Home > PEN World Voices > Press PRESS ARCHIVE June 3, 2007 | Roxana Robinson | The Novelist and the Curious Cabbie I was standing on the curb, uptown, my hand raised for a cab. It was evening, and the sky was clear and the air cool. I had plenty of time, and I was happy: I was on my way to an international literary festival. >> More May 13, 2007 | David Grossman | Writing in the Dark At times I feel as if I am digging up people from the ice in which reality enshrouded them, but maybe, more than anything else, it is myself that I am now digging up. >> More April 24, 2007 | New York Times | For Writers, a Voice Beyond the Page Nadine Gordimer, the South African novelist and Nobel Prize winner, said writing could be political almost by default. “Everyone is influenced by the framework in which they live, so that politics comes into everything. It’s not expressed by us in a didactic way, but comes through our creation of characters who are indeed made up of the kind of world and the kind of reactions that people have toward that world.” >> More March 21, 2007 | Washington Post | PEN Event Features Rushdie, Steve Martin Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer, Salman Rushdie and Steve Martin will be among the many writers and performers featured at the third annual PEN World Voices festival, to be held April 24-29 in settings throughout New York City. >> More October 12, 2006 | New York Times | Turkish writer wins Nobel Prize in Literature Orhan Pamuk, whose uncommon lyrical gifts and uncompromising politics have brought him acclaim worldwide and prosecution at home, won the Nobel literature prize for his works dealing with the symbols of clashing cultures. >> More February 14, 2007 | New York Times | No Rest for a Feminist Fighting Radical Islam Ayaan Hirsi Ali came to the attention of the wider world in an extraordinary way. In 2004 a Muslim fanatic, after shooting the filmmaker Theo van Gogh dead on an Amsterdam street, pinned a letter to Mr. van Gogh’s chest with a knife. Addressed to Ms. Hirsi Ali, the letter called for holy war against the West and, more specifically, for her death. >> More May 25, 2006 | Orhan Pamuk | Freedom to Write To respect the humanity and religious beliefs of minorities is not to suggest that we should limit freedom of thought on their behalf. >> More May 14, 2006 | Philadelphia Inquirer Shriek it, chant it: 'Howl' turns 50 On stage in the New School auditorium, moderator and literary biographer Robert Polito described Howl to hundreds in the audience as a "grim but funny effort" that, like much enduring literature, beguiles through ambiguity. >> More May 11, 2006 | Christian Science Monitor | Uncle Sam Doesn't Want You Why have prominent foreign scholars had their visas to speak or teach in this country denied or revoked? Many, including the academic institutions who invited them, are baffled. >> More May 3, 2006 | New York Sun | An Enlightenment Fundamentalist Like an increasing number of immigrants in the West who refuse to have a "victim" label pinned to their lapels, the Dutch-Somalian actress, author, and politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali represents something of a problem for liberal intellectuals. >> More May 3, 2006 | New York Sun | A Dark & Powerful Force From Down South If you haven't heard of Roberto Bolano, you will soon. The Chilean author, who died of liver failure in 2003, was the subject of a major panel discussion at last week's PEN festival. >> More May 3, 2006 | Philadelphia Inquirer | A literary world out there, but not for U.S. By both force of numbers and abundant literary talent, however, many of the writers challenged America's stinginess toward other literary cultures, what Italian writer Roberto Calasso called "a lethal mixture of provincialism and imperialism. >> More May 2, 2006 | Literary Voices, Loud & Clear | New York Sun The Argentinean-born author Rodrigo Fresan spoke at a BenettonTalk Young Writers Series on Saturday, as part of the PEN World Voices Festival. >> More May 2006 | Jhumpa Lahiri interview | KGB Bar Lit I don't see myself playing a political role, but I do think that it's vital to contribute to a broader understanding of freedom of expression and of cultural tolerance and exchange, especially given the extent to which these values have been threatened in recent times. >> More April 29, 2006 | Jeanette Winterson | Her Word We are creating a world divided between faith-based fanaticism on the one hand, and amoral science and global market “logic” on the other. >> More April 28, 2006 | EITB | Basque writer Bernardo Atxaga at NY Festival of International Lit The Basque well-known writer Bernardo Atxaga is taking part these days in the PEN World Voices, the New York Festival of International Literature. >> More April 28, 2006 | El Pais | El festival de PEN El texto literario es una promesa que nunca se alcanza. >> More April 27, 2006 | Turkish Daily News | Pamuk: Iraq war is the shame of US and West Turkey's internationally acknowledged novelist, Orhan Pamuk, leveled harsh criticism at the U.S.