Join novelist Claire Messud and a prestigious panel for a lively debate on gender, culture, and literature in translation. In the 21st century, few writers want to be classified by gender, ethnicity, or the language in which they write. They’d prefer to be considered just writers now, mindful of Elizabeth Bishop’s observation on gender that “art is art and to separate writings, paintings, musical compositions, etc. into two sexes is to emphasize values that are not art.” Of the Modern Library’s top 100 novels of the 20th century, only nine were by women (two by Edith Wharton). Like the Modern Library’s, most best-of lists include only works written in English. And less than one percent of literary fiction and poetry published in the U.S. are works in translation. Joining Messud are National Book Award winner Norman Rush, novelist and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Lorraine Adams, and Israeli novelist Alex Epstein, who take on some of the toughest questions facing world literature today.
PEN BLOGS
• Anelise Chen for Anderbo.com: It’s been known since the novel was invented that the imagined readership of fiction has been women, not men. Today, 80% of fiction’s readership is women... [more]
• Alta Ifland: This panel focused on the relationship between the writers’ identity and the voices they impersonate in their works. The first question raised by the moderator, Claire Messud, was: “Does it matter who the writers are?” [more]
