“Los Angeles,” said Hector Tobar, prolific author and Friday night panelist at the PEN World Voices Festival, “is a mesmerizing place.” And mesmerizing it was from April 30 to May 3, as the city welcomed the 20th PEN World Voices Festival—a milestone year for a festival founded in the wake of 9/11 to counter rising isolationism, xenophobia, and censorship through the enduring power of literature.
Now in its third year as a truly bicoastal celebration of literature and free expression, the festival brought more than 30 events and 100 artists, writers, and journalists to both New York and Los Angeles, affirming that language, story, and voice know no borders. In the City of Angels, where “dozens of diasporas meet,” as Tobar noted, stories blossomed across landscapes as varied and vibrant as the people who call them home. From Culver City and Beverly Hills to MacArthur Park and Pasadena, LA pulsed with dialogue, imagination, and courage.
In the aftermath of some of the most devastating wildfires in remembered history, panelists and audiences throughout the festival were alight with their own passion for the power of art, while reckoning with new challenges rising against free expression, domestically and internationally. Conversations echoed the responsibility artists have to bear witness to escalating attacks on free speech and civil liberties from an administration that believes there is only one good story– their own.
“When the landscape of your life is violently and randomly changed,” author and Saturday afternoon speaker Ruben Martínez ruminated at the panel “Life in the Pyrocene,” “you wonder, what will become of this place? And what will become of us?”
As audiences gathered in theater spaces, gardens, and museums, we were reminded of these fears– of the destruction of landscapes both physical and emotional. As Emmy-nominated director Ava DuVernay asserted during Thursday night’s event, “Crafting Courage,” “Your memory is a weapon. The idea of memory is actually what your enemy wants to take by moving books off shelves, by intimidating certain kinds and aspects of conversation.”
However, Los Angeles is not a city unfamiliar with the forces of destruction. And as our city continues to rebuild, audiences are reminded that fear is not an ending. Instead, as Peabody Award winning documentarian Shiori Itō reminded audiences, “fear is good– fear can create something.”
Los Angeles, a city perpetually remade by fire and imagination, stood as the perfect stage for this year’s festival. Its layers of migration, its blurred boundaries of language and belonging, and its constellation of cultures echo the global urgencies at the heart of PEN America’s mission. In a moment when freedom of expression faces intensifying threats, the 2025 PEN World Voices Festival reaffirmed that stories are acts of resistance. It was a proud celebration of artists who create despite fear, a recognition of those who use home, memory, and personal narrative to shift conversations and shape hearts. Through them, we were reminded of the importance of artistic expression, of connection, of finding a common story.
“It’s our job as artists to surprise people and to show them the truth that they don’t see,” Tobar said Friday night. “And, to do that, we have to remain true to the artist within us.”
