Elisabetta Dami

Elisabetta Maria Dami (born 1 January 1958) is an Italian children's book author who is best known for creating the book series Geronimo Stilton. Dami is the daughter of publisher Piero Dami (who founded Dami Editore in 1972). 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. 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 (in 2002, 2003, and 2017).