Podcasts about pen world voices festival

We sat down with Bookshop.org's Director of Bookstore Partnerships to discuss the indie bookstore landscape in recent years and how authors and readers can further engage with their local indies.Steph Opitz (she/her) is the Director of Bookstore Partnerships at Bookshop.org. Formerly, she was the founding director of Wordplay at The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis and a visiting instructor at the University of Minnesota. She serves on committees for the National Book Foundation, the Authors Guild, PEN America, and LitNet. She has curated literary events and festivals around the country—as the literary director of the Texas Book Festival, the fiction co-chair of the Brooklyn Book Festival, and on the programs team for the PEN World Voices Festival— and was the books reviewer for Marie Claire magazine. Learn more at bookshop.org.Discover more about Smith Publicity at www.smithpublicity.com and follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Threads, YouTube, & LinkedIn.

Boycotting PEN World Voices Festival https://www.commondreams.org/news/pen-world-voices-festival #peoplearerevolting twitter.com/peoplerevolting Peoplearerevolting.com movingtrainradio.com

What does it mean to grow up as a minority and how do you break out of the life script? Where is racism worse, in Hungary or in the United States? What is the difference if you are an immigrant by choice and what is it like when you have no other choice? What is it like to work with Salman Rushdie? My guest is  László Jakab Orsós, a Hungarian curator, journalist and film-maker who began his career, first as a newspaper columnist, before gaining a professorship at the Budapest Academy of Film.  In 1997, he taught in the Graduate Film Program at New York University, and, in 1999, became a member of the jury of Sundance Institute's screenwriting laboratory. In 2004, he co-wrote the script for an animated feature film, The District. After moving to New York in 2005, he became the director of the Hungarian Cultural Center, where he launched Extremely Hungary, a series of 120 events about Hungarian culture. In 2010, he was appointed director of the PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature. He`s currently the Vice President of Arts and Culture at the Brooklyn Public Library system.

**Who You will Hear**Guest: Esther Allen (Writer, translator. Professor at City University of New York)Co-host: Luna Tang (Cloud Service Delivery Manager at Klopotek)Co-host: Dwayne Parris (Senior Consultant at Klopotek) Translation has long been an indispensable part of the world of publishing and literature.In this episode, we are joined by Esther Allen, writer, translator, and a professor at City University of New York.The conversation begins with Esther recounting how she crossed her line with Spanish and French in her early childhood and youthful years. She then explains to us, from the perspective of a literary scholar, the linguistic landscape in the context of globalization, the dynamics of English and other dominant languages, and the importance of language legacy and linguistic diversity. Many interesting topics are sprinkled throughout: the difficulty of transplanting humor to another language, the “terminal speakers” of an endangered language, how a language becomes an “invasive species,” and why and how to attribute value to a language we don't speak, etc. For more information about Esther and her translation work, please visit her website. If you'd like to go further into the world of translation, check out the 24 programs available through the online conference Translating the Future, which Esther co-curated with Allison Markin Powell at the Center for the Humanities at the City University of New York Graduate Center. And to enjoy a cornucopia of translated writing from across the globe, you're warmly invited to visit Words Without Borders.Tell us what is going on with your publishing projects or business on Twitter (@Klopotek_AG), LinkedIn, or email us at podcast@klopotek.com.  For more information about the Klopotek software solution, please write to info@klopotek.com, or register to receive emails from us on technology innovations & events from Klopotek.* The views, information, or opinions expressed in the program are solely those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily represent those of Klopotek and its employees. It is the goal of Klopotek Publishing Radio to support cultural diversity, the exchange of opinions, and to create an environment where the conversation of a global publishing industry can thrive.

