About Me — Gianluca Alfò. A storyteller shaped by Rome, Greek… | by Gianluca Alfò | Nov, 2025

It’s a sultry summer day. You’ve just sprinted through the airport, dodging businessmen in sharp suits, clusters of oversized luggage belonging to big tourist families who decided to spend the night on the floor, and couples in love just back from Paris, Madrid, London, or New York.
You make it past the gate and end up on an overcrowded shuttle bus, people packed in like sardines in a tin can. Sweat runs down your neck and soaks into your shirt.

After a few minutes on the shaky bus, you finally step out. Your shoe lands on the scorching tarmac, and in front of you stands a towering aircraft. You climb the stairs one by one, the air growing heavier with each step, until you find yourself at the door.

You close your eyes. Your heart races. The knot in your throat tightens. For a moment, you think about the reason that brought you here and the journey you’re about to begin. You take a deep breath and cross the threshold.

Hi, my name is Gianluca, and the feelings I’ve just described to you are pretty much the same ones I experience every time I decide to put my heart into a story and share it with the world.

Stories have always been my favorite thing, ever since I was a child. I grew up in the center of Rome, just steps away from monuments that shaped history and streets overflowing with global tourism. At home, I was lucky enough to be surrounded by a massive bookshelf and a mother who helped me fall asleep by reading Greek and Roman myths, and who would always tell me what she found so magnetic about Stephen King’s last horror.

At school, my Italian literature teacher, Navid, kept pushing me to read poem after poem, to write my own, and to never let mental laziness take over or slip into the ordinary.

I only started writing at fifteen, though. After a heartbreak, I stumbled almost by accident into this way of unloading everything I was carrying inside — first through songs, rap verses, short lines, and eventually through more structured pieces as the years went by.

Now I’m here to keep writing, express myself freely, and build a space of my own. You can expect poems and short pieces, but also unsettling stories and excerpts from the novel I’m working on — a zombie tale set in Italy, a story about connection and isolation.

So if you decide to step in, think of it the same way you’d board that plane on a scorching summer day: a little breathless, a little nervous, but ready to see where the journey leads.