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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Today through Saturday in Greenwich Village and in Los Angeles, the annual World Voices Festival is taking place from the group PEN America. They describe it as uniting 140 writers from 40 countries to celebrate literature and defend free expression at a time that it's under escalating attacks.

PEN America itself is trying to recover from a free expression controversy. Two years ago, this festival was canceled after dozens of writers decided not to attend, accusing it of failing to adequately address the plight of Palestinian writers and Palestinian culture overall. Its longtime executive director, Suzanne Nossel, left after that. Some writers thought the boycott of PEN went too far. That criticism was one thing. Trying to take down an organization that works to defend free speech against all kinds of authoritarianism was counterproductive, but many writers did boycott.

Now, PEN America has new leadership, is talking about the controversy. The World Voices festival itself is back. Joining us to discuss all this are the new PEN America president, the writer Dinaw Mengestu. He's been a MacArthur Genius Grant winner, among other awards, and among his novels as his latest, released last year, Someone Like Us, which, among other things, former President Barack Obama put on his 10 best books of the year list for 2025.

Also with us, one of the two new PEN America Co-CEOs, Clarisse Rosaz Shariyf, who has held various programming leadership positions at PEN America, and her bio page says before coming there, she spent over a decade at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library, working with writers, scholars, artists and librarians to curate and produce more than 100 year round free public programs on the global Black experience. Dinaw and Clarisse, thanks very much for joining us. Welcome to WNYC.

Dinaw Mengestu: Thank you for having us.

Clarisse Rosaz Shariyf: Thank you, Brian, for having us.

Brian Lehrer: Clarisse, for the uninitiated, what is PEN America, and what is the World Voices Festival?

Clarisse Rosaz Shariyf: PEN America is an organization that is more than 103 years old. We are a free expression organization, and we have a really simple and important mission that is to celebrate literature and to defend free expression. This is an enduring mission that is more relevant today in a world where writers, artists are facing threats that are existential. It is a very scary time for many people, including writers, to feel that they can speak without facing harassment.

We have seen how far it goes when we have people expressing their opinions or expressing dissent. We have had in Minneapolis the very tragic death of Renee Good, for example. This is a tough time. Our organization is focused on defending this really basic principle of free speech. This is without free speech, we do not have the liberties and the other rights that everyone should enjoy, and we should not take for granted that this is something that is very much at risk here in the US and still across the world. That's a little bit about PEN America.

Brian Lehrer: Let's address the controversy, and then we'll get to some of the events at this year's World Voices Festival. Dinaw, I saw you quoted in the New York Times saying it was very fair for writers to say no, I guess referring to the boycott two years ago, and ask us to do more. Does that mean you feel the organization-- I'm asking you, does that mean you feel the organization did underreact, at least initially, to Israel's military operation in Gaza as it affects free expression?

Dinaw Mengestu: I think free expression is always going to be a contentious issue, and then also trying to understand that the threats to our free expression are not equal. Sometimes, some bodies, some organizations, some individuals are under much greater threat than others. I think when we look back on what happened in 2024, I think PEN America was trying its hardest to balance these complex, competing desires to address the ongoing devastation in Gaza while also being aware of the numerous other challenges to free expression around the country and around the world.

I do, I think we found ourselves trying to balance and juggle too many different competing concerns. As a result, it was sometimes difficult to see just how much needed to be done in order to address the scale of enormous tragedy that was taking place in Gaza.

Brian Lehrer: Clarisse, last September, PEN America did issue a report that described "destruction of Gaza's cultural heritage." Would you say some of what the report found?

Clarisse Rosaz Shariyf: Yes, I mean, the report is only one piece of the work that we do to sound the alarm on threats to expression globally and on the international stage. I think in Gaza we focused in this report on what happens when cultural destruction is on that level. We are a free expression organization, an organization of writers, and we know the importance of literature, of culture, of stories.

We need to always protect and raise our voices and campaign very hard when the writers and the work that they produce is at risk. This was an important piece of work that we felt that we had to do. This is also a very small part of what the organization does year-round. I just want to say, Brian, that when we talk about the controversy, I just want also to be clear that last year's festival in 2025 was a beautiful celebration of the power of stories.

We had many writers from 35 countries who were also joining us in the village, as we are gathering in the same way this year. The controversy that we're talking about was at a moment where the conflict had just happened, and like every cultural organizations, we wrestled with the moment. What I'd like to also just make sure to add is that PEN America wants to be the organization that can model what it looks like to protect free speech, but to also challenge speech with more speech, to actually turn away from silence and erasure.

Silence and erasure, in a way, is very destructive to the fabric of a democratic society. I think that that's what our role is as an organization. I think we never, even through the controversy, we never stopped doing the work, which is to protect free expression for all and to advocate for the writers who had less of a voice maybe at some point. We're going to continue to do that work and do it in the way that this organization is set up to do.

