Elisabetta Dami


Elisabetta Dami is an Italian children's books author who is famous as the creator of the character Geronimo Stilton.

Biography

Dami is the daughter of publisher Piero Dami. At the age of thirteen she started out in the publishing world as a proofreader for the family business and at nineteen she wrote her first short stories.
As an adventure lover, she got her aircraft pilot and parachutist licenses aged 20, and at 23 she traveled around the world on her own and completed a famous survival course at the Outward Bound School in Maine, in the United States. Some of Dami's other adventures include taking part in a rally in the Sahara desert and crossing Africa from north to south in an off-road vehicle; she raced the 100-km Sahara ultramarathon and ran three New York marathons.

The creation of Geronimo Stilton

Her experience as a volunteer with sick children gave her the idea of writing adventure stories with a mouse called Geronimo Stilton as the protagonist. These stories went on to become a famous publishing sensation in Italy and internationally.
For a while I worked as a volunteer in a hospital, and it was there, almost by chance, that I invented Geronimo Stilton … It was at the time when Patch Adams taught the world that children need to laugh to get better. So I started to make up funny stories in which the protagonist was a clumsy mouse called Geronimo Stilton. He would get involved in all sorts of entertaining adventures, full of funny events and twists in the plot, that children found really compelling.

Since then Geronimo Stilton's stories have been translated into 49 languages and have sold more than 161 million copies all over the world.

Charity work

Dami also supports other non-profit organizations and associations with donations and creative projects to raise awareness about their activities and the issues they are involved in.
Elisabetta Dami is part of WWF Italy national board, is ambassador of Antoniano Onlus and Zecchino d'Oro, and is part of Terre des Hommes Italy permanent council.