PEN World Voices Festival to Focus on Africa

The New York Times's ArtsBeat turns our attention to the 2015 PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature, which has announced its lineup for this year's incarnation, gathering from May 4 to 10 in New York. The festival this year will have a focus on the contemporary literary culture of Africa and its diaspora. From the NYT:

Colm Toibin, who is serving as chairman of the festival for the first time this year — a position he took over from Salman Rushdie — said in an email interview that “there is a great deal happening culturally in Africa that we don’t know about. Africa is also a big place, and there are large differences between Kenya and Nigeria, Somalia and South Africa.”

The festival begins at the Great Hall, Cooper Union, on May 4, with “The Future Is Now,” at which Tom Stoppard, Aminatta Forna, Mona Eltahawy and Yahya Hassan will read commissioned pieces imagining what global culture and society might look like in 2050.

On May 6, at the Sheen Center’s Loretto Auditorium, writers, musicians and other artists will read original meditations and prayers. Participants include Edwidge Danticat, Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts, Rachel Kushner, Mr. Toibin and Nico Muhly.

The festival will also include panels on the African diaspora, the future of Africa’s queer communities, and poetry scenes around the continent.

This year’s participants also include Michael Ondaatje, Tracy K. Smith, Teju Cole, Luc Sante, Richard Flanagan, Alain Mabanckou, Achille Mbembe, Sigrid Nunez and Craig Seligman.

More on the World Voices Festival at PEN America (and the detailed schedule is here).