Critical reception Rushdie has had a string of commercially successful and critically acclaimed novels. His works have been shortlisted for the Booker Prize five times, in 1981 for Midnight's Children, 1983 for Shame, 1988 for The Satanic Verses, 1995 for The Moor's Last Sigh, and in 2019 for Quichotte. In 1981, he was awarded the prize. His 2005 novel Shalimar the Clown received the prestigious Hutch Crossword Book Award, and, in the UK, was a finalist for the Whitbread Book Awards. It was shortlisted for the 2007 International Dublin Literary Award. Rushdie's works have spawned 30 book-length studies and over 700 articles on his writing. Academic and other activities Rushdie has mentored younger Indian (and ethnic-Indian) writers, influenced an entire generation of Indo-Anglian writers, and is an influential writer in postcolonial literature in general. He opposed the British government's introduction of the Racial and Religious Hatred Act, something he writes about in his contribution to Free Expression Is No Offence, a collection of essays by several writers, published by Penguin in November 2005. Rushdie was the President of PEN American Center from 2004 to 2006 and founder of the PEN World Voices Festival. In 2007, he began a five-year term as Distinguished Writer in Residence at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, where he has also deposited his archives. In May 2008 he was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2014, he taught a seminar on British Literature and served as the 2015 keynote speaker In September 2015, he joined the New York University Journalism Faculty as a Distinguished Writer in Residence. Rushdie is a member of the advisory board of The Lunchbox Fund, a non-profit organisation that provides daily meals to students of township schools in Soweto of South Africa. He is also a member of the advisory board of the Secular Coalition for America, an advocacy group representing the interests of atheistic and humanistic Americans in Washington, D.C., and a patron of Humanists UK (formerly the British Humanist Association). He is also a Laureate of the International Academy of Humanism. In November 2010 he became a founding patron of Ralston College, a new liberal arts college that has adopted as its motto a Latin translation of a phrase ("free speech is life itself") from an address he gave at Columbia University in 1991 to mark the two-hundredth anniversary of the first amendment to the US Constitution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salman_Rushdie

In our next to last episode for season two of Cabana Chats, Leslie Shipman, founder of the The Shipman Agency, talks with Resort founder Catherine LaSota about her long career in the literary world, how her love of poetry has guided her, and her latest adventures as the founder of a speaking agency for writers that has turned into a full-service organization for writers, offering classes, editing services, and more, in just a few short years. Leslie Shipman has spent 30 years promoting writers, and creating and managing literary events in New York City. She spent over a decade at the National Book Foundation (which presents the National Book Award), where she was instrumental in creating events and programs such as 5 Under 35, a prize for promising young novelists, the National Book Awards After Party, Eat, Drink, and Be Literary at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Innovations in Reading, a prize that promotes community organizations working at the grassroots level to encourage reading across constituencies, and BookUp, an afterschool program for middle school age students, as well as assembling awards juries. She consulted at PEN America, a leading advocate for free expression, and worked on the PEN Literary Awards, and the PEN World Voices Festival. A poet with an MFA from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, her work can be found in the Kenyon Review, BOMB, Tinderbox, Mid-American Review, Cosmonauts Avenue and elsewhere. She lives in Ridgewood, Queens with her husband, musician Paul Pimsler, and their dog Junie. Find out more about The Shipman Agency: https://www.theshipmanagency.com/ Latest classes in The Work Room at The Shipman Agency: https://www.theshipmanagency.com/theworkroom Join our free Resort community, full of resources and support for writers, here: https://community.theresortlic.com/ More information about The Resort can be found here: https://www.theresortlic.com/ You can find books for purchase by all of our Cabana Chats guests here: https://bookshop.org/lists/cabana-chats-podcast Cabana Chats is hosted by Resort founder Catherine LaSota. Our podcast editor is Jade Iseri-Ramos, and our music is by Pat Irwin. Special thanks to Resort assistant Nadine Santoro. FULL TRANSCRIPTS for Cabana Chats podcast episodes are available in the free Resort network: https://community.theresortlic.com/ Follow us on social media! @TheResortLIC

With the PEN World Voices Festival starting, Suzanne Nossel, CEO of PEN America, the human rights and free expression organization, and Andrey Kurkov, novelist and PEN Ukraine president, talk about the organization's efforts in Ukraine and around the world.→ Andrey Kurkov gives the 2022 Arthur Miller Freedom to Write Lecture on Friday, May 13 at 6:30pm, ET.

