PEN World Voices Festival’s most popular event, the "Translation Slam" took place at the historic Nuyorican Poets Café on May 8th and was hosted by Michael F. Moore. The premise is quite unique: a literary piece is chosen from an invited authors’ work and is given to a group of translators a week in advance. The author does not find out which piece was chosen until the different translations are read on the night of the event.

PEN World Voices festival continues this week, focusing on the broad topic of Africa. On May 6, festival organizers invited writers Teju Cole, Nathalie Handal and Binyavanga Wainaina to discuss The Arrivants: a New World Trilogy by Barbadian author Edward Kamau Brathwaite. The trilogy is a collection of the author’s first three poetry publications: Rights of Passage, Masks, and Islands.

On May 6, The Greene Space in New York hosted the PEN World Voices Festival's "Queer Futures" panel featuring artist Zanele Muholi, writer Binyavanga Wainaina and activist Kehinde Bademosi. Moderated by Shireen Hassim, professor of political studies at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, the panel discussion encapsulated ongoing conversations about the current African gay rights struggle, community formation in the age of social media and the politics of visibility in the postcolonial moment.