Aqua: A Story of Water and Lost Dreams by Chiara Barzini

Rizzoli Bookstore is delighted to partner with the Bridge Book Award for the launch of Chiara Barzini's Aqua: A Story of Water and Lost Dreams, as a part of the NYC Art and Craft in Translation Meetings and Dialogues on Literary Translation festival from April 13th to 15th.

For this particular event, please join us in collaboration with the Giancarlo DiTrapano Foundation of Literature and the Arts to celebrate Barzini's latest book, a hybrid memoir that explores how water shaped the city of Los Angeles and the history of film. She will be in conversation with Lily Anolik and Katie Kitamura, followed by a signing.

This is part of a three-day program, curated by Maria Ida Gaeta, with organizational support of Cathe Giffuni, Maria Gliozzi, Maria Letizia Rossi, and the collaboration of the representatives of the Institutions and Universities hosting the events, including the Italian Cultural Institute in New York, FUIS (Federazione Unitaria Italiana Scrittori), the CUNY Graduate Center, Hunter College — CUNY, Casa Italiana Zerilli Marimò at NYU, Hunter College, the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute at Queens College, and Rizzoli Bookstore.

Art and Craft in Translation was created to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Bridge Book Award (which over the course of its 10 editions has promoted 200 titles and as many authors, financing the translation of 40 books from Italian into English and vice versa) and to continue the reflections developed within the Festival “Multipli Forti — Voices from Contemporary Italian Literature” (which in its recent editions has presented more than 60 authors with their unpublished works to the New York public).

PLEASE NOTE: RSVPs are encouraged but not required. Seating is limited and will be first come, first served. Doors open at 4:45 pm.

Can't attend? (please specify that you would like it signed in the comments box at checkout).

A hybrid of memoir, travel and cultural history that explores how water altered LA and the history of film.

In 1913, William Mulholland finished building the Los Angeles Aqueduct — a 233-mile engineering masterwork transporting water from the Owens Valley, across the desert, to a barren corner of California that would become the home of filmmaking. Over one hundred years later, award-winning Italian author and filmmaker Chiara Barzini traces the geography of the aqueduct, from its source, across the desert, to the city that it helped into existence, all while reckoning with her personal history with the landscape.

From the "fake" waters of the Universal Studios Jaws attraction to Salton Sea — California’s largest lake and "the only man-made mistake visible from space" — Aqua explores how water, and its absence, shaped both a modern landscape and the history of film. A blend of travel writing, philosophy, cultural history and memoir, Aqua is a hugely entertaining and wide-ranging exploration of water, film, dreams versus reality and an empire on the brink of catastrophe.

"Outrageously good … An unforgettable book" – OLIVIA LAING

"Reverie and road-trip, Aqua succeeds in turning the Cadillac Desert and Land of Little Rain into something lush and unexpected … Chiara Barzini ducts and dives through a wonderful and revelatory journey" - GEOFF DYER

Chiara Barzini is an award-winning Italian screen and fiction writer. She lived and studied in the United States where she covered Lifestyle and Culture stories for numerous American and Italian publications including Vogue, T Magazine, Vice, Harper's, and Rolling Stone. She writes and translates both in English and Italian and is the author of the short story collection Sister Stop Breathing (Calamari Press) and the novel Things That Happened Before The Earthquake (Doubleday) which was a Best Book of the Year for Esquire, Elle, Bustle, BBC, Oprah Magazine, and The New York Times. Her debut non-fiction book AQUA: A Story of Water and Lost Dreams (Unnamed Press) was a Times Literary Supplement Best of 2025 . She has a regular column in D Repubblica and is a Literature Advisor at the American Academy in Rome.

Lili Anolik is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. She was a finalist for the 2024 National Magazine Award in profile writing. She is the creator of the podcasts Once Upon a Time… in the Valley and Once Upon a Time… at Bennington College. Her latest book, Didion & Babitz, a national bestseller, was published last year by Scribner.

Katie Kitamura’s most recent novel is Audition. A finalist for the Booker Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, the Joyce Carol Oates Prize and the Gotham Book Prize, it was one of President Obama’s Favorite Books of 2025. It was also longlisted for the Women’s Prize and the Carol Shields Prize. Her previous novel, Intimacies, was one of The New York Times’ 10 Best Books of 2021, was longlisted for the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award, and was one of President Obama’s Favorite Books of 2021. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Cullman Center Fellowship, the Rome Prize in Literature and the Prix Litteraire Lucien Barriere, Kitamura’s work has been translated into 29 languages and is being adapted for film. She teaches in the Creative Writing Program at New York University.

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