In this final episode of the second series of The Sexual Wellness Sessions hosted by Psychosexual & Relationship Therapist Kate Moyle, we're discussing the future of sex. My guest Bryony Cole and I talk about the biggest changes and trends that we have seen impacting our sex lives recently, and where we think the future of sex is heading.   Undoubtably there has been an enormous shift in our sex lives and accessibility to information since the dawn of the internet; and we see that smart phones in particular have played a huge part in changing how we find and meet partners, stay in relationships, and break up. In our conversation Bryony and I talk about the pros and cons of the impact of tech on our lives, the changes to sexual healthcare and solutions; and how sex tech, trends and developments can not just change how we have sex now, but can influence narratives, messages and education going forward.    Bryony Cole is the world's leading authority on sextech, and she's fascinated by the way technology permeates every corner of our lives, even the most intimate ones. She is the creator and host of the Future of Sex podcast, founder of Sextech School and Lovehoney's resident sextech advisor. Since launching the top-rated podcast Future of Sex, Bryony has been on stages across the world forecasting trends in the sextech industry for governments, tech titans and entertainment companies, including SXSW, PEN World Voices Festival, Skolkovo Foundation and Founders Forum. Bryony recently launched Sextech School, a course for entrepreneurs looking to get started in sextech. This episode was brought to you by Lelo the luxury sex toy brand combining luxury, pleasure and innovation to create sex toys for both solo and couple pleasure; and I am very proud to work with Lelo as their UK Sex Expert, and you can use the code KMLELO15 until the end of 2021 to get 15% off your order at https://www.lelo.com/    @lelo_official Kate Moyle is Psychosexual & Relationship Therapist and Certified Psycho-Sexologist, who is passionate about having open and normalising conversations around sex and relationships; and helping people to get to a place of sexual health, happiness and wellbeing.  Follow Kate on Instagram at @KateMoyleTherapy

On this final day of the 2021 PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature, our Jared Jackson sits down with Brian Broome to discuss his debut memoir Punch Me Up to the Gods. Plus, we take a look back at the 2021 festival. Learn more at pen.org/festival. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/penamerica/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/penamerica/support

As we enter the penultimate day of the PEN World Voices Festival, we hear from PEN/Hemingway Award winner Kawai Strong Washburn about myth-making, magic, and storytelling. Plus we look at what the Festival has in store for its final days. Tickets on sale at pen.org/festival. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/penamerica/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/penamerica/support

On today's special edition of The PEN Pod, we bring you a conversation with author of Detransition, Baby Torrey Peters—featured in this week's PEN World Voices Festival—on family dynamics through the lens of the lived transgender experience. Plus, we preview the next day of the Festival. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/penamerica/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/penamerica/support

On this special edition of The PEN Pod, our Nancy Vitale talks to Allison Markin Powell and Gabriella Page-Fort about bringing translated literature to a wide audience. And we preview the day ahead of the PEN World Voices Festival. Tickets on sale at pen.org/festival. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/penamerica/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/penamerica/support

As we dive into the first day of the 2021 PEN World Voices Festival, we talk to virtual co-hosts Ayad Akhtar and Masha Gessen, who share their thoughts on a global virtual festival as we still contend with global crises. Then, we preview the week ahead for the festival—tickets are on sale at pen.org/festival. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/penamerica/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/penamerica/support

On this special edition of The PEN Pod, we look ahead to this week's PEN World Voices Festival of International literature, a global convening of writers and readers that will gather to celebrate the written word. Here to walk us through what's up this week, PEN America's own Clarisse Rosaz Shariyf. Tickets are on sale at pen.org/festival. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/penamerica/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/penamerica/support

