150 writers, 40 countries,
and more than 50 events

Another exciting week-long celebration of books and writing from around the globe has wrapped. A stellar line-up of emerging and established authors took the stage in venues across New York City and several satellite locations from San Francisco to Washington, D.C. for an exciting cross-cultural literary exchange, featuring conversations, panels, performances, readings, a translation slam, and an all-star Cabaret night!

Homero Aridjis
Mexico

Maziar Bahari
Iran

Ariel Dorfman
Chile (U.S.)

Richard Ford
U.S.

Edith Grossman
U.S.

Mohsin Hamid
Pakistan (U.K.)

Aleksandar Hemon
Bosnia and Herzegovina (U.S.)

Yiyun Li
China (U.S.)

Natalie Merchant
U.S.

Sofi Oksanen
Finland

Toni Morrison
U.S.

Ben Okri
Nigeria (U.K.)

Richard Price
U.S.

Salman Rushdie
India/U.S.

Patti Smith
U.S.

Miguel Syjuco
Phillipines

[complete list of participants]

PEN World Voices Opening Night: Readings From Around the Globe

Toni Morrison and Marlene van Niekerk in Conversation with Anthony Appiah

Patti Smith and Jonathan Lethem in Conversation

Short Stories: Past, Present, and Future

Blogs, Twitter, the Kindle: The Future of Reading

[complete Festival multimedia archive]

Jane Ciabattari

Patti Smith Rocks the Great Hall

Summery day. Drifts of tree pollen and cherry blossoms in the air. New Yorkers baring arms, legs, tattoos. Mayday protest for workers’ rights in Union Square, cheek by jowl with fresh arugula and fiddleheads at the greenmarket ... [more]

Chad Post

New European Fiction

Granta editor and former NBCC president John Freeman opened up this event talking about how Best European Fiction 2010 served as a sort of print version of the PEN World Voices Festival. Containing something like 40 writers from across Europe ... [more]

Alta Ifland

Panel on Stefan Zweig

The panel on Stefan Zweig at the Austrian Cultural Forum, moderated by Jonathan Taylor, was probably the most successful panel I attended during these past several days, and this must have had something to do with the fact that all the speakers seemed to know each other ... [more]

[more posts from Festival bloggers]

White Masks by Elias Khoury Don’t ask me why, but whenever I see the word “dreadful,” the word “wonderful” springs to mind. [more]

Purge by Sofi Oksanen There was nothing but UFOs, old men, and dim-witted hooligans around here anymore. [more]

The Dead Republic by Roddy Doyle I’d cycled every inch of every lane of this county. I’d lobbed bombs from most of the ditches. Bullets had slowed me down, but nothing had ever stopped me. [more]

[more excerpts from Festival participants]