Adria Bernardi was selected as the recipient of the 2007 Raiziss/de Palchi Fellowship Academy of American Poets. This $20,000 prize is awarded every other year to enable an American translator to travel, study, or otherwise advance a significant in-progress translation of modern Italian poetry.
   
The award allows Ms. Bernardi to complete her translation of Small Talk by Raffaello Baldini. She also receives a residency at the American Academy in Rome. The judges for the Fellowship were Eamon Grennan, Geoffrey Brock, and Stephen Sartarelli.
Geoffrey Brock says of her translation:

“Bernardi's ear for the immediacies of Baldini's speech patterns as they come into writing is, on the evidence of these translations, remarkable. She produces a wonderfully kinetic mélange of speech and observation, catching exactly the hurry as well as the colloquial wisdom marking each poem. Each translation manages to create a true ‘character’—a persona through which we can hear the living sound of this bustling, crowded, factually packed, local life. In this, she performs with great effect the true "bringing-over" task of the translator.”
    
Raffaello Baldini was born in 1924 in Santarcangelo di Romagna, and lived in Milan from 1955 until his death in 2005. His collections of poetry, all written in the romagnole dialect, include E'solitèri, La nàiva, Furistír, and Ad Nòta (Mondadori, 1995), with an introduction by Pier Vincenzo Mengaldo. He received the Dino Campana Award, the Bagutta Prize, and the 1988 Viareggio Prize—the first time the prize was awarded to a work written in dialect.