Luciana Percovich (1947) – Born in Gorizia to an Austro-Dalmatian family of Italian language and culture, she graduated in Lingue e Letterature Moderne, at Università degli Studi di Milano. She joined the first self-consciousness groups of the early Seventies and became involved in various projects (Lotta Femminista, Medicina delle Donne e consultorio autogestito in Bovisa, Libreria delle Donne, Libera Università delle Donne). In that period, she came across the pamphlet Witches, Midwives and Nurses/Complaints and Disorders by B. Ehrenreich and D. English, which she translated and published as Le Streghe siamo noi (Celuc Libri-La Salamandra), thereby launching the Il Vaso di Pandora series. She also collaborated with La Tartaruga Edizioni and published on women’s medicine, science, and literature in feminist periodicals (Sottosopra, Orsaminore, Reti, Lapis, Fluttuaria, Madreperla).

Subsequently, she collaborated with various women’s associations, including Le Melusine, Milano (her course L’etica necessaria, eredità materna e passione politica, 1993, was translated by Silvia Tubert as Figuras de la madre, Madrid, 1996), the Centro Documentazione Donne, Firenze, and the Margaret Fuller, Pescara. In 1990, she received the City of Monselice Award for her translation of Diario di una Astronauta (Memoirs of a Spacewoman) by Naomi Mitchison, La Tartaruga, 1988.

In 1999, at the international conference “Le Radici prime dell’Europa”, in Milano, she met Joan Marler and, through her, she discovered the work of Marija Gimbutas (From the Realm of the Ancestors, 1998). Another important encounter at the turn of the millennium was with Mary Daly, who was invited to Italy by Libera Università delle donne. Later, in Bologna, she met Sandra Schiassi (Associazione Armonie) and the publisher Chiara Orlandini. With the publication of Daly’s Quintessenza in 2005, Venexia’s Le Civette–I Saggi series, dedicated to women’s history and spirituality, began.

Also in 2005, La coscienza nel corpo. Donne, salute e medicina negli anni Settanta was published by F. Angeli, followed in 2007 by Oscure Madri Splendenti. Le radici del sacro e delle religioni and in 2009 by Colei che dà la vita. Colei che dà la forma. Miti di creazione femminili in the Venexia series (e-book, She who gives life, She who gives Form, Venexia).

During the subsequent years, she contributed to the translation and introduction to the Italian audience of several authors such as Vicki Noble, Starhawk, Phillis Curott, among others, while her research focused on prehistory, mythology, and matriarchal cultures. Together with Associazione Laima in Torino (Morena Luciani, Sarah Perini, and Daniela Degan), she organized the international conferences “Culture Indigene di Pace” (https://morenalucianirusso.eu/laima/ 2012, 2013, 2016) and a conference on Marija Gimbutas (Venti anni di Studi sulla Dea – Rome 2014). In 2016, Castelvecchi published Verso il Luogo delle Origini, an anthology of her writings between 1982 and 2014.

She moved to the countryside to live on her family’s small organic farm. She began working in Crones circles, became a grandmother, and in 2020, together with A. De Nardis and E. Visciola, she launched the website Preistoria in Italia. In 2024, she co-authored Cronario. Dizionario per immaginare futuri diversi, Vanda E.

www.preistoriainitalia.it
www.autricidicivilta.it
www.universitadelledonne.it
https://independent.academia.edu/LucianaPercovich
https://tempiodelladea.org