By ALCG Books
May 5, 2023
Follow ALCG as we cover events featuring some of the most prominent voices in global literature today. This year, the focus of the festival will be on celebrating great writing and the power of storytelling in opposition to public attacks on freedom of speech. The roster of writers includes Pulitzer-prize winning playwright and PEN America president Ayad Akhtar, festival chairs Marlon James and Odessa Moshfegh, New York Times bestselling author Roxanne Gay, and many others.
When Catherine Dawson Scott founded PEN International in 1921, shortly after the end of the First World War, she envisioned it as a refuge for writers who were eager to escape the propaganda machines and social malaise of the early 20th century.
"Even as individuals become families and families become communities, and communities become nations, so eventually must the nations draw together in peace. In this faith, I founded PEN International."Catherine spoke these words at the Berlin Conference in 1926.
If Catherine were alive today, she'd possibly question her faith in the enduring power of peace in practice -- both among writers and in the general population. By 1986, Salman Rushdie, president of PEN America, was commenting on the chaos that ensued when 600 prominent writers from around the world gathered in New York City for PEN Congress.
"It was sort of exciting for a young writer to be there amongst all these giants yelling at each other," Rushdie said. "There were lots and lots of really terrible arguments."
Three years later, the Iranian government would issue a fatwa on Rushdie for his now widely-celebrated novel, The Satanic Verses (1988).
PEN Congress 1986 did succeed in generating the kind of cross-cultural dialogue that Catherine had originally hoped for. It also became an inspiration to Rushdie himself, who later founded the PEN World Voices Festival a few years after 9/11, in 2005.
Rushdie later spoke to the New York Press in 2015 about the unique and significant social impact of PEN on writers and readers around the world:
"In the U.S., in the heyday of Norman Mailer and Susan Sontag, there was a [phenomenon of the public intellectual]. That's less so now ... PEN is filling a cultural gap here. [We're also working on] behalf of persecuted writers ... addressing free-speech issues. The festival feeds back into the core work of PEN."
This year in 2023, more than 100 writers from 27 countries will be featured in the PEN World Voices Writer's Festival, the 18th anniversary of the event. Programming will run from May 10 - 13, and this year, events will be held in both New York City and Los Angeles.
"This year's festival, our largest gathering of writers ever, is our own act of jubilant defiance, a recognition of just how precious the gift of literature is, and how worthy this gift is of our commitment to protect it," PEN American president Ayad Akhtar told the New York press this past April.
Follow ALCG on Instagram and here on our blog as our CEO and Editor-in-Chief, Toyin Adeyemi, guides us through PEN World Voices Festival 2023!