Thea Stilton

Thea Stilton is the pseudonym for Italian author Elisabetta Dami that also writes as Geronimo Stilton. Currently residing in Italy, Thea enjoys traveling the world to find inspiration for her series of novels. Her travels have seen her travel to a wide range of exotic places that include travels to Zambia, Easter Island in Egypt, a trek in Nepal, and a climb up Mt. Kilimanjaro. Her enthusiasm for adventure and travel has also seen her run two New York City marathons, and a 75-mile marathon in the Sahara. Her most famous novels are the Geronimo Stilton series that feature Geronimo the mouseling as the lead, while her other titles have the Thea Sisters and Thea Stilton as the lead characters. Stilton was born to the founder of the famous Dami Editore publishing house Peidro Dami in 1972, and thus got a chance to get a start in the literary world as a proofreader at her father’s publishing house. She would start writing children’s stories by the time she was 19, given her strong interest in children cultivated when she worked with sick children as a volunteer. Her experience working with children is what led her down the path of writing her hit Geronimo Stilton series of novels. The character was such a commercial and cultural success in Italy and internationally, that it has enabled Thea fulfill her lifelong dream of helping abandoned, orphaned and sick children. In 1999, Stilton collaborated with Piemme Publishing house to produce the collection of books in her series. Ever since she published her first novel in 1999, she has gone on to sell over 100million copies in 40 languages in over 150 countries.