When young Tommy works up the courage to tell his father that he wants to be a writer and, who knows, even teach others to love literature, the response is a laconic: «You’ll get over it!». As if it were a contagious disease! The long journey of a young man to make his dream come true starts here in beautiful and gossipy Barletta. Because Tommy, who in the meantime has become a man, still has the “disease”, which has become chronic, driving him to flood the schools in his region with pressing requests. Until, finally, his phone rings and he ends up in front of a class of teen-agers, the first of many. He knows how to provoke these kids, how to catch them off guard, forcing them to open up. These are kids used to a school increasingly similar to a hospital that refuses the ill and cures the healthy. Teaching creative writing also opens the door for Tommy to worlds inhabited by fragile people: prison, a mental health centre and an old people’s home, where Tommy attends his own personal school of life. He meets Pino, called Pinuccia, who cultivates the aspirations of a vamp imprisoned in a man’s body, Peppe, the little boy who wants to be a shark, Gino, who talks about death in exchange for a lemon drop and then, Michele, Pierluigi, Domenico, Carmine and Matteo who all fight their personal demons by rapping. These are faces Tommy will never forget and voices he will hear forever. The authorTommy Dibari (Barletta, 1974) is a writer, TV author, advertising expert and teacher of creative writing at the Centro Internazionale Alti Studi Universitari. He was among the authors of TV programmes like Striscia la Notizia, Artù, Paperissima and Paperissima Sprint. He has written for the cinema and theatre and also writes song lyrics. Together with Fabio Di Credico he wrote La Cambusa. Storia d’amore e di altre malattie (Rizzoli, 2007) and Non ho tempo da perdere (Cairo, 2011). In 2015, Cairo published his book Sarò vostra figlia se non mi fate mangiare le zucchine.
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