Franco Nembrini was born in Trescore Balneario, in the province of Bergamo, on August 15, 1955. The fourth of ten siblings, he understood at the age of 12 that literature could guide him in the journey of his life and promised his teacher that he, too, would become an Italian Literature teacher.

He started high school but was forced to leave school at the age of sixteen when his family ran into economic difficulties, and he went to work in a factory. When he was eighteen, he decided to take a high school equivalency exam in order to get a diploma from a specialized high school for educators. In three months of “mad and most desperate study” (a quotation borrowed from Leopardi, the poet who, together with Dante, is the object of Franco’s great passion) he learned the curriculum and passed the final exam.