Goliarda Sapienza was an Italian writer, actress and activist. She grew up in a well known revolutionary and socialist family, joined the Resistance during the war, and had a complicated public life with many rises and falls. A larger-than-life personality, she went from being a central figure in Rome’s cultural elite revolving around the Communist Party, to being shunned by high society and spending time in prison. She withdrew from the world for nine years to write her most well-known book, “The Art of Joy,” a historical novel about a woman’s pursuit of cultural, financial and sexual independence in early 20th century Sicily. A few years after her death, the novel (of which only 1,000 copies were published) was noticed in Germany and then in France where it became a literary sensation, selling 350,000 copies. Fourty years after her death, she is finally meeting her readers. She has written biographical pieces, novels and poetry, about politics, anarchy, family trauma, feminism, sexuality, and her vital need for words.