Brian Lehrer: Dinaw, we'll get to a variety of authors and events scheduled for the festival this week. How, for example, are you addressing the Middle East situation in these coming days as it relates to the PEN World Voices' mission?

Dinaw Mengestu: I believe it's on Thursday. There are two panels, one dedicated to telling stories from Palestine, and that looks at the ways Palestinian narratives have been framed before historically and the ways Palestinian writers today are currently trying to reframe that story on their own terms. There's also, I believe, the second panel happening also on Thursday, that focuses on the Holocaust and the remembrance of the Holocaust through literature.

Clarisse can also correct me if I'm missing something, and I'm not sure if there's anything currently because the organization-- The organizing for the festival obviously begins long before the most recent war began. I don't think we have anything right now that's scheduled to take place surrounding what's happening in Iran. I know certainly we do have those two events happening that obviously are focused on the Middle East.

Brian Lehrer: Clarisse, anything to add?

Clarisse Rosaz Shariyf: What I'd like to add is what vets-- we are not only tackling current issues. I think that this festival has an amazing origin story with post 9/11, Salman Rushdie, who was at the time the PEN America president, with Esther Allen, a translator, and Michael Roberts, founded this festival with this idea that in the time of war, in a time of isolationist movement, when the US was actually retreating onto itself, that it was really important to bring international writers to the US to be in conversation with American writers about what connects us.

Literature and stories, that's the true power of what we're celebrating with this festival. It's not just about current issues, but it's about what's preoccupying us as citizens of this world and as citizens of this country.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we can take a few phone calls or texts with questions or comments for our guests representing and leading the PEN World Voices Festival here in New York and in Los Angeles, the next three days or four days, really, if you count today. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. This can be on some of their festival event themes that we're going to get to, like free expression in a time of endangered democracy or political forces affecting people's personal lives. This is around some books that have dystopian near-future themes.

We'll touch on that, or the controversy surrounding PEN America these last few years, or anything else related.

I see they just issued a statement yesterday having to do with new pressure from the Trump administration on ABC because of something Jimmy Kimmel said. 212-433-WNYC, 433-9692, call or text. All right. Dinaw, I see that your opening event today will be about the endangered health of our democracy with three pretty acclaimed authors, Molly Jong-Fast, Phil Klay, the Marine veteran who's written books like Uncertain Ground, Citizenship in a Time of Endless Invisible War, and Judith Butler, author of Who's Afraid of Gender? and many other books. Can you say anything more about that, like how those three connect to each other or what aspects of endangered democracy might be the focus?

Dinaw Mengestu: I think the threats to our democracy have been at the forefront of PEN America's work for a number of years now. We issued reports looking at the threats of disinformation to democracy, certainly looking at the threats the Trump administration continues to pose to our democracy. What you see in that panel, I think, are three wonderful, fantastic writers coming from different fields of expertise who can actually talk about their experience and their understanding of how our democracy is under threat.

Phil Klay, as you noted, is both a former Marine and also a novelist and a journalist. We have an incredible scholar in Judith Butler who understands, I think, perhaps more acutely than anybody else, just how profound the threats to LGBTQ rights are right now, under this administration. I think we've got an ability in not only this panel, but probably in all of our panels to actually bring together a number of competing and sometimes diverse and incredibly thoughtful and intelligent perspectives, and to hold them all together in one space and have one conversation both among the panelists and the audience.

Brian Lehrer: Clarisse, I see that you'll be moderating a panel on Friday with authors who've written what your release calls dystopian near-future books that illustrate how political forces impact personal lives. That's with Laila Lalami, the Moroccan American novelist and essayist, and New York-based Indian author Megha Majumdar, if I'm saying that right. Can you give us any examples of these dystopian near-future themes or what interests you about them?

Clarisse Rosaz Shariyf: Yes, actually, I am moderating this conversation, and I'm really excited. These are two extraordinary writers, and if your listeners have not read them yet, I would definitely encourage them to pick up a copy, but mostly to join us on Friday and come in and hear from them directly. Here, I think they both tackle very current and immediate issues that we're wrestling with in our daily lives. One is the issue of surveillance and the way technology and the way technology is so embedded into our lives that the amount of data that exists about each of us and that is exchanged and used by big technology companies is affecting the way we move in the world and the way we are surveilled in some instances.

The other is tackling the issue of climate and what happens when you exist in part of a world where you have to-- It's a question of survival and what happens to how we behave. The ethics of who has access to which resources when scarcity arrives and is much closer to you in your daily life. It's really interesting to have these two writers be in conversation with each other and actually wrestle with things that are very immediate to us in our daily life, but they wrote it in this dystopian way. As you can tell, I'm a fan. Also, I'm inviting everybody to join us for this amazing conversation.