In our final conversation, the acclaimed, genre-breaking Black playwrights Lynn Nottage and Jeremy O. Harris join forces for a compelling conversation about where, how, and why they make theater, the importance of inclusion within the art form, for playwrights and audience members alike, and imagining what a new theatre can look like in the midst of a pandemic and cultural uprising. ------ These Truths is a new podcast from the PEN World Voices Festival, exploring literature and the deeper truths that connect us. In a moment that risks tearing our world apart, and when the factual basis of our daily lives is constantly undermined, this podcast explores how literature can help us arrive at the truth and a deeper understanding of what connects us. Each week, authors wrestle with urgent questions about contested histories, foundational myths, and dangerous manipulations of language rampant in our daily lives. This podcast brings writers and artists of America’s premier international literary festival into homes everywhere while introducing listeners to new books, ideas, and authors on the vanguard of contemporary literature. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram @penworldvoices PEN America thanks the following sponsors for their support of the 2020 PEN World Voices Festival: The National Endowment for the Arts New York State Council on the Arts The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs The Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment (New York City) Amazon Literary Partnership The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Acton Family Giving

In this installment of The PEN Pod, we check in with author and activist Simran Jeet Singh; he's out with a new children's book, and he reflects on the protests he's witnessed in New York City. Then we get an excerpt from our PEN World Voices Festival podcast These Truths with a conversation among three writers. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/penamerica/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/penamerica/support

In this conversation, novelist, poet, playwright, essayist and short story writer, Ben Okri speaks with Anderson Tepper, member of the editorial staff of Vanity Fair, about his latest novel, The Freedom Artist. Together, they discuss the power of myth and the role of the writer in times of crisis. For more from the PEN World Voices Festival, visit us at pen.org/worldvoicesdigital PEN America thanks the following sponsors for their support of the 2020 PEN World Voices Festival: The National Endowment for the Arts New York State Council on the Arts The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs The Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment (New York City) Amazon Literary Partnership The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Acton Family Giving

On this episode, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and Emmy-nominated filmmaker Jose Antonio Vargas explores how the pandemic response is excluding undocumented people, as well as the unique freedom that is inherent in writing. Then, the PEN World Voices Festival is back. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/penamerica/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/penamerica/support

Starting Wednesday, May 6 These Truths, a World Voices Podcast, brings the writers and artists of the 2020 PEN World Voices Festival right into your home. Each week, writers from America’s premier international literary festival will explore works that wrestle with contested history, challenge the fabrications served to us on an almost daily basis, and awaken us to the beauty and power of storytelling. In a moment that risks tearing our world apart, when the factual basis of our daily lives is constantly undermined, this podcast explores how literature can help us arrive at the truth and a deeper understanding of what connects us. Learn more about upcoming episodes and other offerings in this year's digital World Voices Festival by visiting us at http://pen.org/worldvoices Follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @penworldvoices PEN America thanks the following sponsors for their support of the 2020 PEN World Voices Festival: The National Endowment for the Arts New York State Council on the Arts The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs The Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment (New York City) Amazon Literary Partnership The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Acton Family Giving

Christopher and Drew talk about PEN's 2018 World Voices Festival - check out their website of events! https://worldvoices.pen.org/schedule/ music: Disaster Magic - Desert Snake and Coconut Crab (https://soundcloud.com/disaster-magic) contribute! patreon.com/smdb for drink recipes, book lists, and more, visit: somanydamnbooks.com   This minisode was sponsored by PEN America - www.pen.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On today’s Please Explain, we’ll attempt to understand what it’s like to translate the untranslatable! English audiences rely on translators for access to much of the world’s most important literature and religious texts, from Cervantes, to Voltaire, to the Bible. But unfortunately there is no magic formula when it comes to choosing comparable words from one language to another. Our guests for today's Please Explain argue that there is no such thing as a literal translation – rather, it’s a task that veers into the philosophical, and depends on each individual word, language set, and text.  Esther Allen is a Professor at Baruch College, co-founder of the PEN World Voices Festival, and board member of the American Literary Translators Association. Jacques Lezra is Professor of Spanish, English, and Comparative Literature at New York University. He also was an editor for The Dictionary of Untranslatables.

As part of the PEN World Voices Festival, highly acclaimed author Sebastian Barry reads from his new book, The Temporary Gentleman.

