experience as a teacher in the immediate post-war period, she started writing for the newspaper Il Corriere della Sera and many Rizzoli magazines in the early 1950s, distinguishing herself for her modern and progressive point of view on the problems that would dominate Italian society in the following years. Her column Ditelo a Brunella ("Tell Brunella"), where she established a direct and frank dialogue with her readers on such themes as divorce, abortion, family and politics, appeared on Annabella for twenty-five years. She dealt with similar issues in her column Lettere a Candida ("Letters to Candida"), in the magazine Novella.[3]

In 1956 she published her first novel, L'estate dei bisbigli (previously issued in instalments in Annabella), followed by Io e loro: cronache di un marito (1959), Rosso di sera (1964), A scuola si muore (1975) and Grazie lo stesso, all published by Rizzoli. Her non-fiction work includes the humouristic handbook manual Il galateo di Brunella Gasperini (Sonzogno, 1975) and her autobiography Una donna e altri animali (Rizzoli, 1978).[4]

A selection of her editorials and of the letters published in Annabella was collected posthumously in Così la penso io (Rizzoli, 1979) and Più botte che risposte (Rizzoli, 1981).[5]

Her books have been translated and successfully published into several languages, such as German, French, Spanish, Hungarian. From her marriage to Adelmo Gasperini (called Mino by everyone and “life mate” by Brunella) she had two children, Massimo (1946-2013), a sculptor,[6] and Nicoletta (1950-1989), herself a journalist,[7] who wrote assiduously for different fashion and music magazines.

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