The joy of exchanging ideas can lead to some surprising encounters, as Antonio Monda well knows: together with his wife, Jacqueline, he has turned his New York City home into the city’s “only remaining cultural salon” (New York Times), where unique friendships, lasting bonds, and social connections are made. Incontri ravvicinati (Close Encounters) is a collection of portraits of the actors, directors, artists, writers, and singers whose lives have become entwined with the author’s, some ships passing in the night, others for life. Icons of the caliber of Marina Abramović, Wes Anderson, James Ellroy, Lucio Dalla, Jane Fonda, Stephen King, and Susan Sontag turn into real men and women on the page, with their joys and sorrows, their lived lives, their struggles against shyness, or worse. And their irony or artistry, as a response. The introduction was penned by Jonathan Safran Foer.

Antonio Monda lives in New York. A writer, an NYU Associate Professor and the Artistic Director of the international literary festival Le Conversazioni, which he co-founded in 2006, with Davide Azzolini, he was also the Artistic Director of the Rome Film Festival from 2015 until 2021. He has taken the director’s chair, as well, on several documentaries as well as his 1990 feature film Dicembre, which premiered at Venice. Since 2003, Monda has written several novels and works of criticism, such as La magnifica illusione (Efebo d’Oro Award for the best book about film); and the novels L’America non esiste (Cortina d’Ampezzo Prize); L’evidenza delle cose non viste (Special Mention at the Giulietta awards); and Io sono il fuoco (Biagio Agnes Award). Over the course of his career, he has curated exhibitions for the Louvre, MoMA, Lincoln Center, and the Guggenheim, and he is a regular contributor to the cultural pages of La Repubblica, La Stampa and RAI. In 2023, he received the Amerigo National Journalism Prize for his magazine articles.