The literary free speech organization PEN America has announced plans for their 2026 World Voices festival. The four day event will take place in New York and Los Angeles from 29 April to 2 May and feature writers from over 140 countries, with in person appearances from authors including Judith Butler, Bill McKibben, Cory Doctorow, Megha Majumdar and Katie Kitamura.
In a press release, the event is billed as a “testament to literature’s ability to unite us, and to counteract the closed mindedness that has resulted in a nationalist maelstrom. It continues to affirm PEN America’s commitment to championing writers and their work.”
In 2024, PEN America cancelled World Voices festival after dozens of authors were outraged by the organization’s failure to condemn the war in Gaza. An open letter signed by writers including Naomi Klein, Isabella Hammad and Zaina Arafat read: “We believe that PEN America has betrayed the organization’s professed commitment to peace and equality for all.”
The letter also called out PEN America’s failure to “join other leading human rights organizations and United Nations officials in the demands for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire”.
After calling off the event, the organization issued a statement saying that “amid this climate, it became impossible to mount the festival in keeping with the principles upon which it was founded 20 years ago”.
The 2026 World Voices festival is the first since the February appointment of Summer Lopez and Clarisse Rosaz Shariyf as joint CEOs. The event will also feature appearances from authors including Molly Jong-Fast, Sarah Ruhl, Abdellah Taïa and Ha Jin.
Sabir Sultan, festival director, said in a statement: “The 2026 World Voices festival is an act of jubilant defiance – an insistence on the power of literature … In a time of inherent divisions, this year’s festival insists on our shared humanity, literature’s ability to connect us through our imaginations, and writers’ ability to reflect and refract the world around us in transformative ways.”
The organization continued, drawing parallels between the current political climate and those of its founding year of 2004. “The PEN World Voices festival was founded in the wake of 9/11 and the Iraq war to confront and offer an alternative to an era entrenched in cultural isolationism,” they said. “The current moment bears a chilling resemblance to the one from which the festival emerged.”
As well as author talks and panel discussions, the festival will include a slate of public activations around New York. The 10th annual Indie Lit Fair will be held in Washington Square, and Union Square will see a large public mural installed by the the Afghan artist collective ArtLords in addition to a large scale installation for books from the anti-censorship collective Unbannable Library.
The festival will kick off on 29 April with an opening event featuring Butler, Jong-Fast and Phil Klay. Titled Attacks on Democracy: The Plot Against America, the evening is billed as a discussion of the health of our democracy that assesses where the US is headed.