Her second work, Casalinghitudine, written thirteen years later, is a kind of recipe book where each dish is linked with a particular moment of her own past, an indelible memory.
Her popularity increased with short stories, such as Manicomio primavera (1989) and the novel Il gioco dei regni (1993), which won her two literary prizes.
In 1998, following a difficult personal situation (her son Matteo has been affected by psychosis from birth), Sereni promoted the Città del sole NGO Foundation (becoming its President) – a charity mental health organisation for the disabled and gravely afflicted.
She was also a columnist for the Italian newspapers l'Unità and Il Manifesto, and translated and edited works by Balzac, Stendhal, Madame de la Fayette.
Moreover, she reviewed many books, among which in 1996 the important Si può (You can), where five Italian journalists (Lucia Annunziata, Gad Lerner, Barbara Palombelli, Oreste Pivetta and Gianni Riotta) narrate a positive story of integration into society of the mentally disabled.