Benedetti, Laura: - Laura Benedetti is the Laura and Gaetano De Sole Professor of Contemporary Italian Culture at Georgetown University. The author of numerous volumes and essays that cover seven hundred years of Italian literature, from Dante to Elena Ferrante, she was awarded the Flaiano International Prize for her monograph The Tigress in the Snow: Motherhood and Literature in 20th-Century Italy, and has received grants and fellowships from the Renaissance Society of America, the Bogliasco Foundation, and the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation. A Country of Paper is her first novel, followed by Secondo Piano (Second Story).