From the PEN America blog:

"As you may have heard, British memoirist Sebastian Horsley was denied entry into the US on account of "moral turpitude." As mentioned here before, PEN has long opposed ideological exclusion, and even if Horsley is no Doris Lessing, laws like this shouldn't be abided."

My response? Amen to that. Give me a break. US memoirists seem only to be flat-out liars, of late (no, not all of them, but it does seem to be a trend, maybe designed to sell books? Hmmmm). At any rate, in the so-called land of the free, how can we so pompously judge the work of foreign-born writers while we suffer the current stain on our own starched white shirt?

"And so Horsley has been invited to this year's World Voices festival, April 28-May 4 in New York (with satellite events in Boston-- i.e., Cambridge-- and Rochester). With any luck, the US government will get the chance to exclude him once again, and draw further attention to this frankly un-American policy."

My response? Now this is why I belong to PEN. Right on! (And please, America, let us choose a president and administration that's got open minds in its thinktank, k? We've been locked out of freethought for a tad bit too long, I say.)

"If they do so, though, he'll miss some great events: Ian McEwan and Steven Pinker; Rushdie, Eco, and Vargas Llosa together again; Rabih Alameddine talking with Aleksandar Hemon; Susan Bernofsky, Deborah Eisenberg, Jeffrey Eugenides, Wayne Koestenbaum, and Michael Krüger paying tribute to Robert Walser; the list goes on and on."

My response? I wish I could go to the World Voices festival. Sounds like just my cup of tea. I mean, come on…Rushdie, Eco and Vargas Llosa all in the same room? A miracle I won't have the pleasure to witness. Dear readers, if you happen to go to this event, please send me back a dispatch, wouldja?