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In my speech I will tell how our limits, what we don't have (but also what we don't know, what we are not, what we don't eat...) can reveal themselves as a vital principle. I will start from an image and a phrase from my book Qualcosa, a moral fable where the protagonist Qualcosa di Troppo is grappling with a hole in her heart that she must deal with to transform it into "a secret passage". I will then bring as examples other characters from my books and some classics that have inspired me who also find themselves face to face with a lack, with a failure, with their own personal hole in their heart or in life, and I will tell their attempts to come to terms with that void. But I would not have developed such attention to characters of this type, if I had not found myself first, in my personal and professional journey, to understand that precisely WHAT I DON'T HAVE has revealed itself to be what has helped me most to become the person and the writer I am. In the second part of my speech I will therefore mention my story, that of a child very conditioned by the limit of a difficult and hyper-sensitive character who instinctively and fatally found in writing her way to bear existence. And who thus furnished her tunnel, rather than coming out of it. Chiara Gamberale was born in 1977 in Rome, where she lives. She has published thirteen novels, the latest being “L'isola dell'abbandono” (Feltrinelli). Among the others: Per dieci minuti (2013), Adesso (2015), La zona cieca (Campiello Prize Jury of the literary experts 2008), Le luci nelle case degli altri (2010) and Qualcosa (2017). She made her debut in 1998 with “Una vita sottile”. She is an author and host of television and radio programs. She collaborates with various newspapers. She created the festival “Procida Racconta”, this year in its fifth edition. Her novels have been translated into 16 languages and have sold over a million copies. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx