Photo: Beowulf Sheehan/PEN Word Voices Festival of International Literature, 2015
The 12th edition of the PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature will take place from April 25 – May 1 in venues around New York City. The festival brings together over 150 international writers and translators, many of whom have contributed to Words Without Borders.
Below are some of the events that we are especially excited about, along with links to work by WWB contributors. Check back on May 2 for dispatches from Bruna Dantas Lobato, who will be covering events for WWB, and follow the conversation at #PENfest and #RethinkMexico.
We hope to see you at this year's festival!
MONDAY, APRIL 25
Opening Night: The Drug Edition
7:00pm; The Great Hall, The Cooper Union, 7 East 7th Street, New York, NY
With WWB contributors Olga Tokarczuk and Juan Villoro, as well as Boris Akunin, Lydia Cacho, Anne Enright, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Marlon James, and Paul Muldoon.
TUESDAY, APRIL 26
Country of Nowhere: The Refugee Crisis
7:00pm; Nuyorican Poets Cafe, 236 East 3rd Street, New York, NY
With WWB contributor and board member Maaza Mengiste, as well as Naila Al Atrash, Marlon James, Laila Lalami, and Sunjeev Sahota.
Reckoning Mexico
7:30pm; Roulette, 509 Atlantic Ave, Brooklyn, NY
With WWB contributors Valeria Luiselli and Juan Villoro, as well as Cristina Rivera-Garza, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Claudio Lomnitz, and Guillermo Osorno.
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 27
Expats
6:00pm; Instituto Cervantes 211 East 49th Street, New York, NY
With WWB contributor Valeria Luiselli, as well as Kwame Anthony Appiah, Marlon James, Jamaica Kincaid, and Colum McCann.
Literary Quest: Tenement Museum Edition
6:30pm; Lower East Side Tenement Museum, 103 Orchard Street, New York, NY
With WWB contributors Olga Tokarczuk and Guadalupe Nettel, as well as Rashidah Ismaili, Eisa Davis, Richard Price, Colm Tóibín, Sunjeev Sahota, and Veronica Gonzalez Peña.
Inside Out: Modern Chicano/a Culture
7:00pm; Nuyorican Poets Cafe, 236 East 3rd Street, New York, NY
With WWB contributor Ilan Stavans, as well as Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Carmen Tafolla.
Mexico’s Latin American Leadership
8:00pm; Instituto Cervantes 211 East 49th Street, New York, NY
With WWB contributors Yuri Herrera, Juan Villoro, and Jorge Volpi, as well as Cristina Rivera-Garza and Rafael Rojas.
THURSDAY, APRIL 28
Literary Quest: Westbeth Edition
6:30pm; Westbeth Center for the Arts, 55 Bethune Street, New York, NY
With WWB contributors Álvaro Enrigue, Yuri Herrera, Abdellah Taïa, Juan Villoro, Jorge Volpi, and Burhan Sönmez, as well asDalia Betolin-Sherman, Lorea Canales, Saleem Haddad, Andreï Makine, Karim Miské, Mark Nowak, Alexandre Vidal Porto, Susanna Reich, Fatima Shaik, and Klaus Wivel.
Free Expression, a Reality Check
7:00pm; Instituto Cervantes, 211 East 49th Street, New York, NY
With WWB contributor Magali Tercero, as well as Lydia Cacho, Pedro Ángel Palou, and Marcela Turati.
Elena Ferrante: Frantumaglia
7:00pm; The Greene Space, 44 Charlton St, New York, NY
With WWB contributor Ann Goldstein, as well as Roxana Robinson and Judith Thurman.
Women of Mexico
8:00pm; Dixon Place, 161A Chrystie Street, New York, NY
With WWB contributors Carmen Boullosa, Mónica de la Torre, Valeria Luiselli, and Guadalupe Nettel, as well as Cristina Rivera-Garza.
Mexican Poetics: A Lecture-Performance
8:30pm; Nuyorican Poets Cafe, 236 East 3rd Street, New York, NY
With WWB contributor Luis Felipe Fabre, as well as Guillermo Gómez-Peña.
