May 18th: Elif Batuman and Andrew Sean Greer in conversation

Presented by 192 Books and Paula Cooper Gallery, Elif Batuman and Andrew Sean Greer will be discussing A Tower in Tuscany: Or a Home for My Writers and Other Animals.

The live event will stream directly on this page on Tuesday, May 18th at 6pm EST. There is no login or rsvp required. A recording will be archived and posted shortly afterwards.

A Tower in Tuscany: Or a Home for My Writers and Other Animals, Edited by Beatrice Monti della Corte and Michael Cunningham, Photographed by François Halard (Rizzoli, 2021)

In the hills above Florence, Santa Maddalena is like a secret garden where writers hone their craft and meet like-minded people. Paired with evocative images, these essays by twenty-seven acclaimed authors invite readers to understand how the spirit of this restored villa, its owners, and resident pets have inspired creative writing and creativity among so many.

Monti della Corte and her late husband, Gregor von Rezzori, transformed a ruin into the ultimate retreat where they would write, garden, and entertain friends and fellow artists—Pedro Almodóvar, Bernardo Bertolucci, David Hockney, and Isabella Rossellini. This gracious weaving together of hospitality and creativity became the Santa Maddalena Foundation and writers' fellowship program in 2000.

Beatrice Monti della Corte ran Galleria dell'Ariete, a trailblazing art gallery in Milan in the 1950s and is the founder of the Santa Maddalena Foundation, which administers the Premio Gregor von Rezzori and the eponymous writers' retreat. François Halard is one of the most important interior and architectural photographers and has been published in Vogue, Apartamento, T Magazine, and Cabana, among others. Michael Cunningham is the author of A Home at the End of the World, Flesh and Blood, The Hours (winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Pulitzer Prize), Specimen Days, By Nightfall, The Snow Queen, and Land's End: A Walk in Provincetown.

Elif Batuman’s first novel, The Idiot, was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in fiction. She is also the author of The Possessed, which was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award in criticism. She has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 2010.

Andrew Sean Greer is the bestselling author of six works of fiction, including The Confessions of Max Tivoli and Less. He is the recipient of an NEA grant, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Less. He lives in San Francisco and Italy.