These Truths PEN World Voices Festival

In our final conversation, the acclaimed, genre-breaking Black playwrights Lynn Nottage and Jeremy O. Harris join forces for a compelling conversation about where, how, and why they make theater, the importance of inclusion within the art form, for playwrights and audience members alike, and imagining what a new theatre can look like in the midst of a pandemic and cultural uprising.

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These Truths is a new podcast from the PEN World Voices Festival, exploring literature and the deeper truths that connect us. In a moment that risks tearing our world apart, and when the factual basis of our daily lives is constantly undermined, this podcast explores how literature can help us arrive at the truth and a deeper understanding of what connects us.

Each week, authors wrestle with urgent questions about contested histories, foundational myths, and dangerous manipulations of language rampant in our daily lives. This podcast brings writers and artists of America’s premier international literary festival into homes everywhere while introducing listeners to new books, ideas, and authors on the vanguard of contemporary literature.

Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram @penworldvoices

PEN America thanks the following sponsors for their support of the 2020 PEN World Voices Festival:

The National Endowment for the Arts
New York State Council on the Arts
The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs
The Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment (New York City)
Amazon Literary Partnership
The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation
Acton Family Giving

How do you explain segregation or the Movement for Black Lives to kids? In this conversation, Fatima Shaik speaks with co-authors Amy Nathan and Sharon Langley about their picture book, A Ride to Remember: A Civil Rights Story, which tells the story of how a community came together to integrate a public park and its carousel. These award winning authors share their perspective on how caregivers and educators can explain democracy’s benefits and failures to kids.



PEN America thanks the following sponsors for their support of the 2020 PEN World Voices Festival:

The National Endowment for the Arts
New York State Council on the Arts
The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs
The Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment (New York City)
Amazon Literary Partnership
The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation
Acton Family Giving

In this conversation, Sierra Leonean-American author Ishmael Beah and New Yorker staff writer Alexis Okeowo discuss how fiction can help us navigate some of the most unrelenting humanitarian crises of our age.

To enjoy more from the writers of the Digital PEN World Voices Festival, visit pen.org/worldvoicesdigital, and stay up to date on our latest offerings by following us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter @penworldvoices



PEN America thanks the following sponsors for their support of the 2020 PEN World Voices Festival:

The National Endowment for the Arts
New York State Council on the Arts
The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs
The Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment (New York City)
Amazon Literary Partnership
The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation
Acton Family Giving

In this conversation, we hear from poet Reginald Dwayne Betts and folks from PEN America’s Prison & Justice Writing Program about how literature deepens our understanding of mass incarceration at a pivotal moment in time.

Featuring Caits Meissner and Robbie Pollock of the Prison & Justice Writing Program at PEN America 

with original work by Yvette M. Louisell and Justin Rovillos Monson

and original music provided by Kenyatta Hughes.



PEN America thanks the following sponsors for their support of the 2020 PEN World Voices Festival:

The National Endowment for the Arts
New York State Council on the Arts
The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs
The Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment (New York City)
Amazon Literary Partnership
The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation
Acton Family Giving

In this episode, writers from across the globe, including Russian poet Tatiana Voltskaya with Russian writer and translator Elina Alter, Uyghur poet Tahir Hamut with historian and translator Joshua L. Freeman, and Turkish novelist Burhan Sönmez, join in solidarity to share powerful messages of resistance, resilience, and hope responding to injustice in their parts of the world.

First, Tatiana Voltskaya shares a poem about how the past haunts us, and how having a terrible foundation, metaphorically and also literally being built on a swamp, has made St. Petersburg, and Russia, dangerous and frightening. Next, Tahir Hamut reads “What is It?,” a poem he wrote shortly after fleeing persecution in the Uyghur region, and which reflects his inner turmoil in having to leave home for safety in America and is filled with imagery of his distant homeland. Finally, Burhan Sönmez shares a new reflection on the complicated feeling of home, as his memories of a less than idyllic childhood confront the current harsh realities of crumbling democracy in his native Turkey.

PEN America thanks the following sponsors for their support of the 2020 PEN World Voices Festival:

The National Endowment for the Arts
New York State Council on the Arts
The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs
The Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment (New York City)
Amazon Literary Partnership
The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation
Acton Family Giving

In this conversation, writer and journalist Fernanda Melchor, author of the International Booker Prize shortlisted novel Hurricane Season, speaks with professor and writer Yuri Herrera, whose book, A Silent Fury: The El Bordo Mine Fire, will be published in June. The two Mexican writers  talk about their latest books and the ways in which literature opens the door to a richer, more complicated understanding of culture.

To enjoy more from the writers of the Digital PEN World Voices Festival, visit pen.org/worldvoicesdigital, and stay up to date on our latest offerings by following us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter @penworldvoices

PEN America thanks the following sponsors for their support of the 2020 PEN World Voices Festival:

The National Endowment for the Arts
New York State Council on the Arts
The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs
The Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment (New York City)
Amazon Literary Partnership
The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation
Acton Family Giving