Paolo Cognetti was born in Milan in 1978. He made his début with a number of short story collections published by Minimum Fax. He has written The Wild Boy - Il ragazzo selvatico (Terre di Mezzo, 2013), **The Eight Mountains **- Le otto montagne (Einaudi, 2016), Without Ever Reaching the Summit - _Senza mai arrivare in cima _(Einaudi, 2018), The Happiness of the Wolf - La felicità del lupo (Einaudi, 2021) and Giù nella valle (Einaudi, 2023).
In 2021 he edited _L’Antonia _about Antonia Pozzi (Ponte alle Grazie). 2021 also saw the release, both as a film-documentary and a podcast, _Big North - _Paolo Cognetti. Sogni di Grande Nord. _
For The Eight Mountains, which has been translated for release in over 40 countries, in 2017 he won the Strega Prize (Italy's most prestigious literary award), the Premio Strega Giovani and the Prix Médicis étranger. The film, based on the book of the same title, won the Jury Prize at the 2022 Cannes Film and four David di Donatello 2023 including Best Film.
