Alessandro Combina (he/him) was born and raised in Turin, Italy, where he earned both his bachelor's and master's degrees in comparative literature. With his strong interests in non-realistic literature, his BA thesis focused on the ambiguous relationship between fantastic literature and the concept of identity. Later, he worked on the “New Weird,” a literary genre akin to speculative fiction that arose in the 1990s in the U.S. but soon landed in Italy as well. His studies have also focused on uchrony and the fantastic in Italo Calvino. He recently worked in Italy as a high school teacher and as a copywriter. His current interests include the links between non-realistic literature and the tools of ecological criticism developed in recent years.