PEN World Voices at The Writer's Center, May 2

Just about ten days remain until our PEN World Voices event at The Writer's Center. Moderated by writer (and president of the Pen Faulkner Board of Directors) Lisa Page, the event features three fabulous authors (see below).

There's still time to purchase your ticket today! Members/Students (with a valid ID) $5; Non-members $10. Purchase your ticket right here at Writer.org or by calling TWC at 301.654.8664.

Lisa Page is a freelance writer. Her work has appeared in Washingtonian, Playboy, The Crisis, Savoy, the Chicago Tribune, Washington Post Book World, and other publications. She is also included in various anthologies. She is President of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation and teaches writing at George Washington University.

Leila Aboulela won the first Caine Prize for African Writing. Her new novel Lyrics Alley is set in 1950s Sudan and is inspired by the life of her uncle, the poet Hassan Awad Aboulela, who wrote the lyrics for many popular Sudanese songs. Leila is the author of two other novels: The Translator, one of The New York Times 100 Notable Books of the Year, and Minaret; both long-listed for the Orange Prize and the IMPAC Dublin Award. Her collection of short stories Coloured Lights was short-listed for the Macmillan Silver PEN Award. Leila’s work has been translated into twelve languages and included in publications such as Granta, The Washington Post, and The Virginia Quarterly Review. BBC Radio has adapted her work extensively and broadcast a number of her plays including The Mystic Life and the historical drama The Lion of Chechnya. The five-part radio serialization of The Translator was short-listed for RIMA (Race In the Media Award). Leila grew up in Khartoum, lived much of her adult life in Scotland, and now lives in Doha.

Daniel Orozco’s stories have appeared in Best American Short Stories, Best American Mystery Stories, Best American Essays, and the Pushcart Prize Anthology, as well as in publications such as Harper’s Magazine, Zoetrope: All-Story, McSweeney’s, Ecotone, and Story Quarterly. He was awarded a 2006 NEA fellowship in fiction, and was a finalist for a 2006 National Magazine Award in fiction. A former Stegner Fellow and Jones Lecturer at Stanford, he teaches Creative Writing at the University of Idaho

Jonas Hassen Khemiri, born in 1978, has a Tunisian father and a Swedish mother. He grew up in Stockholm, studied literature in Paris, and was an intern at the United Nations. In 2003, his novel One Eye Red was published to enormous acclaim and received the Borås Tidning Award in 2004 for best literary debut, Sweden’s most illustrious award for a first book. Montecore was awarded Sweden’s highest honor for a young novelist, the PO Enquist Literary Prize, in 2006. Khemiri lives in Stockholm.