Charlotte Abbott in Publishers Weekly:
As books like The Kite Runner and Reading Lolita in Tehran dominate the bestseller list, there are other signs that U.S. readers may be waking up to writers born abroad. The week-long PEN World Voices festival of international literature, which closed April 22, drew more than 8,000 people to 43 events in New York City. Many panels were sold out, forcing the organizers to turn away an estimated 2,000.
“We guessed the audience would be there, but it was a real thrill to see the response,” said Salman Rushdie, president of the PEN American Center, who attributed the diverse and youthful turnout to an “enormous amount of blogging” about the festival. With 75 foreign writers and 36 from the U.S., it was the largest international gathering of writers in New York since the PEN congress in 1986.
More here. And there’s more, including audio archives of the conference, at PEN’s website here.