We're back! With our newest and semi-delayed installment of the Three Percent Podcast. This week is a two-parter. First, Chad and Tom run down the list of fiction and poetry finalists for the 2013 Best Translated Book Awards. Yes, it's true that these were announced a couple weeks ago, but, as luck would have it, today (Friday, May 3) happens to be the big awards ceremony, which is taking place at the PEN World Voices Festival in NYC (come one, come all!). So, what better time than now to brush up on the potential winners?   Then, the podcast's main event: Chad and Tom are joined by the one-and-only Richard Nash to talk about Richard's recent article in the Virginia Quarterly Review. The title and subtitle should give you a nice teaser to their discussion: "What Is the Business of Literature?: As technology disrupts the business model of traditional publishers, the industry must imagine new ways of capturing the value of a book."

The PEN America Center’s organizational focus is the effect of world events on the safety and freedom of expression of writers, so the topic of war naturally looms large in its cultural consciousness. As part of the recent PEN World Voices Festival, Polish journalist and author Wojciech Jagielski was interviewed by Joel Whitney, a founding editor of Guernica: A Magazine of Art & Politics.  Jagielski began his career on assignment in the former Soviet Union and then spent a decade in Afghanistan. He became particularly interested in how countries with trenchant ethnic divisions seem so often to wind up in the midst of seemingly irresolvable conflicts. His most recent book, The Night Wanderers, is on Uganda and the problematic resistance leader Joseph Rao Kony, a now recognizable name thanks to a wildly circulated viral video. The PEN World Voices event took place at the Brooklyn Public Library on May 2 and was introduced by Meredith Walters, the director of exhibitions at the library. Listen to the talk between Jagielski and Whitney by clicking on the link above. Bons Mots: Jagielski on becoming a foreign correspondent: "It was easy choice because in the '80s, when we [Poland] were the colonist country, writing about Poland and politics in Poland, it was not the job for the journalist, it was the job for the politician, the activist." Jagielski on child soldiers: "The scenario was always the same. At night the guerillas were attacking a village … and they were taking hostages, the children. It was planned action because it was easier for children to be made a soldier. I was even told the best age to be kidnapped … to be made a future guerilla, was eight to 10 years." Jagielski on Idi Amin: "The stereotype was created in Western media. The real Idi Amin was not the same person that we have from the movies, from the books."

The 2012 PEN World Voices Festival ended with a talk about censorship at the Cooper Union by novelist Salman Rushdie (Midnight's Children, The Satanic Verses). After the speech, the PEN festival founder had a conversation with writer Gary Shteyngart (The Russian Debutante's Handbook, Super Sad True Love Story). Peter Godwin, the president of PEN American Center, and Laszlo Jakab Orsos, PEN World Voices Director, introduced Rushdie before he gave the Arthur Miller Freedom to Write Lecture that traditionally wraps up the festival.   Listen to and download Rushdie's 17-minute talk by clicking the audio link above. Bon Mots: Rushdie on censorship: "If writing is Thing, then censorship is No-Thing. And as King Lear told Cordelia, 'Nothing will come of nothing.' Think again. Censorship changes the subject. It introduces a more tedious subject and creates a more boring world." Rushdie on liberty: "Liberty is the air we breathe...in a part of the world where, imperfect as the supply is, it is, nevertheless, freely available—at least to those of us who are not black youngsters wearing hoodies in Miami, and broadly breathable—unless, of course, we’re women in red states trying to make free choices about our own bodies." Rushdie on originality: "Great art, or, let’s just say, more modestly, original art is never created in the safe middle ground, but always at the edge ... Originality is dangerous. It challenges, questions, overturns assumptions, unsettles moral codes, disrespects sacred cows or other such entities. It can be shocking, or ugly, or, to use that catch-all term so beloved of the tabloid press, controversial." Watch a video of Rushdie speaking at the talk.

