Interview with Maddalena
Vaglio-Tanet, literary scout

Maddalena Vaglio-Tanet is best known to the reading public as a writer. She has published, among others, Il cavolo di Troia e altri miti sbagliati (Rizzoli 2020, finalist for the Strega Ragazzi 2021 prize as best debut) and the novel Tornare dal bosco (Marsilio), candidate for the Strega prize in 2023. But for some years now she has also worked as a literary scout and it is precisely this activity that our interview focuses on.

How did you come to work as a scout? Can you tell us something about your work (your relationships with agents, publishers, writers, etc.)?

All writers are avid, obsessive readers. I have always wanted to write, and to read. As a child I thought it would be nice to read novels for a living, but I didn’t think such a job existed. I discovered much later that I was wrong. After high school I studied Italian and comparative literature; first at the University of Pisa and the Scuola Normale Superiore, then, for my PhD, at Columbia University in New York. Already during my studies, I started to gain some experience in the publishing world: an internship at Nottetempo, then reading (i.e., sorting unpublished manuscripts) again for Nottetempo and for the American New Vessel Press, and finally a project on Montale for Jonathan Galassi, a writer and former editorial director of Farrar Straus & Giroux. It seemed to me that it was very difficult to keep academic research and creative writing together, while I had the impression that writing was more compatible with publishing, because the two jobs have very different times and rhythms: very fast in the case of publishing, slow for writing. I was also interested in understanding the workings of publishing from the inside in order to manage my expectations as an author and to be aware of the mechanisms, relationships, and expectations of editors (those who work in publishing) and readers. After my PhD, I sent a few emails to professionals in the publishing world to try to orient myself and ask for advice. Many did not reply. I was immediately answered by Cristina De Stefano, a scout from French and Italian, with forays into Spanish and German. We met in Paris where I was for other reasons, and I immediately started writing some test reports (reading sheets). A scout reads books in certain languages (really monitoring everything that is published) and advises their clients whether to acquire foreign translation rights. It was therefore crucial that I was able to read quickly in French and German, as well as in Italian, and that I knew English very well because all scout sheets are in English, as they are sent to many clients in different countries. Scouting is a little-known profession outside of publishing, so I also had to understand very well what was required of me. When I did readings for a publisher, I had to evaluate a book according to its publishability for that specific publisher. As a scout, on the other hand, you have many clients, which are publishers of different languages (never two publishers publishing in the same country/language, otherwise they would be in competition). Some are publishing groups comprising dozens of different imprints (publishers in the same group). It is important to get to know all the editors who make acquisitions from abroad and learn to anticipate their tastes and criteria. It also takes some time to understand what is acquired in a particular country and what does well (e.g. Paolo Cognetti in Germany or the Netherlands), or did not work. We receive pdf books from all the agents and publishers in a territory (of a language). We read everything and then send our files to customers. So, say, for an Italian book read, we send the report to the Spanish, French, Turkish, Chinese, American, British, Portuguese, Lithuanian, etc. publishers we work for – who might decide to make an offer to buy the translation rights of that book. Recently, we have also started working with cinema and platforms for adaptations of a book into films or TV series. In short, when we find foreign books in bookshops or watch a film, there was often a scout in the chain that led to the translation and transposition.

Among your ‘discoveries’ as a scout, are there any that were particularly important to you?

I read Viola Ardone‘s Il Treno dei bambini in draft, before any editing, and my colleagues and I immediately realised that the text could travel abroad. Soon after, at the Frankfurt Fair, the novel was sold in more than twenty countries (we are now in more than thirty). The same thing happened with Beatrice Salvioni‘s La malnata, a very successful debut in Italy and abroad, the effectiveness of which we noticed immediately and which several customers acquired. Last year, I read Triste tigre by Neige Sinno, a book with a difficult pitch: a story of sexual abuse in the family. It is an extraordinary text, full of intelligence and anger, which we strongly supported. I am happy that it has received the recognition it deserves (including the Prix Fémina and the European Strega) and that many publishers have competed for it in translation. I conclude with two books that I loved, that travelled abroad and consecrated their authors: Claudia Durastanti’s La straniera and Vincenzo Latronico‘s Le perfezioni.

In the light of your international vision of the book world, what assessment do you think you can give of the Italian publishing system from a European perspective?

