2025 Author Ambassador: Tom Benjamin

Hello to our blog’s community of readers! Leading up to the beginning of the Bologna Book Fair at the end of the month, I have been focusing on some of the amazing events organised this year.
 

Today it’s all about the Author Ambassador, an initiative intended to celebrate an author and their work. The 2025 title holder for this programme is the critically acclaimed author Tom Benjamin. He has been the mind behind the fascinating Daniel Leicester mysteries based in Bologna. Benjamin has an interesting background as a journalist and Scotland Yard spokesman, who then moved to Bologna with his Italian wife and took inspiration from his new life to create these incredibly absorbing detective stories. The first book A Quiet Death in Italy was published in 2019. Since then, there have been another five books with the seventh The Stolen Children coming up this year. However, we are hoping they will soon be translated into Italian and make them more accessible to the local readership. 

Bologna is grateful for the interest the Leicester series have sparked towards the city’s history, tradition and contemporary developments. For this reason, it is an honour to make Benjamin our Ambassador and work with him throughout the fair. On Tuesday 1st of April he will be contributing to our AI Summit sessions, speaking about the values of AI and the way it can benefit authors to find their own niche in a content rich world. Later that day, he will also be in conversation with Natasha Poliszckuk of BolognaBookPlus. There are many other events in programme which you can find on the full schedule of the fair now live on the official website: Programma eventi 2025. 

See you in Bologna!

- Lara Abrahams