Today the PEN American Center unveiled the schedule for the sixth annual PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature–a New York City-based festival with 150 writers from 40 countries. In the video above, you can see PEN American Center executive director Steven L. Isenberg introducing the festival at Instituto Cervantes this sunny afternoon.

For the first time, the event will also feature a traveling show, as World Voices Festival participants will head to events around the country, from San Francisco to Washington DC. Running from April 26 until May 2, the New York City festival will feature a Natalie Merchant, an adaptation panel featuring Barry Gifford and Richard Price performance, and an interview with filmaker and novelist Melvin Van Peebles.

The festival concludes with a Sherman Alexie lecture on “The artistic, political and economic responsibilities of writers in the digital age.” It should be an interesting speech, based on the outspoken novelist’s past comments on Amazon and the digital future.

As we journey through this eventful Tuesday the 13th, here are some more links for your midday reading pleasure…

One blogger explains how she got a HarperCollins author to visit her book club via the community and sponsorship website, Groupable.

Andrew Foster Altschul edits an iPhone and iPod Touch-based anthology of stories by Lemony Snicket, Kau Hart Hemmings, and Joshua Furst.

Novelist Sherman Alexie will join the Upstairs at the Square reading series at the end of the month, mixing it up with musician Kelley McRae.

Rachel Sklar does a Double Take while watching a book trailer.

Following his disparaging remarks about Amazon’s Kindle in the NY Times and his subsequent clarification on a popular literary blog, author Sherman Alexie has agreed to meet with Amazon and “and listen to their arguments for the machines.”

Yesterday the author of the National Book Award-winning book, “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” said he felt unfairly vilified for taking a stand against Amazon’s popular e-reader. On his personal website, Alexie added that he finally accepted a long-standing meeting request from Amazon.

Check it out: “I have been especially humbled by those Kindle readers who, because of various physical issues, can only read with the machines. While I still have serious qualms about the technology, I have been challenged and emotionally moved enough to take a long-requested meeting with the folks at Amazon and Kindle and listen to their arguments for the machines. I’m on Amazon’s list of most-requested authors whose fiction is not available electronically, so now, thanks to the beautiful emails I received, I will do my best to enter the meeting with an open mind. And I definitely promise that I will not beat up anybody at Amazon or Kindle.” (Via MobyLives)

Author Sherman Alexie played a public role at BEA 2009–contemplating readership, Amazon’s Kindle, and class during heady panel discussions.

The author of “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” earned NY Times coverage for his disparaging remarks about the “elitist” nature of the Kindle. As the literary blogosphere debated his speech, blogger Edward Champion interviewed the author about his Amazon opinions.

Here’s one juicy excerpt from the Alexie interview: “I am taking a very tiny stand against many large corporations. I am asking what I think are serious, tough questions and all sorts of people are vilifying me for it. When it comes to this, many people are taking the side of massive corporations over one writer trying to get answers. They’re treating me like I’m Goliath. It reminds me of the way people think of professional athletes and their salaries. All sorts of middle-class folks agree with the billionaire owners of sports teams that the millionaire players make too much money.”

On Friday afternoon, American readers were praised, teased, and celebrated during a lively BEA panel discussion moderated by Granta‘s newly-appointed acting editor, John Freeman. The editor grilled novelists Olga Grushin, Sherman Alexie, and Paul Auster about the literary journal’s new fiction issue and American letters.

Alexie made a controversial point about readership: “All of us are writing for college-educated middle-aged white women,” he said. “Look around you. Count!” The audience ruefully complied, testing his generalization.

Grushin recalled how she moved to the United States as a 17-year-old student and read American writers for a year straight, hoping to strike up literary conversations. “I thought I could come here and talk to people about what I read–boy was I wrong!” she said, and the audience giggled nervously. She recounted telling an American teenager that her favorite authors were Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. “I’ve never read those Russian writers,” replied her young friend.

Auster concluded the discussion with an unwavering faith in his country’s pool of writers. “This is what makes American literature so vital–it’s so full of talent that these things bubble up anyway; despite the recession, despite declining literacy rates, there are as many poets now as there ever was.”

This month’s Harper’s magazine features short science fiction from Colson Whitehead, Jamaica Kincaid, Sherman Alexie and other writers–ten authors pondering “My Great Depression.”

All the stories imagine what life will be like if the economic recession continues, considering what poverty, politics, entertainment, comic strips, drugstores, and books will be like in the very near future.

Here’s an excerpt from a piece by Thomas de Zengotita about the YouTube generation grappling with food shortages: “So there are multiple opportunities here. It’s all a matter of reframing, you see–no wonder the self-help bestseller of the 2012 spring season is called Reframing Your World. And the title is so apt, as Oprah herself acknowledged on her show, because it captures the agency you still have when the world you live in is sufficiently mediated. On the pages and on the screens, it’s still all about options, and they are still all yours.”