Anita
Likmeta

​​Anita Likmeta was born in Durrës at the twilight of Albania’s communist regime. In 1997, at the age of eleven, she emigrated to Italy, stepping into a long process of reconciling identity, between the pull of belonging and the feeling of being other. She completed her secondary education at Liceo Classico, Italy’s rigorous classical high school with a curriculum rooted in ancient languages, literature, and philosophy. She later completed advanced studies in Literature and Philosophy at Sapienza University of Rome. Her academic trajectory was shaped by a specialization in medieval, modern, and contemporary history, culminating in a dissertation on the political and cultural relations between Italy and Albania during the interwar period (1922–1943). Her research focused on the narrative construction of historical memory and the subtle operations of power inscribed in language and representation. She later turned to entrepreneurship, merging cultural vision with innovation, and in 2021 was named one of Europe’s 50 most influential InspiringFifty role models by Corriere della Sera. Politically active, in 2022 she ran in the Italian general elections, becoming the first first-generation Albanian woman to stand for a seat in Parliament. From 2020 to 2023, she served as an ambassador for Connect Albania, an IOM – UN initiative aimed at strengthening ties between the Albanian diaspora and their country of origin. In 2024, she made her literary debut with Le favole del comunismo (The Fairy Tales of Communism), Marsilio Editori, a novel that earned several prestigious accolades, including the Viareggio-Rèpaci International Prize and the Giuseppe Dessì Literary Award. In 2025, again with Marsilio, she published L’aquila nera (The Black Eagle), a memoir-essay that revisits a suppressed history of fascism in Albania. Her work also appears in Oltre/Përtej, a bilingual anthology of Albanian poets in Italy (Besa Muci Editore), mapping a transnational generation shaped by the migratory wave of the early 1990s. She has written for La Biennale di Venezia and contributes to various international publications.