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.

PEN World Voices Festival Goes on Tour, Stops at The Writer’s Center May 2

From May 1-3, 2011, the PEN World Voices Festival, which takes place each spring in New York City, is once again extending the reach of this powerful week-long celebration of literature by taking the Festival on the road with the PEN World Voices Festival Tour. Thirteen up-and-coming international writers will participate in events in twelve cities in a dynamic cross-cultural literary exchange. As the sole tour location in DC, The Writer’s Center hosts Sudanese writer Leila Aboulela, Swedish writer Jonas Hassen Khemiri, and American writer Daniel Orozco in an event moderated by the President of the Pen/Faulkner Board of Directors, Lisa Page.

MONDAY, MAY 2
7pm The Writer’s Center, 4508 Walsh Street, Bethesda, MD, 20815
Jonas Hassen Khemiri, Montecore
Daniel Orozco, Orientation: And Other Stories
Leila Aboulela, Lyrics Alley
Moderated by Lisa Page, President of PEN/Faulkner

Price: Members/Students (with a valid ID) $5; Non-members $10.

Visit this page at www.writer.org for information or to purchase your ticket.
For additional details call 301.654.8664. Seating is limited; please register early. High resolution images of the authors are available upon request.

PEN is working with some of the most esteemed literary centers around the nation—including sister centers PEN/New England and PEN/Faulkner—to reach out to local audiences. In Iowa City, events are being held in collaboration with Prairie Lights and UNESCO City of Literature; in Pittsburgh with the unique literary refuge, City of Asylum; in Minneapolis, the Loft Literary Center; Open Letter Books, the publisher of literary translations, in Rochester; Talking Leaves Books in Buffalo; in Chicago, with 57th Street Bookstore; The Writer’s Center in Washington, D.C., Penn Bookstore in Philadelphia; Harvard Bookstore in Boston; Powell’s Bookstore in Portland; in San Francisco, with the literary journal ZYZZYVA, and The Friends of the San Francisco Library; and Elliot Bay Book Company in Seattle. Established writers such as Sherman Alexie and Aleksandar Hemon have been recruited to help introduce these promising new writers to new audiences.

World Voices Festival convenes more than a 100 of the most exciting and prestigious writers from around the world; with the Festival tour, we seek to further enrich our national dialogue with this diverse and international range of voices. In the wake of September 11, 2001, the unique ability of literature to foster human understanding and empathy is all the more important for articulating and defending peace and justice. In each city of the tour, PEN will pay tribute to readers and writers locally, nationally, and around the globe and demonstrate the necessity of a world in translation.

About PEN American Center
PEN American Center has a membership of 3,400 poets, editors, essayists, novelists, and translators and is the largest of the 141 centers of International PEN, the world’s oldest human rights organization and the oldest international literary society. International PEN was founded in 1921 to dispel national, ethnic, and racial hatreds and to promote understanding among all countries. PEN American Center was founded one year later. www.pen.org.