Brian Lehrer: That's great. Listener writes, "In the PEN discussion, it is clear that Gaza was a singular event for the organization. Can the speakers address why this was so different from other past issues?" Dinaw, do you want to take that first?

Dinaw Mengestu: Yes. I also was thinking-- I wanted to go back to also note, given the scale of destruction in Gaza, I think everyone, every organization that was responsible and watching what was happening knew that to respond forcefully was both necessary and also it was always going to be-- There's always going to be a need for more. The scale of death, of cultural destruction, was larger than any one group, any one organization could ever account for. I think PEN America certainly, like everyone else, tries and does its best to account and tries to speak to what's happening.

Sometimes, there is also just a question of scale and size. The enormity of the tragedy, I think, defeats anybody who's trying to address it at all times. I think being asked to do more is, I think, a natural response to that destruction. It's a call for people to join together and work towards a more aggressive response. I think PEN America certainly was able to do that. I think we were able to do that in part because the writers in our community challenged us to do more. We continue to do more. We are now looking forward to the next part of the organization's future.

Brian Lehrer: Clarisse, anything to add?

Clarisse Rosaz Shariyf: Yes, I think that it was a singular event, but-- From my perspective, I think this is, again, this is an organization that was responding at the same time to very serious threats to free expression in other parts of the world. I mean, we're doing tremendous work in Iran. I mean, this is even just brought to the foreground right now with the current war. We are still working very closely with writers in Ukraine. I think that it could be the perception was such that this felt like a singular event. I do want to assure your listeners that PEN America continued to do the work at its full capacity.

We were able to continue doing our work with elevating the voices of writers from around the world. We actually were able to focus very much on what was going on here at home with a new administration that, in the first hundred days, really were just a source of the dismantling of some of our norms, some of the institutions, cultural institutions in this country. We were on the front lines of pushing back and elevating these issues, and using writers to speak about these issues.

I just want to also just-- to put a finer point on it, PEN America is an organization of writers, is an organization whose mission is to defend free expression for all writers, using the power of storytelling to do so. We represent all the writers across the genres and across ideologies. The goal is not to have writers who are part of our PEN community agree with each other. The one thing that they do agree on is the central role that we can play to defend free expression in this country. This is the focus that we should have right now.

Brian Lehrer: Jumping ahead to Saturday, Dinaw, I see you'll be moderating a closing night event on how literature reflects the plurality of our world with Susan Choi, Tash Aw, Patricia Smith, and Madeleine Thien. Does your own story exemplify this at all? I see you were born in Ethiopia, grew up in the US from the age of two. Your latest novel, Someone Like Us, is about a journalist of Ethiopian descent. Would you like to blurb your own book here and say something maybe about how it represents the theme of that closing event Saturday for the PEN World Voices?

Dinaw Mengestu: I think not just my own books, but obviously the books of everyone on that panel and probably the overwhelming majority of our writers reflects this very diverse and complicated background in which our identities cannot be defined under one singular term. Yet at the same time, we share this core fundamental humanity that we can recognize despite our differences, despite our differences in language and culture.

I think we all try to pay attention to those differences as writers, and we want to respect those differences while also understanding that those differences are not the totality of who we are, that, in fact, underneath them is something far more fundamental, which is our shared collective humanity. Every time I think we can highlight that humanity, and every time we can bring those differences to the foreground, we animate literature at its most powerful.

Brian Lehrer: Can I digress from the festival for a minute? I see that PEN America issued a press release yesterday based on something in the news. It says, "People aren't stupid. One day President Trump demands Disney and ABC fire Jimmy Kimmel over his jokes, and lo and behold, the next day, his administration seeks the FCC on ABC to investigate the network's licensing. If comedians can't make jokes about the President without fear of government retaliation, then what's the First Amendment for? This is Free Speech 101."

Your press release says, "Once again, the Trump administration is abusing federal regulatory power to silence the President's critics. We call on Disney, ABC's parent company, to stand firm in the face of this blatant intimidation and fight for the First Amendment." Can either of you say what ABC standing firm means, what PEN America is calling on the network to do?

Clarisse Rosaz Shariyf: I'll just say from my perspective, again, we have to safeguard a culture of free expression in the US and safeguard the First Amendment. Jimmy Kimmel is a Comedian. We know what happens in history and in other parts of the world, authoritarian governments will come after comedians, satirists first, writers first. PEN America is here to speak up and to be very clear, to sound the alarm of what is happening right now in this country. We just need to protect the right for free expression. Comedians are performing their right to free speech and free expression when they create their satire and monologues. This is no exception. We're watching, and we will continue to speak up.