FRIDAY, APRIL 29
Diasporic Fragments, Repeating Islands: Finding Shorty Bon Bon
2:00pm; Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House of NYU, 58 West 10th St., New York, NY
With WWB contributor Willie Perdomo.
CantoMundo
5:00pm; Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House of NYU, 58 West 10th St., New York, NY
With WWB contributor Willie Perdomo, as well as David Campos, Natalie Scenters-Zapico, and Deborah Paredez.
In Conversation: Glenn Patterson and Juan Villoro
5:30pm; Glucksman Ireland House of NYU, 1 Washington Mews, New York, NY
With WWB contributor Juan Villoro, as well as Glenn Patterson.
Translation Slam
6:30pm; Nuyorican Poets Cafe, 236 East 3rd Street, New York, NY
With WWB contributors Margaret Carson, Chris Clarke, Luis Felipe Fabre, Ezra Fitz, Michael F. Moore, Emma Ramadan, and Abdellah Taïa.
Ninety Minutes, Three Minds
6:30pm; Frederick P. Rose Auditorium, The Cooper Union, 41 Cooper Square, New York, NY
With WWB contributors Maaza Mengiste and Burhan Sönmez, as well as Dalia Betolin-Sherman and Andreï Makine.
SATURDAY, APRIL 30
La Frontera: A Literary Salon
1:00pm; Queens Museum: New York City Building, Flushing Meadows Corona Park, Queens, NY
With WWB contributors Yuri Herrera, Carmen Boullosa, Luis Felipe Fabre, Francisco Goldman, Guadalupe Nettel, and Juan Villoro, as well as Cristina Rivera-Garza, Fey Bermann, Claudio Lomnitz, Óscar Martínez, Rubén Martínez, Guillermo Osorno, and Veronica Gonzalez Peña.
Translating Nonfiction: When Words Become Walls
2:00pm; Instituto Cervantes 211 East 49th Street, New York, NY
With WWB contributors Marjolijn de Jager and Sophie Hughes, as well as Elizabeth Boburg and Lydia Cacho.
Monkey Business: Japan/America Writers’ Dialogue
2:00pm; Asia Society, 725 Park Avenue, New York, NY
With WWB contributors Hideo Furukawa, Mieko Kawakami, and Motoyuki Shibata, as well as Rebecca Brown, Linh Dinh, Roland Kelts, and Ted Goossen.
Edith Grossman: Making Translation Matter
4:00pm; Instituto Cervantes 211 East 49th Street, New York, NY
With WWB contributors Edith Grossman, Esther Allen, Susan Bernofsky, Margaret Carson, Jonathan Cohen, Michael F. Moore, Mary Ann Newman, and Alta L. Price, as well as Ricardo Alberto Maldonado, Jonathan Galassi, Julia Guez, Juan José Herrera, Jaime Manrique, Erroll McDonald, Daniel Shapiro, and John Siciliano.
Neruda in Cuba
4:00pm; Frederick P. Rose Auditorium, The Cooper Union, 41 Cooper Square, New York, NY
With WWB contributors Adam Feinstein and Ilan Stavans.
The Fictional Other
8:00pm; Dixon Place, 161A Chrystie Street New York, NY
With WWB contributor Abdellah Taïa, as well as Saleem Haddad, Alexandre Vidal Porto, and Eisa Davis.
SUNDAY, MAY 1
Mexican Landscapes
12:00pm; Frederick P. Rose Auditorium, The Cooper Union, 41 Cooper Square, New York, NY
With WWB contributors Carmen Boullosa, Álvaro Enrigue, Guadalupe Nettel, Yuri Herrera, and Jorge Volpi, as well as Sabina Berman.
Mexico City: Place and Metaphor
2:00pm; Frederick P. Rose Auditorium, The Cooper Union, 41 Cooper Square, New York, NY
With WWB contributors Carmen Boullosa, Francisco Goldman, and Jorge Volpi, as well as Jennifer Clement and Guillermo Osorno.