-led war in Iraq by saying that the Iraq war did not bring peace or democracy to the region but rather sparked nationalist and anti-Western sentiments. >> More April 27, 2006 | El Pais | Rushdie acusa a Bush Hay momentos en los que los escritores son realmente importantes. Y el actual es uno de ellos, según el novelista Salman Rushdie, presidente del festival literario PEN Voces del mundo. >> More April 27, 2006 | New York Times | In a Break From Mystery, A Writer Turns to Africa To many English speakers Henning Mankell is probably best known as the creator of Inspector Kurt Wallander, a morose, self-loathing plainclothes officer whose dark vision of himself is matched only by the bleakness of the Swedish terrain and weather in which he somehow manages to track down the villains. >> More April 26, 2006 | El Pais | Los escritores cruzan la línea entre la razón y la fe Fe y razón son dos conceptos que coexisten en una relación que no es sencilla. ¿Qué papel juega la literatura en esta compleja interacción que discurre por todo el mundo? >> More April 21, 2006 | New York Times | Found in Translation: Endangered Languages Some 6,500 languages spoken in the world today. And, according to the 2000 census, you can hear at least 92 of them on the streets of New York. >> More April 2006 | Blogroll Read about PEN World Voices from blogs around the world. >> More March 29, 2006 | Bernardo Atxaga | The Basque Spring The story that began when a group of university students founded Basque Homeland and Liberty, the organization known as ETA, has finally come to an end with its announcement last week of a permanent cease-fire. >> More March 27, 2006 | Etgar Keret | Stupor in Our Time If, after all the hopes and disappointments, all the accords and intifadas, the best a whole country can wish for is a politician so nondescript that the pundits are still arguing over whether he's on the left or the right — if we want a non-event on Election Day — then we really must be exhausted. >> More March 21, 2006 | New York Times | Biographer to Lead PEN Center in the U.S. At the annual meeting of the PEN American Center on Thursday night, the organization of writers and editors is expected to ratify Ron Chernow, the best-selling biographer of J. P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller and Alexander Hamilton, as its next president. >> More April 27, 2005 | Arab News | Word and World in New York You’re enamored of books, ideas and the life of the mind? Then you should’ve attended the weeklong PEN World Voices. >> More April 24, 2005 | Salman Rushdie | Books vs. Goons A butterfly flaps its wings in India, and we feel the breeze on our cheeks here in New York. A throat is cleared somewhere in Africa and in California there's an answering cough. >> More April 23, 2005 | New York Times | A Crowd That's Seldom at a Loss for Words It was one of the largest international gatherings of writers in New York since the PEN international congress of 1986. >> More April 17, 2005 | Salman Rushdie | The Pen and the Sword In January 1986 I came to New York for a gathering of writers that has become a literary legend. >> More April 16, 2005 | Globe & Mail | Still tilting at Quixote 400 years later Since the publication of the first volume of Don Quixote in 1605, the world has been enthralled by the tale of the aging country gentleman whose love of chivalric romance stories inspires him to travel the countryside righting wrongs. >> More April 15, 2005 | New York Press | Salman Rushdie Interview It’s ridiculous that New York doesn’t have an international literary festival. It was an obvious hole in the cultural calendar we wanted to fill. >> More Home | Site Map | Copyright / Privacy Policy | Contact Us © 2004-2010 PEN American Center. All rights reserved.