What Italian journalist and writer's short stories is one of the episodes of L'amore difficle based on?
Italo Calvino
Title: Luciano Bianciardi
Passage: Luciano Bianciardi (] ; 14 December 1922 – 14 November 1971) was an Italian journalist, translator and writer of short stories and novels.
Title: Corrado Alvaro
Passage: Corrado Alvaro (15 April 1895 in San Luca – 11 June 1956 in Rome) was an Italian journalist and writer of novels, short stories, screenplays and plays.  He often used the "verismo" style to describes the hopeless poverty in his native Calabria.  His first success was "Gente in Aspromonte" (Revolt in Aspromonte), which examined the exploitation of rural peasants by greedy landowners in Calabria, and is considered by many critics to be his masterpiece.
Title: Giorgio Manganelli
Passage: Giorgio Manganelli (15 November 1922 – 28 May 1990) was an Italian journalist, avant-garde writer, translator and literary critic.  A native of Milan, he was one of the leaders of the avant-garde literary movement in Italy in the 1960s.  He was a baroque and expressionist writer.  Manganelli translated Edgar Allan Poe's complete stories and authors like T. S. Eliot, Henry James, Eric Ambler, O. Henry, Ezra Pound, Robert Louis Stevenson, Byron's "Manfred" and others into Italian.  He published an experimental work of fiction, "Hilarotragoedia", in 1964, at the time he was a member of the avant-garde "Gruppo 63" (Group 63).  "Centuria", which won the Viareggio Prize is probably his most approachable; it was translated into English in 2005 by Henry Martin.  "Agli dei ulteriori" comprises a linked collection of short pieces including an exchange of letters between Hamlet and the Princess of Cleves and concludes with a fake learned article on the language of the dead.  He died in Rome in 1990.  He was an atheist.
Title: Francesco D'Isa
Passage: Francesco D'Isa is an Italian artist, writer, journalist and art curator.  He studied philosophy in Florence, Italy.  He's self-taught as an artist: his fascination with visual imagery has driven him to master the required skills.  He's a pioneer of digital art in Italy, but his drawing abilities let him work with traditional media as well.  He was the co-founder of the Italian art & literature magazine "Mostro", where he published his first artworks.  After that, his digital and traditional artworks were featured in many magazines around the world, like "Expose III", Ballistic Publishing (US); "Pixel Surgeons: Extreme manipulation of the figure in Photography", Mitchell Beazley Art & Design, Octopus ed.  (UK); "Black magic, White Noise" ed "Illusive 3", Die Gestalten Verlag (Germany); "Design 360°", SanDu Culture ed.  (China), GQ magazine (Italy), Inside Art (Italy).  His accolade in contemporary art practice has been recognised with several art prizes.  He has exhibited internationally from Italy, Germany, Holland, Switzerland, England, US, Australia, Russia, South America.  His theory and practice has been extended as a workshop leader and lecturer in multimedia.  In 2007 he became "Pornpope" founding the porn-artistic collective Pornsaints.  He organized for Pornsaints international art exhibitions and parties in art galleries and erotic festivals, both in Europe and USA.  Moreover, through his work as "Pornpope" many international porn stars like Kylie Ireland, Stoya, Madison Young, Sasha Grey and Ariel Rebel acted for him as muses, models and working partners.  In 2009 his art has been chosen for the image of the Italian fashion brand bigfatfanny and featured at the fashion fair "Pitti Immagine" 2010.  In 2010, his comic "I., a comic drawn by everyone" become a regular blog of the Italian online newspaper "Il Post"; in November 2011 "I." has been published as an illustrated book by Nottempo (Italy).  In 2013, his short stories has been published in "Selezione Naturale", Effequ (Italy) and "Toscani Maledetti", Piano B (Italy) and his short comic "Liebe macht nicht frei, baby!"  as ebook for Retina Comics.  His first novel, "Anna - storia di un palindromo" has been published in 2014 by Effequ (Italy), his second novel, "Ultimo piano (o porno totale)", by Imprimatur (Italy) in 2015, the third "La Stanza di Therese", by Tunué (Italy) in 2017.  He regularly writes for "Il Post" (Italy) and RT Book Reviews (USA).  Since 2015, he's head editor of the Italian magazine L'INDISCRETO.
Title: Vugar Aslanov
Passage: Vugar Aslanov (born 1964 in Goranboy, Azerbaijan) is a writer and journalist from Azerbaijan.  In college he studied literature.  By the 1990s he was working in Baku for various newspapers.  He and the information agency Səmt (Drift) founded the newspaper, Kompas, which he ran from 1995 to 1998.  During that time he edited a book of short stories and also wrote short stories.  Many of his stories were published by the writers union of Azerbaijan in its literary magazines.  He emigrated from Azerbaijanin in 1998 to Germany.  In Germany he was able to continue his journalistic and literary work.  He lectured and wrote about the various republics in the former Soviet Union.  In 2007 he wrote a book in German called "The Cotton Fields."  "The Cotton Fields" is a volume of seven of his short stories on aspects of life; for example, in one story his protagonist is a hospital's very tired accountant.
