Book News: World lit fans gear up for PEN World Voices Festival

Tomorrow sees the launch of this year’s PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature as 150 top writers from 40 countries gather in New York City to participate in a week-long celebration of global writing. And this year’s Festival is set to be the biggest yet, as it also ‘takes to the road’ for the first time in its six year history, staging a number of further events in other major cities around the US, including Seattle, Pittsburgh and San Francisco.

With acclaimed international writers as Maziar Bahari, Ben Okri, Salman Rushdie, Roddy Doyle, Yiyun Li and Aleksandar Hemon etc. taking part in this year’s PEN World Voices Festival, this is one event that world literature fans in the US would be foolish to miss out on (especially when this is the only international literary festival that takes place in the United States ). Thankfully, those of us outside of the US can join in the festival fun too. With festival events being fully supported online, the organisers have made available a selection of international writings from a number of the Festival participants. So plenty of international reading fun for all. Wahoo!

The PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature runs from Monday 26th April to Sunday 2nd May. For more information, including full details on participants and events, head on over to the official website.