There are people of extraordinary competence in the Italian publishing world. The big phenomena are similar everywhere. The fact is that more and more titles are being published – too many. The great success of fantasy, romance (a cross between romance and fantasy) and dark romance (love stories with strong and, at times, toxic and violent overtones) in YA (books for teenagers). The growth of comics and, above all, manga. The strength of female readers, who continue to outnumber male readers. The stable fortune of feel-good, cosy, reassuring books (so-called feel-good, or uplifting novels, which can also mix comedy and mystery or romance and detective stories, as in cosy crimes). The success of the so-called upmarket books, i.e. books for middle- to upper-middle readers, with highly polished writing, but also a catchy plot or a committed theme, and very good commercial potential. Let me give some examples, to clarify, always bearing in mind that genres and registers are not watertight compartments and that commercial success is not proof of a lack of literary quality: Valérie Perrin and Matteo Bussola write upmarket books. Michele Mari, Viola Di Grado and Emanuele Trevi do not (they are literary authors, with recognisable and unrepeatable style and poetics). Felicia Kingsley, on the other hand, is an example of a very good commercial author. As for working conditions, employees in the Italian publishing world are often more precarious and earn less than their counterparts in other countries (but this does not only apply to publishing). There are many women in publishing, and many young women, much more than in other fields. This is good, because usually those who work in publishing want very much to do so – to deal with books. Often those who work in it have trained for it and have a vocation. We are all bibliophiles. Yet this also exposes us to having to accept unfair working conditions. And women tend to do it more, because there is still the problem of unequal pay in the world of work. Because they tend not to be the highest paid worker in a family anyway. They are used to it, I mean. I fear it is a case of a vicious circle of economic fragility being grafted on to a virtuous circle of passion and skills. In Italy more than elsewhere.

The success of a writer in his own country does not immediately translate into success abroad. What ‘type’ of writer sells well abroad? Those writers who are more strongly marked by their national origins (in other words, the more ‘Italian’ ones) or the more international ones?

There are always exceptions. Usually, however, books with a strong geographic and social connotation work, where the Italian character is present according to the idea abroad (Naples, the mountains, a seaside resort, a small town with a closed mentality, Rome, perhaps Milan, etc.), but written in a language that can be translated without losing the author’s character. Hence: not too much dialect and regionalism expressions (except for scattered touches), a syntactically simple structure, but enlivened by memorable similes and metaphors. This is helped by a short prologue that captures the attention, a first-person narrator or at least a strong protagonist, a novel structure that is not too convoluted, a metaliterature that is not too ostentatious (a book that works regardless of the reader’s identification of literary references that are perhaps less well known abroad), and finally a not too intrusive presence of national cultural references that are not explained in the text (music, television, news events, etc.). Elena Ferrante is the perfect example of a literary, sophisticated writer, who, however, has always had a poetic contrast between the environment she writes about (Naples: a city with a baroque and expressionist literary tradition) and a terse, clean, almost algid language (especially in her first novels, where her protagonists had consciously repudiated dialect and Neapolitanism and this was an explicit theme). It is certainly not a deliberate, studied effect, and indeed makes sense in the author’s poetics, but the result is that Ferrante’s novels are very translatable. In translation, the language does not lose its distinctive features and this has contributed to the success. In general, Italy is treated with a certain exoticism. That is: if I buy an Italian book, I want it to be clearly Italian, in a way that is recognisable to foreign readers. So I want the landscape, the food, a way of life, etc. Like we do with almost all other traditions (e.g. Japanese, or South American) except the Anglo-Saxon one. The Anglo-Saxon tradition has become the degree zero, the one with a universal vocation, therefore also, if you like, unconnected. A Sally Rooney novel is almost entirely devoid of geographical-cultural characterisation. They are not young Irish people, normal Irish people. They are normal people.

Do you pay particular attention to literary prizes for unpublished works (such as the Calvino Prize in Italy) or first novel festivals (Laval, Chambéry, Cuneo, etc.)?

We certainly follow them, just as we follow writing schools (I recently found Marta Lamalfa‘s debut, L’isola dove volano le femmine, on which she had worked with the Bottega di Narrazione, truly remarkable). However, we, as scouts, work with a view to foreign translations or film transpositions. With some exceptions, we do not look for unpublished works in the language in which they are written. For this step there are agents and publishers. So we usually receive texts that already have an agent or a publisher, that are in the process of being published.

When reading becomes a professional occupation, how much time remains for the free pleasure of reading and/or re-reading?

Time remains. I read a lot, all the time. I even read more than before. For work, I read quickly and in a very focused manner. It happens that a book I love is unsuitable for foreign customers and I have to write it down in the file. I have to search for them, on their behalf. It also happens that a book that I, as a reader, would not buy, turns out to be full of commercial potential abroad. Then, of course, it is wonderful when the planets align and a beloved book becomes a hit, like Triste Tigre. I happily read books from languages I don’t read for work. Non-contemporary books. Translations from Russian, Hebrew, Korean (I am delighted with the Nobel Prize awarded to Han Kang, a superlative author whom I warmly recommend), Scandinavian languages… I read a lot of poetry. I read in English (a language we do not cover as scouts). I read to write. I read at a different pace: slow, erratic, or fragmentary. I read to study literature. I read to my son and daughter. I listen to audiobooks while cooking, shopping, travelling, hanging laundry, cleaning the house. The flow of storytelling in my head is almost never interrupted.