• Alessandra Di Maio
• University Professor of English and African Literature
• University of Palermo

Alessandra Di Maio is a Professor of English and African literature at the University of Palermo, Italy. She has been the recipient of a Fulbright scholarship, a Mellon postdoctoral fellowship, a MacArthur Research and Writing Grant, and a Richard D. Cohen fellowship at the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. Among her publications Tutuola at the University: The Italian Voice of a Yoruba Ancestor (2000), An African Renaissance (ed. 2006), Wor(l)ds in Progress (2008), Dedica a Wole Soyinka (ed. 2012), La letteratura nigeriana in lingua inglese (2020), and Black Italia (2024). She has translated into Italian several authors from Africa and the Diaspora, including Nigerian Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, with whom she has conceived the poetry/photo anthology Migrazioni/Migrations (2016) and guest edited Transition 60th Anniversary Special Issue “The Black in the Mediterranean Blue” (2021). She is the editor of the African Literary Series for Milan-based publisher Francesco Brioschi Editore.