The programme has been announced for the 12^th edition of the annual Rome Literature Festival, after initial uncertainty over whether the organisers would receive the necessary funding from the city.

As in previous years, the festival takes place at the Basilica di Massenzio in the Roman Forum over ten evenings, from 11 June to 3 July, and features a host of international authors who will read specially written unpublished texts based on the “I have a dream” speech by Martin Luther King, on the occasion of the 50^th anniversary of the famous address.

A change in format will see the participation of the public, particularly the young, whose stories of dreams and aspirations precede the authors’ readings which are brought to life with the help of live music, video images and photographs.

Among the writers who describe their dreams through literature are Britain’s Edward St Aubyn; America’s Jennifer Egan and Scott Hutchins; Edwidge Danticat from Haiti; Paris-based Syrian Maram Al-Masri; London-based Sicilian Simonetta Agnello Hornby; Spain’s Clara Usòn and Alicia Giménez Bartlett, Italo-Iranian Farina Sabahi; and Italy’s Ferdinando Scianna, Emanuele Trevi, Chiara Gamberale, Eraldo Affinati, Fulvio Ervas, and anti-Mafia writer Roberto Saviano.

Entry is free, but tickets must be picked up at least two hours before the readings begin at a designated festival booth on Via dei Fori Imperiali, Clivio di Venere Felice.

For information tel. 060608 or see festival website.