Talk to Me

Late last month, journalist Janet Malcolm had a conversation with New Yorker writer Ian Frazier at The New Yorker Festival. Malcolm's writing has been appearing in The New Yorker — as well as in other outlets — for almost 50 years.

Philip Schultz, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "Failure," among other books of verse, has written an unexpected work of prose called "My Dyslexia."

“Les chose sont contre nous” ("Things are against us") is the wry slogan of Paul Jennings’ parodic philosophy resistentialism*. But Professor Jane Bennett of Johns Hopkins University doesn’t think so. (*For more on resistentialism, check out: Paul Jennings, "Report on Resistentialism," The Jenguin Pennings, 1963.)

In honor of its 50th birthday, the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) brought together company founder Sir Peter Hall and current Artistic Director Michael Boyd in conversation at the Park Avenue Armory where the RSC is currently in residence. 

The second of four panel discussions held in conjunction with the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) residency at The Park Avenue Armory focused on “Directing Shakespeare." David Farr, the RSC's associate director and director of "King Lear" and "The Winter’s Tale" in the company's New York repertoire was joined by Arin Arbus, Associate Artistic Director of The Theater for a New Audience; Karin Coonrod, the founding director of the Arden Party Theater Company; and Mark Lamos, Artistic Director of the Westport County Playhouse.

The Happy Ending Music & Reading Series is celebrating a happy beginning. The series performance on June 8 at Joe’s Pub marked the launch of Happy Ending’s partnership with Yaddo, an artists’ working community based in Saratoga Springs, New York. Starting next fall, the series will produce three shows featuring entirely Yaddo-affiliated artists. Wednesday night, Suzanne Bocanegra and Kyle deCamp performed a collaborative visual and performance piece, and Amor Towles read from his new novel.

New Orleans manages to leave a mark, good or bad, on its tourists, natives, and those who've decided to take up roots there. Most people who visit have a great time, but many can attest to how the city's unique insular culture, history and traditions can be as frustrating as they are fascinating. As part of the 2011 Pen World Voices Festival of International Literature, five distinguished New Orleans writers — Sarah Broom, Richard Campanella, Nicholas Lemann, Fatima Sheik and Billy Sothern — read selections from their recently published books and essays. Through their writing, each author has made sense of the nuanced complexities that make up this Louisiana port city. Panel moderator and novelist Nathanial Rich called the discussion a manifesto to the city.

While PEN is often at the forefront of debates and initiatives to do with the more obvious forms of oppression against writers — isolation, censorship, imprisonment — it is also ready to tackle the more subtle deterrents that plague the publishing industry as a whole.

Legendary writers  Edmund White and Pierre Guoyat spoke together about personal tragedy, childhood and, of course, life as writers, at the 2011 Pen World Voices Festival.

Are you craving a little continental culture? Do you need a good book recommendation? Both were on offer on Tuesday, April 26, when New York Public Radio's Jerome L. Greene Space hosted a literary salon as part of the 2011 PEN World Voices Festival. The event: “From Russia with Love,” featured Russian poetry, criticism, and classical music.