Magis BANCOMAT Award for Italian fiction: telling the world, making it a better place

The presentation press conference held today, Monday, May 5, 2025, at the Ara Pacis Museum was attended by: Franco Dalla Sega, Annamaria Malato, Sebastiano Nata and Sandra Petrignani.

The Prize allocates 250,000 euros to the humanitarian organizations selected by the organizers. The amount will be invested in projects aimed at reducing hunger, promoting education and supporting women's entrepreneurship.

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The first edition of the Magis BANCOMAT Award, created on the initiative of Fondazione 153, with the participation of Bancomat as main sponsor, and the support of the Silvano Toti Foundation.

The Prize aims to celebrate Italian literature, also by promoting solidarity projects, and is divided into two sections: the Magis BANCOMAT Literature Award, for established authors, and the Magis BANCOMAT Debutants Award.

”The importance of the written word as a tool of knowledge, support for new generations, a company that wants to be at the service of Italians by innovating without abandoning the historic values that belong to us. All this is for us the Magis Bancomat Award”, said the president of Bancomat Franco Dalla Sega. “We are proud that the Bancomat brand is in the name of such an initiative. And we will be enthusiastically alongside prestigious jurors, brilliant writers and writers who will thus contribute to making our country grow”.

The jury that will select the most deserving works is chaired by Marco Lodoli is composed of authoritative writers, literary critics and representatives of the cultural world: Giulia Caminito, Andrea Carraro, Carlo D'Amicis, Donatella Di Cesare, Angelo Ferracuti, Maria Ida Gaeta, Filippo La Porta, Carlo Lucarelli, Annamaria Malato, Sebastiano Nata, Valeria Parrella, Sandra Petrignani, Roberto Saviano, Gianluigi Simonetti, Antonio Spadaro, Elena Stancanelli, Emanuele Trevi and Sandro Veronesi.

The Magis BANCOMAT Award will allocate the sum of 250,000 euros to the humanitarian organizations pre-selected by Bancomat and the 153 Foundation. For 2025 they are: Food Bank, Busajo, Caritas, Rwanda Project and Save The Children.

The winners of the two competing categories will have the task of deciding how to distribute the amount allocated to solidarity initiatives: a unique opportunity to celebrate creativity and to finance humanitarian projects.

“The work of the writer and the work of those who work in the humanitarian field seem very different, but instead they have common characteristics. They require time, creativity, intelligence, a lot of effort. There are no shortcuts, it takes perseverance. Every book and every poor person, who helps themselves to become an autonomous and free being, need the same affectionate care. Greater justice is also important to let us taste the beauty that is in things. This is why our manifesto phrase to tell the world, to make it a better place, even if ambitious, faithfully represents the spirit that guides us” said Sebastiano Nata, Chairman of the Steering Committee.

The winner of the Magis BANCOMAT Literature Prize, in fact, in addition to receiving a prize worth 10,000 euros, will have to choose how to distribute the 130,000 euros allocated to Busajo, Caritas, Rwanda Project and Save The Children. Each humanitarian organization will receive 27,500 euros, while the chosen one will receive an additional 20,000 euros.

To the winner of the Magis BANCOMAT Debutants Award a prize worth 4,000 euros will be awarded. He will then have to distribute the 120,000 euros among the four projects of Food Bank pre-selected. Each of the projects will receive 27,000 euros while the chosen one will get an additional 12,000 euros.

”We increasingly believe that literature can move things at least a little, inside and outside of us, creating beauty, awareness, participation, in the hope that everything can be modified, because this is the task of human beings: to understand, to tell and connect, to improve. We are in a time that surpasses vanity, the time of attention to the world and to the life of those who must never be forgotten, because all lives are small, they are big, they are important” he said Marco Lodoli, President of the Prize Jury.

Works of Italian fiction published between August 1, 2024 and July 31, 2025, will compete for the Magis BANCOMAT Prize. The texts may be indicated by the publishers, who must send 25 copies of the work to the organizational secretariat, no later than August 5, 2025. Each publisher can submit a maximum of 2 works (one for each section of the Prize). Even the members of the jury will be able to select works considered worthy.

For more detailed information and for the regulations, please consult the website www.premiomagisbancomat.it.

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