Thursday, April 26, 2007

PEN World Voices: DeLillo, Desai, Gordimer, Rushdie and Martin

Last night Rod and I went to the PEN World Voices town meeting on “Writing Home”.

Tons of fabulous authors—some I’ve been a fan of for years, others I was vaguely familiar with, and others I’d never heard of before.

Namely:

Steve Martin, who read from his soon-to-be-published memoir;

Pia Tafdrup, who read from her poems in both her native Danish and in English;

Don DeLillo, who read from his new book, Falling Man;

Tatyana Tolstaya, a Russian writer who read from her book The Slynx about an abandoned Moscow, set sometime in the near future;

Saadi Youssef, the Iraqi poet;

Kiran Desai, who read a little from her famous The Inheritance of Loss;

Alain Mabanckou, a poet from the Congo who read his poems in French...a friend read the English translation;

Neil Gaiman, of Sandman fame, who read from American Gods;

Nadine Gordimer, who read a little from her short story “The Ultimate Safari”;

And

Salman Rushdie, who read an excerpt from Shalimar The Clown.

The funniest part of the whole thing was when Desai, after stumblin a bit over her own words, said "I drank too much before getting onstage," before resuming the reading. All said in a rather prim Indian accent,

All told, I walked away feeling energized and excited and so happy I’m a writer, so grateful to be a part of this world of literature.

Cheesy to be sure. But: it’s a good life.

Labels:

2 Comments:

Blogger Martha Elaine Belden said...

i agree (about the good life part, i mean). i hope i one day get to become an actual writer... not just the lame magazine writer i am today.

i need to look for events like this in my very own dallas... i'm sure we have some sometime, right? probably nothing like this one, but still. it can't hurt to look :)

8:35 PM  
Blogger Candy Minx said...

Oh my god...what a line up...I'm having heart palpitations just reading the list...incredible! I love Don DeLillo and Neil Gaiman. However...i haven't been able to make it through Desai's book...yikes, it's well fey so far... It's even dare I say it poorly written in so many places. But I haven't finished it yet, so maybe it will improve.

9:30 AM  

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home