World Voices Festival Celebrates Literary Diplomacy (part 1 of 2) by Aberjhani


Award-winning journalist Serkalem Fasil accepts the 2012 PEN Freedom to Write Award for husband Eskinder Nega. (photo by Beowulf Sheehan, PEN American Center/Associated Press)


Political relations between China and the United States may have been visibly strained due to Chinese activist and lawyer Chen Guangcheng’s unexpected bid for asylum last week but diplomacy and fellowship between authors from across the globe proved the exact opposite throughout PEN American Center’s World Voices Festival from April 30 to May 6.

Currently celebrating the 90th anniversary of PEN American Center, headquartered in New York City, members of the organization hosted some 100 writers from more than two dozen countries during the festival. The event concluded Sunday with former PEN president Salman Rushdie’s presentation of the Arthur Miller Freedom to Write Lecture.

Several locations in the city served as festival venues, including the The Standard, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the High Line, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem. Those unable to physically attend the festival were treated to ongoing realtime posts via PEN Live on Tumblr.

Participating writers included some of the most recognized names in world literature, all gathered not to flaunt their status as literary celebrities but in defense of human rights in general and the freedom of literary expression in particular. Yet these represented only one aspect of the occasion. As festival correspondent and former National Book Critics Circle president Jane Ciabattari pointed out in her May 2 post, “Hybridity is the keyword for this year’s PEN World Voices Festival. Take words, music, new visual and digital forms, theater, photography, puppets, add tension—and all arrows point toward the creation of something new.”

For the entire article by Aberjhani please click the link:

World Voices Festival celebrates literary diplomacy (part 1 of 2) - National African-American Art | Examiner.com

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