I was able to attend three of the discussions, all of which took place in the “Underglobe” stage at Shakespeare’s Globe. Unfortunately, I missed the opening event, which featured Nadine Gordimer and took place on the main stage, which is modeled after the original Globe, including a huge space for the audience to stand and watch the performance and an outdoor stage. (Of course, Thursday night wasn’t the best of all nights for an outdoor reading, but nevertheless, I heard that it went really well.)

All three events I attended—“Telling Secret Lives,” “Hell on Earth,” and “International Futures”—were very well attended, and quite interesting. I believe all of these events were recorded and will be available on the International PEN website at some point, and if you have the chance they’re definitely worth checking out.

Since this festival is inspired by PEN America’s World Voices Festival (coming up next week), it’s hard not to compare the two. In many respects they’re very similar—high quality authors, very well-organized events, lots of attendees—but there are a few noticeable differences.

For one, the questions from the audience here in the UK were much more logical and contained than the ones in New York. Maybe it’s a British thing (Brits speak so formally in contrast to us Americans, with complicated sentence structures and all the necessary words articulated in such a precise order), but there weren’t any crazies (no offense to New Yorkers) who stood up and rambled on and on without actually asking a question—something that inevitably happens at every World Voices event.

Also, in terms of the audience (I swear these two points aren’t related) there weren’t nearly as many publishing people at the Free the Word! events as there are at World Voices. Which is curious . . . Seems like at World Voices, a good portion of the attendees are editors, marketing folks, people from the various consulates, etc. Which helps fill the auditoriums, but also indicates that the publishers are very invested in the festival and help bring out more people to the events. And since in America publishing and parties go together, there are more receptions in the evening, and maybe a more festive mood in general.

Not to say that one festival is better than the other—it’s just interesting to see how the two organizations run these events differently. Here the events seemed shorter and were a bit more spontaneous. Which is something that I really appreciated, since I think the very staged panels in which each author reads a pre-written paper/story for 15 minutes without interacting or responding to his/her fellow panelists are the weakest of all literary events. At Free the Word! all the prepared readings were very short (in the five minute range—and really five minutes) leaving much more time for conversation, questions, etc.

I think this festival is going to continue to grow over the next few years and become an even more critical part of the international book scene here in London. Hopefully next year more international publishers will come to the London Book Fair a few days early to support their authors and participate in this perfect lead-in event . . .

Another thing that’s really cool is how International PEN is exporting the Free the Word! brand and structure to other PEN centers around the world to put on their own festivals. Up next, Austria PEN will host a four-day Free the Word! festival in Lenz later this fall. Having these festivals all over the globe is a very cool idea, and should help increase the flow and exchange of ideas between cultures.

Put on by International PEN, the festival runs through Sunday and features a number of great events with authors (and translators) from all over the world. (You can download a pdf version of the complete brochure by clicking )

Thanks to the fact that this takes place just before the London Book Fair (wouldn’t World Voices make a great public addition to BookExpo? Just saying, just saying . . .) I’ll be able to attend a few of these events and will do my best to blog about them. Here are some of the panels that caught my eye:

on Friday, April 17th at 7:30pm

Azar Nafisi (author of Reading Lolita in Tehran) will participate, as will Lee Stringer, but I’m most interested to hear from who translated Liao Yiwu’s He also translated Yang Xianhui, a series of fictionalized interviews with female survivors of the Gansu “reeducation” camp.¹

on Saturday, April 18th at 6:00pm

Lydia Cacho, Christian Jungersen and Carolin Emcke will discuss their recent works, each of which is concerned with human rights and presents information that is hard to listen to and impossible to ignore.

on Saturday, April 18th at 7:45pm

From the Free the Word! website: A sold-out event last year, ‘International Futures’ is back to celebrate the eminent writers of tomorrow. Kamila Shamsie, the acclaimed author of numerous novels including her latest, Burnt Shadows, talks on the subject of heaven and earth with some of the brightest contemporary international voices whose work already heralds stellar international futures: Bertrand Besigye (Norway), Petina Gappah (Zimbabwe) and Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih (India).

Should be a fantastic festival, filled with interesting events (many of which aren’t listed here). And on a basic level, it’s great to see the PEN World Voices idea spreading to another part of the world, creating new opportunities for readers to hear about international literature.

¹ While it’s on my mind, c’mon Random House, how hard is it to include Wen’s name in your online catalog and on the Amazon entries for these two books? Pretty shameful considering the fact that Wen is doing most of the publicity for these titles . . .

At that time, there weren’t many details, but now, they have a name—“Free the Word!”—and an impressive

Running from Friday, April 11th through the 13th, the festival will include a slew of authors and translators, including Alaa Al Aswany, Emine Sevgi Özdamar, Maureen Freely, Yang Lian, Tze Ming Mok, Sjón, Azar Nafisi, Daniel Pennac, Alberto Manguel, Salman Rushdie, and Lisa Appignanesi, among many others.

Overall, this looks like a fantastic festival, and it’s great that it coincides with the London Book Fair, providing publishers, editors, journalists, etc., with another reason to spend a lot of time in London celebrating international writing.