Maria Venturi is dead. She was the “lady of feelings” of the Italian novel

She was the “lady of feelings”. She is a journalist, director of weeklies such as Novella 2000 and Annabella but above all a writer of romance novels and screenwriter of highly successful soaps and TV series. Maria Venturi she died in her native Brescia at almost 90 years old (she was born in Venice on August 1, 1933 but had moved to Lombardy at the age of 7) where she married and her two twin daughters were born.

More than a journalist-author, over the years she had become a sort of “confidant” of her readers thanks to “love lessons”, the column that accompanied her for a lifetime even when she moved to the weekly Today. The consecration, as mentioned, with TV and fiction: from Magic spell a Prideyes Throw the moon (with the acting debut of the former athletics champion Fiona May) a Fear of loving. From his first successful book, Love story, written in 1984, was made into The Broken Story, another successful television drama which attracted twelve million viewers. There have been about thirty latest novels in total – and, as always, bestsellers and sales champions Much heaven for nothing e Crazy Heart.

And to say that Maria Venturi’s ancient passion has always been History, the one with a capital “S” so much so that after her classical high school diploma she enrolled in the Ancient Literature course at the University of Milan. You publish your first stories in the weekly Novellawhich at the time was a fiction magazine, edited by Giorgio Scerbanenco. At 25 he began writing a novel. He sends the plot and the first eight pages to Italo Calvino, at Einaudi. Three months later the answer arrives: a handwritten letter with the invitation to complete the book. But this novel will remain unfinished because in the meantime Venturi has been hired by Novella with a six-month contract and began commuting from Brescia to Milan which will last over twenty years.

Her contract will be renewed, but her job is at risk because it has been decided to close the weekly fiction magazine. He will be saved and transformed by Enzo Biagi in a current affairs rotogravure and it is to him that Maria Venturi owes her internship and final hiring. She became a professional journalist in 1970 and spent two years traveling around Italy as a correspondent with Sandro Mayer. In 1979, after having been editor-in-chief and deputy director, Venturi took over the direction of Novella 2000. Two years later Paolo Occhipinti called her to direct the historic weekly Annabellawhich a few months later becomes Anna.

The “direct line” with the readers begins with a mail address book, which will continue during the difficult period of the crisis of the Rizzoli publishing house, the change of ownership and the controlled administration. In October 1986, Venturi left Anna maintaining a collaboration contract with other newspapers of the group: he continued his mail with readers, wrote articles and interviews, started a television criticism column in the weekly Today and collaborate with The messenger.

AND Oreste Del Buono, head of Rizzoli’s book division, to bring her back to writing a novel. He gives her advice, which is “unashamedly compelling, romantic and popular.” She is born Love story. Director Duccio Tessari he purchased the rights and in 1987 it became a television miniseries starring Margherita Buy. Between 1992 and 1993 three of his other books ended up on TV (The broken story, The wife in the frame e The sky never falls). In 1998 Venturi created the subject for the successful series Magic spell. In 2004 he was among the authors of Pride. Then of Throw the moon (2006) e Fear of loving (2010).

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Venturi also continues his activity as a journalist and in 1997 he received the Saint Vincent prize at the Quirinale. Among the awards she has received as a writer, she is particularly fond of Bacchante prize of Matera. In 2011, Umberto Brindani, director of Today, entrusted her with the column “Love Lessons” which she would hold for several years and which established her as a point of reference for Italian romance literature. In 2015 the ‘Il Molinello’ literary prize awarded her the Lifetime Achievement Award and the Special Prize for the book Nothing is by chance. Also in 2015 he published The days of the othera revised, updated and expanded version of a novel he had published twenty years earlier by Baldini and Castoldi.