‘We are exiting the realm of life, for real, to enter the theatre of war’: Flavia Steno’s reports from the front

Flavia Steno was the pen name for Amelia Cottini Osta, one of the very few Italian female journalists who in 1916 was admitted to the positions conquered by the Alpine Division on Mount Krn (Monte Nero in Italian), as an official war correspondent for the Genoese daily Il Secolo XIX. In October 1915 she joined the High Command in Udine and was allowed to visit the field hospitals, the only way for a woman to get closer to the frontlines. In 1916 she managed to reach the mountain medical posts as a guest of the Alpine troops in Drezenca. The frontline reports of this exceptional woman and opinion-maker aimed at reporting the soldiers’ life during wartime, reassuring readers and promoting women’s patriotic activism by providing detailed descriptions that skilfully combined journalism and fiction.