Title: Italo Calvino
Passage: Italo Calvino (] ; 15 October 1923 – 19 September 1985) was an Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels.  His best known works include the "Our Ancestors" trilogy (1952–1959), the "Cosmicomics" collection of short stories (1965), and the novels "Invisible Cities" (1972) and "If on a winter's night a traveler" (1979).
Title: Shihabuddin Poythumkadavu
Passage: Thoniyan Puthiyapurayil Shihabuddin, better known as Shihabuddin Poythumkadavu,(Malayalam: ശിഹാബുദ്ദീൻ പൊയ്ത്തുംകടവ് ; born 29 October 1963) is an Indian writer, journalist, poet, orator and television personality.  He is a creative writer in Malayalam who has been writing short stories, novellas, novels, essays and poems since 1982.  His works have appeared in all leading Malayalam magazines viz. " Mathrubhumi" weekly, "Malayala Manorama" annuals, "India Today", "Bhashaposhini", "Kerala Kaumudi" and the "Samakalika Malayalam" weekly.  Most of his books have run into multiple editions with the sales of each book crossing around 10,000 copies.  His stories have been prescribed by the Kerala State Education Board, University of Calicut, Mahatma Gandhi University and Kerala University as text books.  He has also been translated to English (published in "Indian Literature", the journal of the cultural ministry of India), Hindi, Tamil and Arabic.  He has been felicitated with awards several times by organizations such as the Kerala Sahitya Akademi (the supreme cultural body of the state government of Kerala), various other literary and cultural societies in India and abroad.  He has scripted and directed many tele-films and serials, for Doordarshan, Asianet and Surya TV, including the script for one of the first mega serials in the Malayalam television, "Kasavu".  As a literary journalist, Shihabuddin has associated with three major weeklies: "Poonkavanam" (Kozhikode), "Pravaasachandrika" (Dubai) and "Gulf Life" (Abu Dhabi) in the capacity of editor and chief editor.  He has traveled extensively in Middle Eastern countries such as the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Qatar and Bahrain, accepting the invitation of Malayali literary and cultural organizations.  He was the Chief Programme Designer, Rahma Television Productions, in Kozhikode.  Now Shihabuddin is working as periodical editor of "Chandrika" daily, in Kozhikode.  His essay collection titled "Marujeevitham" that based on the Middle East diaspora published in 2014 had received well.  Shihabuddin Poythumkadavu's books were translated into Arabic,Kannada,Tamil, Telugu, French and English.  "Yarrikkum vendatha kan" his exclusive Tamil collection of short stories Translated by KV Shylaja, published by vamshi books, tiruvannamalai.
Title: Carl Richard Jacobi
Passage: Carl Richard Jacobi (July 10, 1908 – August 25, 1997) was an American journalist and author.  He wrote short stories in the horror and fantasy genres for the pulp magazine market, appearing in such pulps of the bizarre and uncanny as Thrilling, "Ghost Stories", Startling Stories, Thrilling Wonder Stories, Planet Stories and Strange Stories.  He also write stories crime and adventure which appeared in such pulps as Thrilling Adventures, "Complete Stories", Top-Notch, Short Stories, The Skipper, Doc Savage, and "Dime Adventures Magazine".  He also produced some science fiction, mainly space opera, published in such magazines as Planet Stories.  He was one of the last surviving pulp-fictioneers to have contributed to the legendary American horror magazine "Weird Tales" during its "glory days" (the 1920s and 1930s).  His stories have been translated into French, Swedish, Danish and Dutch.
Title: Vacuum Diagrams
Passage: Vacuum Diagrams is a collection of science fiction short stories by British writer Stephen Baxter.  The collection connects the novels of the Xeelee Sequence and also shows the history of mankind in the Xeelee universe, and ultimately the universe.  While each short story in the collection is self-contained, the stories are presented as being contained in the context of the first story, "Eve", about a man (seemingly Jack Raoul from the portion of the timeline concerned with the silver ghosts) who is forced to witness the events in the short stories by a god-like being.  "Eve" acts as a structure for the short stories, with an introduction at the beginning of "Vacuum Diagrams", short scenes occurring between each "era" (with "Eve" character explaining and introducing the next section), and an ending that wraps up the plot for the "Eve" story itself.  "Vacuum Diagrams" won the Philip K. Dick Award in 1999.
Title: L'amore difficile
Passage: L'amore difficile (internationally released as Of Wayward Love and as Sex Can Be Difficult) is a 1962 Italian comedy anthology film.  The film represents the directorial debut of the four authors, that however were all experienced in other areas of the cinematographic industry (Manfredi and Bonucci as actors, Lucignani and Sollima as writers).  The four episodes are based on short stories of well-known Italian novelists ( Mario Soldati, Alberto Moravia, Italo Calvino and Ercole Patti) and share the themes of love and betrayal.
Italo Calvino L'amore difficile