PEN World Voices Festival 2019: Arthur Miller Freedom to Write Lecture: Arundhati Roy

For the Festival’s closing event on May 12, 2019, PEN welcomed Arundhati Roy, winner of the Booker Prize for her novel "The God of Small Things" and author of "The Ministry of Utmost Happiness and My Seditious Heart."

In the Festival’s keynote lecture, named for past PEN America president Arthur Miller, Roy discussed the defense of the collective, of the individual, and of the land, in the face of the destructive logic of financial, social, religious, military, and governmental elites.

Following the talk, Roy joined celebrated novelist and journalist Siddhartha Deb for a discussion about the ways in which literature can open up space for justice, rights, and freedoms in an increasingly hostile world.

This once in a lifetime moment took place at the infamous Apollo Theater.