Brian Lehrer: The joke that apparently got to Trump this time was Kimmel saying that Melania Trump has a glow like an expectant widow. That was a couple of days before the assassination attempt on the president Saturday night. They're saying he was somehow promoting violence. Similar, I guess, with the new criminal case against James Comey for writing out 8647 on the beach with seashells in a social media post.

86 means get rid of, 47, could be Trump the 47th president. Allegedly, that was a call for assassination. Of course, Comey strongly denies that. Those may both be baseless charges and just more examples of trying to silence Trump's critics, Comey and Jimmy Kimmel. How do you grapple at PEN America, Dinaw, as a free expression institution, with finding a line between expressing strong points of view or even hate speech and promoting violence?

Dinaw Mengestu: Fortunately, we do have a First Amendment that clearly, I think, helps us articulate and understand the difference between those two. I think even when you look at the ABC example, what you understand there, and I think what PEN America is really calling on ABC to do is not to fall to the government's pressure. ABC, as they did last time, it was the affiliate networks that decided that we're going to pull this show. The government can threaten, but the networks have to be able to have courage, and they need to be able to stand on the front lines and defend this collective right that belongs to all of us.

What we want ABC to do, obviously, is to stand firm and protect, not only their hosts, but also, I think, all of us who are dependent upon that free expression. When it comes to that line between, our position has always been difficult, uncomfortable. Sometimes, speech that we find even reprehensible has to be made accessible. It has to be allowed. Because without that, there's no way to ensure that we all maintain and are able to protect that same fundamental right.

When speech begins to obviously cross that line into hate, when it becomes an incitement to violence, then obviously you've crossed over the First Amendment, and you're no longer protected by that. I think we have a clear sense of where that line stands. I think we demand institutions, cultural organizations, to be as generous and forward-thinking as possible when it comes to protecting those free expression rights. Even if it's not necessarily a First Amendment issue, it's really important that institutions and organizations accommodate and make as much room possible for the range of speech that their audiences might hear.

Brian Lehrer: Anything to add, Clarisse?

Clarisse Rosaz Shariyf: No, except that if you allow me to return back to the World Voices Festival, I think that this is what someone will experience attending for four days. You'll be in rooms with brilliant writers, thinkers, storytellers, and you'll be in an audience with fellow readers, but also fellow citizens who are interested in discussing these issues in an environment that feels productive, in an environment where you'll be engaged, maybe challenged, but mostly inspired. I'm welcoming everyone to join us starting tonight through Saturday. This is very accessible. No ticket is over $20. A lot of tickets are free. Please join us.

Brian Lehrer: I mentioned three of the particular events between now and Saturday. Is there any other? Because there are so many, and I guess they're mostly concentrated in Greenwich Village, but in many venues. Is that right, Clarisse?

Clarisse Rosaz Shariyf: That's right. We have a few venues across the Village and lots of choices at any hour. I would encourage people to actually look at the schedule for Saturday because we have public art installations in Washington Square. We'll have some of the panels happening on our outdoor stage. We also have something very cool, the Indie Lit Fair, presented in collaboration with CLMP, with 36, I think, independent presses and literary magazines will be there. Come and talk to them. Let's support independent publishers and literary magazines. They are part of the vibrant ecosystem that make up the literary community here in New York.

This is free. You can walk through around Washington Square and attend panels, but also go to the Lit Fair. That's something that I would want to highlight for your audience.

Brian Lehrer: Dinaw, if you want, you could highlight one other thing. I'm looking at the list. I mean, there are so many well-known authors here, as well as maybe some that a lot of the listeners hadn't heard of, who they'd enjoy being exposed to. So many different events between now and Saturday. I don't know if you want to pick one other example which doesn't elevate it over the others. It's just an example, if you want, or just tell people how to get tickets, and then we're out of time.

Dinaw Mengestu: I would just say that one of the remarkable things about this festival is that there's really nothing else like it. We really do bring the world to New York. We bring writers from as many different countries and perspectives as possible. To have all of those writers assembled and in dialogue with each other and with the audience is something remarkable. To choose one panel over another would be impossible because all of them are going to do something remarkable.

Brian Lehrer: Very politic. How do people get tickets?

Clarisse Rosaz Shariyf: You go to worldvoices.pen.org, or you can just go to pen.org, and you'll see the link for tickets.

Brian Lehrer: Dinaw Mengestu, PEN America president, and Clarisse Rosaz Shariyf, one of two new PEN America CEOs. Good luck at the World Voices Festival the next four days. Thank you for joining us.

Dinaw Mengestu: Thank you so much for having us.

Clarisse Rosaz Shariyf: Thank you, Brian.

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