Writers include John Irving, Roxane Gay, Ayad Akhtar, Reza Aslan, Marlon James, Ottessa Moshfegh, and more.
On May 10-13, PEN America will present the 18th annual World Voices Festival, its largest gathering to date of literary stars, visionaries, and great thinkers from around the globe. Events will take place in downtown Manhattan, with concurrent programming in Los Angeles.
The festival will celebrate great writing and the power of storytelling against the current headwinds of attacks by those who seek to censor and silence. This gathering of writers from every part of the globe is a potent reminder-in fact, an antidote in an era of censorship-that books drive culture and identity, while empowering and transforming our lives. The full schedule of 40 events will can be found here starting in April, including some that are free.
Ta-Nehisi Coates, a MacArthur "Genius" grant honoree, will deliver the festival's keynote, the annual Arthur Miller Freedom to Write Lecture, May 11 at the New School. He will discuss the book bans and censorship sweeping schools across the United States. Coates' Between the World and Me and We Were Eight Years in Power were among the 1,648 titles banned in the 2021-22 school year, according to PEN America's Index of Banned Books. Coates' work was also reportedly stripped from the College Board's AP African American studies curriculum.
"America has long been haunted by men who considered 'Freedom of Speech' a right reserved for a certain class. Indeed, this current effort to drive uncomfortable literature from the public square is as old as the slave codes, as old as the gag laws. And just as old are those who understand that true free speech cannot be divorced from freedom itself," said Coates.
Founded by Salman Rushdie, post-September 11, to keep dialogue alive between the United States and the world, the festival will be concentrated in the New York neighborhood where it was launched 18 years ago, Greenwich Village, creating a salon-like hub for the exchange of ideas. Poised to welcome emerging audiences, many venues are steeped in this city's literary past and present: Cooper Union, The New School, the Strand bookstore, and the Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House, among others.
Ayad Akhtar, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and PEN America President, is this year's festival chair, with Marlon James and Ottessa Moshfegh as guest chairs. Each will curate a signature event: Moshfegh will explore what, if anything, writers owe to their audience, and James will discuss a novelist's journey to and from their second novel. Akhtar will speak with Eboo Patel about sustaining creative expression in an environment of contentious debates.
"Salman Rushdie was the creative and visionary force behind this festival 18 years ago," said Akhtar, "and his inspiration remains our guiding principle, bringing writers from across the world together as an act of celebration and exchange. Threats to our intellectual climate and freedom are in ascendance here in the United States, as attacks on education, free speech, facts, open dialogue, even reason itself, have become daily news. This year's festival, our largest gathering of writers ever, is our own act of jubilant defiance, a recognition of just how precious a gift literature is, and how worthy this gift is of our commitment to protect it."
Headline events in New York include: a conversation on journalism and democracy between Jelani Cobb and Margaret Sullivan (May 13); a discussion on global inequality, unaffordability and poverty featuring Matthew Desmond (May 11), and a screening of Women Talking, followed by a conversation between Oscar-winning filmmaker-screenwriter Sarah Polley and Miriam Toews, author of the 2018 book that the film is based on (May 12).
This year's festival curators led by Clarisse Rosaz Shariyf, chief of PEN America's Literary Programming, and Sabir Sultan, associate director of the festival, are Devyani Saltzman, Eloisa Amezcua, Louise Steinman and Andy Tepper.
Clarisse Rosaz Shariyf said, "This spring, as we've done for close to 20 years, PEN America will celebrate the undeniable power of stories and the pleasure of showcasing the next literary stars alongside iconic authors. We will connect readers to great international and American writers, artists, leading journalists, scholars and intellectuals. Over four days, Greenwich Village will come alive with the most important issues we face today in terms of free expression."
For the second year, the festival will convene a World Voices Congress of Writers. Closed to the general public, the Congress is a writer-to-writer conclave to address pressing issues and complex questions facing the literary community. Last spring's Emergency World Voices Congress of Writers, prompted by Russia's war on Ukraine and other global concerns, was held at the United Nations. It was a modern iteration of a PEN America-led 1939 conference convened by Dorothy Thompson, the legendary journalist and then PEN America's president.
The festival kicks off Wednesday evening May 10 in New York with Moshfegh's discussion exploring the relationship between author and audience. She will be joined by writers Min Jin Lee, Rachel Kushner, and Akhil Sharma. Below are brief descriptions from the program lineup:
International writers will make up almost half of the total participants of this year's World Voices Festival and represent the following 27 countries: Afghanistan, Argentina, Armenia, Canada, China, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, France, Georgia, Germany, India, Iran, Jamaica, Mexico, Nepal, Nigeria, Pakistan, Russia, South Korea, Sudan, Taiwan, Trinidad, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States, and Zambia.
PEN America stands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect open expression in the United States and worldwide. We champion the freedom to write, recognizing the power of the word to transform the world. Our mission is to unite writers and their allies to celebrate creative expression and defend the liberties that make it possible. Learn more at pen.org.
Videos