Viola Di Grado Photo: Michele Panduri.
Italian writer Viola di Grado is fascinated by language. A graduate from Turin in Chinese and Japanese, her first novel 30 percent wool, 70 percent acrylic won awards at home for "linguistic invention pushed to the visionary".
Viola is here as part of the Auckland Writers Festival, and also appearing in Wellington on Tuesday, talking with Dr Claudia Bernardi, at Victoria University's Kelburn campus, about How to be Viola Di Grado.