WNYC

The 2012 PEN World Voices Festival ended with a talk about censorship at the Cooper Union by novelist Salman Rushdie (Midnight's Children, The Satanic Verses). Listen to and download Rushdie's 17-minute Arthur Miller Freedom to Write Lecture.

Earlier in May, Jacob Weisberg, editor-in-chief for the Slate group, and author Jennifer Egan discussed Egan’s Pulitzer Prize-winning, genre-busting novel A Visit from the Goon Squad at The New School. Their conversation was part of the annual PEN World Voices Festival. Download the audio of the talk or watch a video of the talk.

One of the highlights of this year's PEN World Voices Festival was a talk between writers E.L. Doctorow, Margaret Atwood and Martin Amis on America and its role in the global political culture. Download a podcast and watch a video of the talk here.

New York City has no shortage of sites that have a direct connection to the Titanic. One of them is the Jane Hotel, where the Titanic's surviving sailors went for a memorial service in 1912. Check out our map of this and other Titanic landmarks in New York City.

The theme for the Happy Ending Music and Reading Series at Joe's Pub in March was Strange Places. Listen to the extraordinary — and absurd — environments that authors Jessica Anthony, Amelia Gray and Heidi Julavitz conjured up their readings.

This month, Happy Ending Music and Reading series curator Amanda Stern welcomed three Yaddo alums to Joe’s Pub for a program entitled “Reality and Scandal.”

The poet Anne Sexton took her own life in 1974, but had she lived, this year would have marked her 83rd birthday. Reason enough, thought the actor Paul Hecht, to organize an elegant tribute to her at the Cornelia Street Café on Nov. 14.

Two famed poets, essayists and translators — Lydia Davis and Eliot Weinberger — recently read from new work at the True Story: Non-Fiction reading series at the KGB Bar in the East Village. Listen to the audio here.

“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.

Technology that begs to be played with at MoMA, punk graphics at Steven Kasher, carved characters at the Morgan Library and redecorated airplane nose cones out in the Hamptons. Here's what's on our radar in the arts world this very steamy weekend.

The second of four panel discussions held in conjunction with the Royal Shakespeare Company residency at The Park Avenue Armory focused on “Directing Shakespeare."

As the Middle East continues to feel the tremors of revolution from all across the landscape, Dr. Reza Aslan’s book “Tablet and Pen: Literary Landscapes from the Modern Middle East” offers a timely look at the role of literature in modern Islam.

Peter Brook was a legendary director with the Royal Shakespeare Company (R.S.C.) in the 1960s and 1970s; Michael Boyd is the current Artistic Director. The two were recently brought together in the first of a series of discussions being presented by the Park Avenue Armory in conjunction with the R.S.C.’s summer residency.

A recent Happy Ending Music and Reading Series focused on (modern) legends and beliefs. Listen to readings from Tea Obreht, Dean Bakopoulos, and Fernanda Eberstadt here.

Listen to the audio of a PEN World Voices Festival panel at the Standard Hotel. Writers and editors talked about the ways in which corporate publishing limited access to audiences, the pressure to mainstream, and editing as a form of censorship.

China watchers and writers Ian Buruma, Yan Lianke, Linda Polman, David Rieff, and Zha Jianying spoke at the PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature to discuss human rights in China at the Great Hall at Cooper Union.

A large swatch of artist Laurel Nakadate's work features performances in which she performs acts with strangers—and videotapes them. Nakadate recently discussed her work at UnionDocs as part of New York's "Walls and Bridges" conference.

WNYC was there to hear the conversation photographer Nan Goldin, critic Lynn Tillman and French thinkers Ruwen Ogien and Carole Talon-Hugon had on the intersection of these subjects.

On a recent Saturday, "The Writers Studio Reading Series" celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Yale Review. Listen to Louise Glück, Caryl Phillips, Edmund White and Michael Cunningham read from their work at the event.