Giovanna Li Volti Guzzardi's father was an accomplished classical musician who was a lover of literature and of his hometown of Vizzini, where the writer Giovanni Verga was born and where he wrote his most famous novels. Volti-Guzzardi attended school in Italy until the third year of college, married young and moved to Australia with her husband and daughter.
For ten years, starting in 1978, she attended a Literary Circle at the University of Melbourne that encouraged her to write and participate in seminars, radio programs, competitions, interviews and international Competitions. Her work has been read on the Italian program of Radio 3EA and on Radio 3ZZZ. She has read at the Italian Institute of Culture, at a seminar on Italo-Australian Literature at the Hawthorne Institute of Technology, at St Albans Library, and at the poets' meeting at Il Tempo restaurant, Bundoora. Her collection of poems Io e il mio mondo [I and my world] received the Wing of Victory Award (Rome) for the best book of the month. She has had commendations and honourable mentions in a number of poetry competitions including the Milan 'Autumn Trophy' International Competition of Art and Literature in 1983, the Melbourne IQ 100 Plus Competition and the Friendship Italia International Competition in 1990. She has written fiction also.
In May 1992 she founded the Italo-Australian Literary Association (A.L.I.A.S.), now known as the Literary Academy of Italo-Australian Writers. Its aim is to ensure that the Italian language and culture is preserved and promoted in Australia.
