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| Péter Esterházy |
The theme of this year's World Voices Festival of International Literature, being held for the fourth time this year, is Public Lives/Private Lives. Participants from more than fifty countries will participate at the six-day event.
Péter Esterházy, who is among Hungary's best-known living authors, and Bea Palya, a talented young interpreter of Hungarian folk songs, have been invited to the festival by PEN and the Hungarian Cultural Institute in New York, which has maintained a close cooperation with PEN and World Voices chairman Salman Rushdie in the run-up to the Hungarian Cultural Season in New York and Washington in 2009.
Esterházy will speak about the private lives presented in Hungarian literature since WWII, including those in his own novel Celestial Harmonies, at a talk with the American writer and critic Wayne Koestenbaum at the New York Public Library on May 4.
Palya will perform at a PEN Cabaret event in Webster Hall on May 3. She will share the stage with the legendary choreographer Bill T. Jones and jazz singer Erika Stucky. From the Cabaret, the participants will move to the nearby Hungarian Cultural Institute where music will be provided by Tilos Radio DJ Balázs Vajna.
The young Hungarian writer György Dragomán will participate at a talk on "minders" at the festival.
Photo: Eszter Gordon