Comparisons are invidious, but Hugo Hamilton is clearly a successor to the late Frank McCourt, author of the celebrated “Angela’s Ashes,” in the tradition of Irish memoir.  Hamilton read from his book, “The Speckled People,” as part of the PEN World Voices Festival on May 3. The event was held at Ireland House, a handsome mews building off Washington Square Park that is home to NYU’s Irish studies department. Hamilton was introduced by John Waters, head of the university’s Irish literature program. In the competitive world of memoir writing, a bizarre childhood is almost de rigueur. But Hamilton’s was even more bizarre than most. His father was an ardent Irish nationalist, married to a German woman. In protest against what he viewed as the British “occupation” of his country, he refused to allow any English to be spoken in his home.  As a result, Hamilton grew up as a virtual émigré in his own country, speaking primarily Celtic and German. The two languages also came to delineate the very different temperaments of his parents — an angry, pessimistic father and a nurturing mother with a sense of humor. To further complicate matters, Hamilton and his siblings still had to go to the local school in his English-speaking community, so that life was “a daily form of emigration.” As if to emphasize the polyglot nature of the PEN festival, the evening at Ireland House included a discussion between Hamilton and the Basque philosopher Fernando Savater, who spoke through a translator. Click on the link above to hear Hugo Hamilton comment on and read from “The Speckled People.”  Bon Mots Hamilton on not speaking English at home: "The feeling we had was that we weren’t in the right country somehow." Hamilton on writing memoirs: "As a child, you collect very strong memories. As an adult, you go back and reclaim your own story." Hamilton, recalling what his mother said about baking and life: "If you bake a cake in anger, it will taste of nothing."

Earlier in May, Jacob Weisberg, editor-in-chief for the Slate group, and author Jennifer Egan discussed Egan’s Pulitzer Prize-winning, genre-busting novel A Visit from the Goon Squad, and her writing process at The New School. Their conversation was part of the annual PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature. Bon Mots Weisberg on the incredible likability of A Visit from the Goon Squad: “The thing about this book is I don’t know anybody who disliked it. You can get an argument going at any dinner party if you just say ‘Jonathan Franzen’ and at least somebody will take the contrary position. But I have yet to find somebody who read this and wasn’t impressed by it." Egan on the mysterious P.M., to whom she dedicated A Visit from the Goon Squad: “You’re killing me with these questions! I feel as though I really should have had a warning. I am going to come out and answer that … It is my long-time therapist.” Egan on developing her characters: “I’m really bad at trying to use people I know. I wish I could use them. But I’m sure most people I know are [so] happy that I can’t!” Download the audio of the talk above or watch a video of the talk:

Tom and I were on fire during this week's podcast, talking about the PEN World Voices Festival and some interesting questions we were asked in an interview for the Picador Book Room Tumblr. While talking about PEN WV, what is learned about a location from reading a book set there, what's lost and/or gained in translation, we (meaning mostly me) tear into a number of things. 

One of the highlights of this year's PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature was a talk between writers E.L. Doctorow, Margaret Atwood and Martin Amis. New York Times chief film critic A.O. Scott asked the authors about America and its role in the global political culture at The Times Center. The Sunday before the talk, Doctorow (Homer & Langley, Ragtime), Atwood (The Blind Assassin, Alias Grace) and Amis (Time's Arrow, The Rachel Papers) had written essays for The Sunday Review section of The Times on the subject. Doctorow's was called, "Unexceptionalism: A Primer"; Atwood's was titled, "Hello, Martians. Let Moby Dick Explain"; and Amis's, "Marty and Nick Jr. Go to America." Roughly 100 writers from 25 countries were in New York City from April 30 to May 6 for this year's PEN festival. Bon Mots: Doctorow on why America is becoming increasingly unexceptional, "in terms of our secret warrant-less searches of people's homes and businesses and records, and our data-mining, and all the subversions of what we think of as life in the United States."  Atwood on what America should be: "I think with a lot of countries, you don't ask the question, 'What should it be?' But America has always had that question, 'What should it be?' because it did start as a utopian community. So it is always examining, 'What should it be?' as opposed to 'What it is.'" Amis on Trayvon Martin and American law: "Is it possible to confess to the pursuit and murder of an unarmed white 17-year-old, white 17-year-old, and be released that evening without charge? And I wanted to be told, 'Yes.' But in fact, as we all know -- it's one of the public secrets of America -- is that this happens all the time." Atwood on Herman Melville's Moby Dick: "I think that Melville designed it very carefully to represent a number of different segments of American society. It wasn't for nothing that he named the ship after an extinct native tribe and put three harpooners in there from different parts of the empire and made the owners two hypocritical Quakers." Doctorow on Edgar Allan Poe: "Did I ever tell you I was named after him? [Atwood: No.] I think it was my father's idea. He was philosophically inclined but he was busy supporting us during the Depression and couldn't give vent to his literary and philosophical being but he named his child after a writer he admired ... A few years before my mother died, I finally asked a question, I said, 'Do you realize you and Dad named me after an alcoholic, drug-addicted, delusional paranoid with strong necrophiliac tendencies?'" Atwood on being a smart, but not necessarily an intellectual, politician: "What you probably want is somebody who's got some political smarts or somebody who's at least smart enough to avoid sinking the entire fortune of a country in some really ill-advised, unnecessary war." Amis, responding to Atwood's point: "And anti-intellectualism exists in many English-speaking countries, but the American variant is worship of stupidity." Atwood: "And that's a different thing." Amis: "It is an entirely different thing." Click the link above to hear the full PEN festival talk, which took place on May 2 and opened with remarks from Carol Day. Or watch a video of the talk below.

