So the PEN World Voices festival kicks off tonight with Orhan Pamuk’s Cooper Union lecture, where he’ll be introduced by Salman Rushdie and lightly peppered with questions from Margaret Atwood, and perhaps you’re wondering which of the many events held over the next six days you should try to see.
The first obvious choice is Wednesday night’s all-star “Faith & Reason” extravaganza, which features sixteen authors, and then there’s the 50th anniversary tribute to Howl Saturday, which has ten writers on tap. The Believer is also putting on a show Saturday, and though they’ve only got six writers on the roster so far, they’re all pretty big, and there’s bound to be more additions before the curtain goes up (so to speak).
But what about the less obvious choices, the little panels tucked away that may well turn out to be the most fun?
- French novelist Lydie Salvayre speaks with Rick Moody at NYU Wednesday afternoon (and I figure that if we keep plugging enough of Moody’s shows, he’ll eventually start liking us).
- Benetton is sponsoring a series of events during the festival (along with a blogging element on their website), including talks with Jhumpa Lahiri (Wednesday), Helen Oyeyemi & Esmeralda Santiago (Thursday), and Edgar Karet & George Saunders (Friday).
- A Thursday panel on exiled writers living in America includes Yiyun Li, whose efforts to get a green card have been observed with interest here. Li will also be reading Friday afternoon at the Strand with Chris Abani, Frederic Tuten, and Rodrigo Fresán. There’s a good chance you’ll see Jonathan Lethem in the crowd at that event; he’s been friends with Fresán since they met nearly a decade ago at a literary conference, and has nothing but praise for his first novel to be published here, Kensington Gardens…oh, and they’re doing a Benetton event, too, on Saturday afternoon.
- Martin Amis sits down with Patrick McGrath Thursday afternoon; that should make for an interesting conversation. And Christopher Hitchens moderates a panel discussion in which “activist intellectuals reflect on the status of our faith in revolution;” that has some potential for heated debate, wouldn’t you say?
- Friday night’s international crime fiction panel includes Boris Akunin and Hanning Mankell, two of the most popular foreign crime writers to find U.S. audiences.
- Literature goes Hollywood late Thursday night as Liev Schreiber and Debra Winger join Russell Banks and Martin Amis to read from the works of various writers who have been denied entry by the United States government over the years, so you could be hearing selections from Pablo Neruda, Graham Greene, Doris Lessing, Michel Foucault, Dario Fo, Gabriel GarcÃa Márquez, or Farley Mowat, among others.
Of course, these are only my own idea of what constitutes fun. You’d probably have your own favorite events, so be sure to check out the entire schedule!