For the fourth year in a row, the Hotel Bauer’s cultural and hospitality vocations are crossing paths with Incroci di Civiltà, (Crossroads of Civilization) the International Literary Festival in Venice, which is presented by the City of Venice and Ca’ Foscari University, and will run from April 18 to 21.

The International Literary Festival’s opening night will take place at Scuola Grande di San Rocco on April 18 at 5 p.m. During this event, Francesca Bortolotto Possati, CEO and president of the Bauers, will be presenting the Bauer -- Ca’ Foscari Award to a prestigious representative of the international literary scene and to a promising young writer. Possati will give this award to Portuguese neuroscientist and writer Antonio Damasio, whose new book, “Self Comes to Mind,” will soon be published in Italian by Adelphi Publishing.

The second award will go to Ghada Abdel Aal, a young Egyptian writer whose blog has been a very powerful and supportive tool during the recent protests in the Middle East. In 2009, the prize was awarded to the French poet Ives Bonnefoy; in 2010 to Ludmila Ulitskaya, one of the most admired writers in the contemporary Russian scene; and in 2011 to the Nobel Prize winner V.s. Naipaul and to the promising young writer Igiana Scego.