Paola Loreto was born in Bergamo (Italy) in 1964, and teaches American Literature at the University of Milan. She is the author of six books of poetry – Miei lari (My Lares, Marcos y Marcos, 2024), case | spogliamenti (houses | stripped, Aragno 2016), In quota (Interlinea 2012), La memoria del corpo (The Body’s Memory, Crocetti 2007), Addio al decoro (A Farewell to Decorum, LietoColle 2006), L’acero rosso (The Red Maple, Crocetti 2002) – and of the plaquettes Spiazzi dell’acqua (pulcinoelefante 2008), Ascesa (pulcinoelefante 2018), and Avola (Volo) (Luciano Ragozzino, 2019). She has published poems in literary journals and magazines, such as Poesia, and L’Almanacco dello Specchio Mondadori. Her books have won a number of prizes and awards, among which are a residency at the Centre de Poésie & Traduction of the Royaumont Foundation in Paris, and a Copeland Fellowship (Amherst College, MA). Her poems have been translated into English, Spanish, Portuguese and Polish. A chapbook, houses | stripped, with translations by international translator and translation theorist Lawrence Venuti, was published in the US by Toad Press in 2018, after having appeared in the American magazine, Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts (vol. 30, no. 1, Winter/Spring 2018). In quota has found a new, enlarged, edition in 2024 as In quota e altre ascese.

As a scholar, Paola has published three books on Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, and Derek Walcott. She translates American poets, and contributes to Poesia, the most widely spread Italian poetry magazine, and to a number of American Literature publications, both in Italy and in the United States.