New Orleans manages to leave a mark, good or bad, on its tourists, natives, and those who've decided to take up roots there. Most people who visit have a great time, but many can attest to how the city's unique insular culture, history and traditions can be as frustrating as they are fascinating. As part of the 2011 Pen World Voices Festival of International Literature, five distinguished New Orleans writers — Sarah Broom, Richard Campanella, Nicholas Lemann, Fatima Sheik and Billy Sothern — read selections from their recently published books and essays. Through their writing, each author has made sense of the nuanced complexities that make up this Louisiana port city. Panel moderator and novelist Nathanial Rich called the discussion a manifesto to the city. Five years after Hurricane Katrina, the flurry of positive national media attention has helped create the impression that all is well in the Big Easy. But the city is still fraught with problems. In conversations about New Orlean's stark contradictions, emotions run high and opinions are strong. The five fiction and nonfiction writers participating in the PEN discussion are either originally from or currently living in New Orleans. Each has devoted his or her work to erasing the city's fairytale image and telling the true story of its past, present and future. At the end of the workshop, the participants issued a statement with suggestions on what PEN could do to improve education in New Orleans. Bon Mots: Billy Sothern, a New Orleans anti-death penalty lawyer and author of "Down in New Orleans: Reflections From a Drowned City," on understanding New Orleans: "I think there are many who view NOLA as this exceptional place and some of them are the city’s biggest fans. But I argue that instead of its exceptionalism, the rest of America needs to be concerned with New Orleans because it's highly representative of the problems of the rest of the country ... These kinds of issues are coming to a neighborhood near you — they may already have but they are going to get worse. Instead of a metaphor, I think it's important to not say we have this 'New Orleans problem' with the schools and crime. Instead, we have this 'American problem' that is tragically magnified in the city of New Orleans." Nicholas Lemann, a New Orleans native, staff writer for The New Yorker (among other magazines), and Dean of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, on race: "The fabled white elite that controls everything in New Orleans are probably the least powerful white elite than you'd find in any big city in the country. Not because someone took their power away, but for various cultural reasons. New Orleans has no locally controlled major economic institutions, so the infamous New Orleans white elite does not have the inclination to do what one would want done in New Orleans. And if they had the inclination, they would not be able to do them." Sarah Broom, a New Orleans native who wrote "A Yellow House in New Orleans," on local pride: "I think this 'love of place' is really just from people who are stuck in a lots of ways. There were very few opportunities for [career] advancement. It's almost impossible for a highly-educated person to move back to New Orleans and find some sort of intellectual rigor. That is just the truth. Part of it is that Hurricane Katrina forced a lot of people from New Orleans and now they don't want to come back. This population of people who can't come back because they can't afford to are also made up of people who don't actually want to return." Fatima Shaik, who is the author of four books of fiction set in Louisiana, on writing about New Orleans: "I think writers after Katrina were thrust into the roles of sociologists. People who are from New Orleans are likely to write about it. I think those people who are not from the city and want to write about it should focus on writing across the cultures and writing accurately. People don't have a conversation across cultures. Writers can do that."

