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.