Dear Friend —
It’s hard to believe that this incredible week has flown by. From our opening night event with Nobel Laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah to last night’s rousing Arthur Miller Freedom to Write Lecture, delivered by PEN Ukraine President Andrey Kurkov, this year’s World Voices Festival was an incredibly special one—not only because it was our first in-person Festival in two years, but because in these times, it feels especially important and meaningful to acknowledge how literature and stories can unite us.
But there’s more to come—while it is the last day of the 2022 PEN World Voices Festival, we've still got a full lineup of events for today. Don't forget to use your discount of 25% off tickets for select events (use code GENWVF22 at checkout).
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We hope that you will join us for these incredible events and come away, as we have, with a fuller appreciation of the importance of community and the power of storytelling to help us imagine and build a better future for all.
Thank you,
The PEN World Voices Festival Team
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Saturday 5/14 | 2pm ET
Judson Memorial Church
The past holds secrets, occlusions, and untold stories that can both validate and pierce present assumptions. In her essay “Venus in Two Acts,” MacArthur-winning writer and scholar Saidiya Hartman described the merits of “critical fabulation,” or intertwining research with theory and fiction to account for violent historical erasure within the archive. MacArthur-winning poet and translator and fiction writer John Keene, in his acclaimed collection Counternarratives, counters and subverts established narrative about race and slavery. Recent Booker and Costa Prize finalist Nadifa Mohamed’s The Fortune Men, fictionalizes the story of Mahmood Mattan, a merchant seaman wrongly accused of murder and executed in Wales in 1952. Join these authors for a rich and probing discussion of their work, and how fiction can open up narrow and regressive understandings of history. This conversation will be moderated by Joy Bivins, director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.
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Saturday 5/14 | 3:30pm ET
AIA Center for Architecture
Centering some of the leading Indigenous women writers and thinkers working across Turtle Island and Aotearoa today, this conversation is a deep dive into this moment of reckoning in Indigenous sovereignty and reconciliation with award-winning writer and journalist Tanya Talaga (Seven Fallen Feathers, All Our Relations), Maori poet Tayi Tibble (Poūkahangatus, Rangikura), and writer and Director of the MFA in Creative Writing at IAIA (Institute of American Indian Arts) Deborah Taffa. Moderated by journalist Connie Walker, host of the Gimlet podcast Stolen: The Search for Jermain. ASL interpretation provided by Pro Bono ASL. Co-presented with California African American Museum. Presented in association with the Consulate General of Canada, Featherston Booktown, Verb Wellington, and ReadNZ.
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Saturday 5/14 | 6:30pm ET
Joe's Pub
Join us for a 100-year journey through archival letters, notes, and speeches featuring world-renowned writers as they transform an international dinner club into a global force defending free expression. Through the words of Toni Morrison, Jack Kerouac, Larry Kramer, Don DeLillo, Grace Paley, Margaret Atwood, Robert Frost, Susan Sontag, Mary McCarthy, Kurt Vonnegut, and many others, we'll explore moments in history when writers mobilized to defend expression and debate artists’ responsibility in the fight for a free and open exchange of ideas. A selection of humorous and dramatic PEN member resignation and acceptance letters and administrative correspondence will be woven together, and archival audio and visual materials will punctuate powerful moments.
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Saturday 5/14 | 8pm ET
Judson Memorial Church
In response to the recent onslaught of book bans across the country, PEN America convenes this star-studded celebration of the freedom to write, read, and think featuring dramatic readings from some of the most “dangerous” texts ever printed. The evening will highlight recent banned books, and other vital, once verboten, works by writers including Toni Morrison, Art Spiegelman, Kurt Vonnegut, and more. Wajahat Ali, New York Times contributing op-ed writer, public speaker, and author of the recently published book Go Back to Where You Came From will host. Presented in collaboration with the PEN America’s Children’s and Young Adult Book Committee and Free Expression and Education Program. ASL interpretation provided by Pro Bono ASL. Presented with support form Featherston Booktown, Verb Wellington, and ReadNZ.
After Party starting 9:30 at Alphabet Bar & Cafe at the Moxy East Village (112 E 11th St).
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