Michael Curtotti is a Canberra writer. In 2023, he published a new translation of Matteo Bandello’s Romeo and Juliet and in 2025 Cinthio’s Desdemona: The Story that Inspired Othello, the primary Italian source stories for two Shakespeare plays. Both translations are accompanied by extensive commentary. Michael’s first translation was The Dragon the Witch and the Daughters (Il Drago) by Luigi Capuana, a master of the nineteenth century verismo movement. In addition to source stories for Romeo and Juliet and Othello, he also plans to publish annotated translations of the source stories for Twelfth Night, Measure for Measure and Much Ado About Nothing, as part of the series Shakespeare Begins. In 2022, Michael edited Dante Under the Southern Cross 2021: Australian Reflections for the 700th Anniversary of the Passing of Dante Alighieri (Dante Alighieri Society Canberra, 2022). In 2020, Michael published Ten Lives Declaring Human Rights: From Bartolomeo de Las Casas to Martin Luther King Jr. a series of short biographies which tell the story of human rights. Michael has also recently released a bilingual anthology of poetry titled Leo’s Letter and Other Poems. He has written over 390 articles and over half a million words on his writer’s website titled Beyond Foreignness at https://beyondforeignness.org. Michael was born in Italy and grew up in Australia. He is married with three children. He is also an enthusiastic student of Arabic, a language he hopes one day to master.