Rosa Cappiello

Rosa Raffaella Cappiello (1942 – 4 September 2008) was an Italian writer, best known for Oh Lucky Country, which won the 1981 Premio Calabria Prize and the 1985 NSW Premier's Literary Awards' Multicultural NSW Award.

Early life Born in Naples, Italy in 1942, Cappiello migrated to Australia in 1971. Arriving in Sydney as an unskilled worker with no English, Cappiello found work in clothing factories, where she experienced discrimination and exploitation.

Career Cappiello's first book, I Semi Neri, was published in Italy in 1977, but was mostly written prior to moving to Australia. Within a month of publication, it had sold 70,000 copies. Cappiello spent a year as writer-in-residence at the University of Wollongong and worked on the English translation with Gaetano Rando. Paese Fortunato: Romanzo, Feltrinelli, Milan, 1981 Oh Lucky Country, translated by Gaetano Rando, UQP, 1984