The Nobel and other news

This morning, Mario Vargas Llosa, former president of PEN International, received the Nobel Prize for Literature. You can listen to his conversation with Salman Rushdie and Umberto Eco, which took place at PEN World Voices 2008, here.

Tomorrow, the Nobel committee will announce the recipient of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. PEN is urging the committee to confer the award on Liu Xiaobo, an imprisoned writer who would be the first citizen of China to receive the award. You can read all about PEN's campaign on his behalf here.

Next Wednesday, PEN will holds its annual awards ceremony. Anne Carson, Susan Choi, Don DeLillo, Paul Harding, Theresa Rebeck, and many others will be on hand to receive their awards, and the event is free, though seating is limited. If you would like to attend, RSVP to awards@pen.org.

The following Tuesday, October 19, PEN will present “State of Emergency: Censorship by Bullet in Mexico,” an event seeking to call attention to and discuss the silencing of Mexican journalists investigating drug violence in their country. Participants include Paul Auster, Don DeLillo, Laura Esquivel, José Luis Martínez, Víctor Manuel Mendiola, Francine Prose, and Carmen Aristegui.