Book Launch: The Choice

A Novel by Orsola Severini

Date: Wednesday, November 19, 2025
Time: 2:00pm - 3:30pm ET
Location: Online
Register: https://yorku.zoom.us/meeting/register/dA3uPmh8Tyac588I7347Vw

Join author Orsola Severini, translator Veronica Frigeni, and Professor Andrea O’Reilly for the launch of The Choice, a powerful memoir on motherhood, loss, and reproductive justice in Italy. Published by Demeter Press, this conversation explores how personal storytelling can become a collective act of healing and resistance.

Orsola Severini was born in Rome in 1981 to a French mother and an Italian father. She studied Contemporary History at the Sorbonne in Paris, where she also earned a master's degree in Linguistics. In addition to teaching French, she writes about history and culture for the online newspaper Globalist.

She made her debut in 2021 with the autobiographical novel Il Consolo, in which she recounts her painful experience of a therapeutic abortion. In 2023, she published the short story Yesterday in the women's anthology Arripizzari. Her latest novel, La quarta compagna, published by Fandango in 2024, explores the role of women in the Italian Resistance.