Ta-Nehisi Coates will deliver the keynote address at PEN America’s annual World Voices Festival, the literary nonprofit announced in a news release.
Coates, known for nonfiction books isuch as the Kirkus Prize–winning Between the World and Me, and his novel, The Water Dancer, will speak about book bans and censorship in the festival’s Arthur Miller Freedom To Write Lecture next month. Coates is no stranger to the topic; his books Between the World and Me and We Were Eight Years in Power have been the targets of challenges and bans in school libraries.
“America has long been haunted by men who considered ‘Freedom of Speech’ a right reserved for a certain class,” Coates said in a statement. “Indeed, this current effort to drive uncomfortable literature from the public square is as old as the slave codes, as old as the gag laws. And just as old are those who understand that true free speech cannot be divorced from freedom itself.”
The festival will be chaired by PEN America President Ayad Akhtar, with Marlon James and Ottessa Moshfegh serving as guest chairs.
Events scheduled for the festival include a conversation between R.F. Kuang and Roxane Gay, as well as a talk featuring Han Kang and Katie Kitamura. Other authors participating in the festival include Phil Klay, Matthew Desmond, Ben Okri, and Stacy Schiff.
The World Voices Festival was founded by Salman Rushdie in 2005. Akhtar said that Rushdie’s “inspiration remains our guiding principle, bringing writers from across the world together as an act of celebration and exchange.”
The festival will kick off May 10 in New York, with Coates’ keynote scheduled for the following day.
Michael Schaub, a journalist and regular contributor to NPR, lives near Austin, Texas.
