Rome II
Villa Medici invites Selby Wynn Schwartz, AAR’s 2025 Joseph Brodsky Rome Prize Fellow in Literature and author of After Sappho, along with Isabelle Olivier and Foster Mickley of black cat day dream, to curate an installation of black cat day dream’s shorelines within La Cabane 7L.
Books can offer encounters—voices, thoughts, and dreams transmitted across time. A polyphony of writers, artists, activists, and both current and former Fellows of AAR and Villa Medici have been invited to lend five books, chosen from their personal libraries, each one marked at a “beautiful” chosen page.
Unattributed, mingled, open, and juxtaposed, these books formed a chorus on the grounds of the American Academy in Rome, inviting guests into a shared imagination.
Within La Cabane 7L, they will create a collective open library for the komorebipavilion created by MBL Architecture—
“this feeling that Sappho calls aithussomenon: the way that leaves move when nothing touches them but the afternoon light.”
A collective reading, shorelines, Après Sappho, will share the voices of participants reading from their “beautiful” pages, interwoven.
shorelines, Après Sappho at Festival des Cabanes di Villa Medici 2025
June 19, 2025｜10:00–19:00
Venue: at La Cabane 7L, Villa Medici
With: Johanne Affricot, Chiara Barzini, Valentina Amenta, Sarah Arvio, Katherine L. Beaty, Olivier Brossard, Theo Casciani, Jean-Baptiste Del Amo, Mark Doty, Claudia Durastanti, Lexi Eberspacher, Rosetta S. Elkin, Forrest Gander, Rachel Hadas and George Edwards, Kimiko Hahn, Sebastian Hierl, Edward Hirsch, Emilie Houssa, Ishion Hutchinson, Mai Ishikawa, Jahan Khajavi, Kojiro Kisaka, Marielle Macé, Clovis Maillet, Francesca Marciano, Dani Martiri, Foster Mickley, MP5, Lynn Nottage, Helen O’Leary, Isabelle Olivier, Muriel Pic, Sébastien Pluot, Ilaria Puri Purini, Robyn Schiff, Selby Wynn Schwartz, Nicole Sealey, Sheila Pepe, Raffaella Silvestri, Rob Spillman, Silvana Tamma, Nadia Terranova, Giancarlo Tursi, Francesco Urbano Ragazzi, Laura Vazquez, Rosanna Warren, Kyoko Yoshida.
A collective reading—shorelines, Après Sappho
June 19, 2025｜18:00–19:00
With: Valentina Amenta, Maria Silvia D’Avolio, Jahan Khajavi, Clovis Maillet, Foster Mickley, Isabelle Olivier, Selby Wynn Schwartz, Francesco Urbano Ragazzi, Lise Wajeman.
In partnership with the American Academy in Rome
In collaboration with MBL Architectes