While PEN is often at the forefront of debates and initiatives to do with the more obvious forms of oppression against writers — isolation, censorship, imprisonment — it is also ready to tackle the more subtle deterrents that plague the publishing industry as a whole. In a panel at the Standard Hotel as part of the PEN World Voices Festival, writers and editors talked about the ways in which corporate publishing limited access to audiences, the pressure to mainstream, and editing as a form of censorship. The evening was moderated by Mischief + Mayhem co-founder Lisa Dierbeck, who fueled debate by "impersonating" a corporate publishing executive and goaded her panelists ("the enemy") to confirm that they planned to overthrow her world. Speakers included writers Carmen Boullosa, Dale Peck (also a co-founder of Mischief + Mayhem), Mkola Riabchuk, and Monika Zgustova; writer and editor Ben Greenman, and Feminist Press editor Amy Scholder. The independent tone was set early in the evening by critic Eric Banks. As part of the festival this year, PEN asked six critics to each recommend five books representing works in translation, contemporary fiction, literary classics, small press publications, and something to surprise. All the Stand-up Book Critics recommendations can be found at this link, but Banks' surprise choice of Edward Said's last book, "On Late Style," resonated with the festival as a whole: "In an era when too many are eager to see the humanities as an anachronism, 'On Late Style' is a stylish retort."  Bon Mots: Amy Scholder on what matters: "My relationship to my authors is primary to me — and then there's the business of books after that." Carmen Boullosa on books by emerging Latino authors: "The novels are prodigious, different...I would even use the word, 'insurgent.' They are like little revolutions. I enter the book(s) and say, 'Wow!'" Dale Peck on the effects of a corporate takeover: "The more von Holtzbrinck got involved [with Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux], the more I was told things like my books needed to be happier, or they needed to be shorter...because paper was expensive."

Are you craving a little continental culture? Do you need a good book recommendation? Both were on offer on Tuesday, April 26, when New York Public Radio's Jerome L. Greene Space hosted a literary salon as part of the 2011 PEN World Voices Festival. The event: “From Russia with Love,” featured Russian poetry, criticism, and classical music. This year, PEN invited members of the National Book Critics Circle to come to each event and recommend notable books. Jane Ciabattari, the president of the National Book Critics circle, opened the evening with her favorite five books. (Get out your pen and paper!) The night was hosted by Ina Parker, who regularly hosts A Global Literary Salon, which is a radio and online television program transmitted from The Greene Space. Parker interviewed the Russian poets Igor Belov and Ksenia Shcherbino, as well as the Russian pianist, Svetlana Smolina. Belov has published two books of poetry: “All That Jazz” and “Music Not For Fat People.” Shcherbino has been published in the journals Babylon, Arion, Kreschatik, Reflect. The poems were read in the poets’ native language, but the lively commentary was in English, and the classical music transcends all language barriers.  Close your eyes and pretend you are in a literary salon—here is your beret. Igor Belov on censorship: "Since the leaders of Russia hardly read books at all, we can basically write almost anything that comes into our heads. Although now so-called 'extremism' is an offense that carries criminal liability...this is a concept that is so broad, that I could say just a little bit more than I’m saying right now and find myself in violation of that statute."  Ksenia Shcherbino on Soviet mythology: "In order to understand another culture, the best way to do that is to understand the myth of that other culture. I was born in 1980 so I grew up without the Soviet pressure. So, I had to re-invent Soviet mythology for myself." Jane Ciabattari on loving Russia: "What to love from Russia? Well, it could be Russian music, Russian poetry: all of the things that make us human beings. And I recall the words of Nietzsche, who said that art is what we have to keep us from perishing from the truth."