The lineup for the PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature has been revealed.  The annual event will be held in New York City from April 30th through May 6th.

Novelist and PEN World Voices chair Salman Rushdie will deliver the Arthur Miller Freedom to Write Lecture this year. The festival will feature Martin Amis, Margaret Atwood, Paul Auster, Graydon Carter, Michael Cunningham, Jennifer Egan, E.L. Doctorow, Tony Kushner, Herta Müller, Marjane Satrapi, Colson Whitehead and many other writers.

Rushdie had this statement in the release: “In an era of ever-expanding ‘screen-time,’ live/in-person readings, conversations and literary performances have never been more radical or more necessary … These live events break down the invisible walls that separate us into our own solitary computer pods and re-assert the importance of dialogue, activism, and community without borders.”

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This year’s New Yorker Festival took place last weekend.  Twitter fans at the festival used the hashtag, #tnyfestival.

On Saturday, Joan Acocella (author of the vampire essay, “In the Blood”) moderated the Vampires Revival panel. On board to speak were philosophy professor Noel Carroll, horror novelist Stephen King, vampire film director Matt Reeves, and Twilight screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg. A video preview of the panel discussion is embedded above.

Several dozen King fans waited outside the venue only to be disappointed by King’s unwillingness to sign books. As he walked away with his arms in the air, he told the crowd: “I can’t sign guys, I got to get something to eat.” Alas, just because he’s a “king” doesn’t mean he isn’t human.

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On this snowy New Year’s Eve morning, a team of famous PEN America members gathered on the steps of the New York Public Library to protest the 11-year sentence of Chinese writer Liu Xiaobo for the crime of subversion.

As you can see by this exclusive GalleyCat video, the list of speakers at this dramatic event included: E.L. Doctorow, Don DeLillo, A.M. Homes, and Edward Albee.

Here’s more from the release: “There are currently almost 1,000 writers on PEN’s list of writers and journalists in danger because of their work. Leading the list is Liu Xiaobo, one of China’s most prominent writers and a past president and member of the Independent Chinese PEN Center, which is doing on-the-ground PEN advocacy in China. Liu was convicted of ‘inciting subversion of state power’ for co-authoring ‘Charter 08,’ a petition calling for political and human rights reforms in China, and for seven sentences in five articles he published on the internet that are critical of Chinese authorities.”

AP’s Hillel Italie is the latest reporter to profile Bridie Clark and her debut novel BECAUSE SHE CAN. No matter how much she and Warner Books, the book’s publisher, swear up and down that the dragon-lady boss character, Vivian Grant, bears no resemblance to Judith Regan, about the only major difference is that Grant is a blonde and Regan’s a brunette. But the piece is more fun for who gets quoted about the paucity of insider-ish novels about our favorite industry. “It isn’t that kind of business,” says Jason Epstein, a longtime editor with Doubleday and Random House whose many authors have included Norman Mailer and E.L. Doctorow. “It’s very gentlemanly, and there isn’t a lot of scandal to write about. You publish a book, it sells or it doesn’t sell, and then you publish another one.”

Other editors who get ink include Rob Weisbach (who namechecks Adam Davies‘ THE FROG KING as a publishing-drenched novel and praises Clark for her good editing skills!) and Robert Gottlieb, who cited Herman Wouk‘s YOUNGBLOOD HAWKE, a 1961 novel about a publishing sensation who lives fast and dies faster. “But publishing is not a glamorous business,” Gottlieb says. “It involves people sitting home and reading long manuscripts and then putting their pencils on the paper and making notations. Someone may set a novel in the publishing industry, but I don’t see it as the basis for a strong novel.”

Strong, no; vivid, yes, but then there are certain scenes in Olivia Goldsmith‘s THE BESTSELLER that are impossible to clear from our heads…

AP’s Hillel Italie had such a good opening line that it bears repeating: “George McGovern was never elected president, but at least he gets to write a book about one.” The president in question is the much-written-about Abraham Lincoln, who will be the latest subject for Times Books’ series of presidential biographies. “President Kennedy thought that only the president could understand the exact pressures and responsibilities of the job, and I felt that George’s defeat in 1972 would give him a sense of the kinds of decisions a president has to make,” said former Kennedy aide and Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., the series’ general editor.

McGovern wasn’t the first choice – both E.L. Doctorow and Bill Clinton were considered but turned it down due to other commitments. Times Books editorial director Paul Golob said he expected McGovern to be finished a year from now and hoped to have the book out by February 2009, the bicentennial of Lincoln’s birth.