(I hate to miss PEN World Voices this year, but I'm very proud to present a report by Dedi Felman, an independent publishing professional, on an event featuring our latest Nobel Laureate. As senior editor at Simon & Schuster, Dedi republished J.M.G. Le Clezio’s first novel, 'The Interrogation' -- Levi)

Saturday night at the Bowery Ballroom brings another sell-out PEN World Voices crowd, this time in a party mood. Nadine is in the house. Salman is in the house. Anne Waldman is in the house too, and slam poet Gary Mex Glazner is whooping it up somewhere in the back. We're psyched for a rare appearance by playwright Sam Shepard, and we're wondering if Sam and Salman and Nadine are Saul Williams and who-knows-else are going to join headliner Patti Smith for a big "People Have The Power" singalong, which actually doesn't sound like a bad idea.

Devoting my PEN World Voices Friday to modern African literature, I grab a seat at the Instituto Cervantes near the United Nations where Dedi Felman is moderating a panel of four diverse writers representing Algeria, Nigeria, Cote D'Ivorie and Zanzibar. There's a good crowd of fifty or so eager listeners, and many of us feel confused when the panelists enter and a male writer occupies the seat behind the name plate for Yasmina Khadra.

Thursday at PEN World Voices brings me uptown to Columbia University, which I don't visit often enough, to catch a variety of international writers associated with Words Without Borders or the new Words Without Borders anthology.

PEN World Voices is a series of more than sixty encounters with writers from around the world, most of them taking place in small rooms before small audiences. But Wednesday night at Town Hall in Manhattan's theater district is "the big show", star-studded and sold-out, and host Salman Rushdie seems almost apologetic about this in his introductory remarks from the Town Hall stage.

Saturday, Noon I'm in the Bowery Poetry Club meeting Lyubomir Levchev, a poet famous in Bulgaria and mostly unknown around the world. He's here in New York City for an onstage conversation with hometown poet Bob Holman in Holman's own downtown dive, the Bowery Poetry Club. It's all part of the current PEN World Voices festival, which ends this weekend.

I took Thursday off to rest, and then I jumped back into the madness of PEN World Voices. And madness it is -- but quiet madness, because we are writers. I stood at the crowded top step of the New York Public Library tonight and watched bemusedly as a security guard nearly roughed Salman Rushdie up.

"If you don't got a ticket you're not getting in," the cop said, blocking the door, until Salman leaned forward and whispered soothing magic words that may very well have been "I'm president of this whole fucking thing, now let me in."

"Faith and Reason" is the theme of the PEN World Voices festival currently taking place in New York City. Here's how faith and reason are making out so far: