The unique Dedica festival has characterised the vibrant landscape of Italian literary events for twenty-eight years. Due to its original formula, which condenses stage performances, conversations, music, art and books into one intense week, the event offers a true insight into the world of the featured author, around whom each edition constructs its own specific itinerary. Dedica thus offers the public the opportunity to reflect on the personality of the guest chosen as dedicatee, in order to gain insight into their thoughts, cultural contexts and the various art forms that the different means of expression are able to reveal from their literary work.
The XXXth edition of the festival is dedicated to Arturo Pérez-Reverte, Spanish writer and journalist whose literary production is characterized by the elegance of writing and the masterful way with which he manages to blend History with fiction, placing alongside the great characters who really existed, complex and fascinating characters created by imagination. The resulting stories are fascinating, full of suspense, but also of erudition, so much so that some critics have praised them as “magnificent cultural thrillers”.
Pérez-Reverte of himself says: «I’m a professional storyteller. I want to tell the world I see through the eyes of my characters. I know that readers have different tastes and cultures, this is my challenge. Writing fiction stories is not a laceration of the soul but the ability to tell, using the head and the reason, not the heart and the feeling. I don’t write to survive depression, I write because I love doing it.»
Devised and curated by Thesis Associazione Culturale, the Dedica project is sponsored by public institutions and bodies – in particular by the Autonomous Region of Friuli Venezia Giulia, the PromoTurismoFVG, the Municipality of Pordenone, the Fondazione Friuli foundation – and is staged with the support of important private entities and special partners: Servizi CGN, COOP Alleanza 3.0, UnipolSai – AssiLab Previdenza and Servizi Pordenone, and BCC Pordenonese e Monsile.
The 2024 edition of the festival has also obtained the Patronage of the Ministry of Culture, the Embassy of Spain in Italy and Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, the University of Udine and the Alpen-Adria Universität of Klagenfurt.
The Festival is currently curated by Claudio Cattaruzza.
